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How warehouses for personal junk became a $38B industry

202 points by kawera 9y ago

chasingthewind 9y ago
I try to be pretty slow to criticize people for taking advantage of a service that they find valuable. Calling things in these storage units "junk" is a moral judgement that's repeated a bit early on and then cast off to make room for the more mundane rundown of the market analysis. In the end, there's no way to know the ratio of people getting good value out of this storage to the number of people throwing good money after bad.
- snarf21 9y ago
  I agree with you and there are short term reasons to put everything in storage. There is another group that just has stuff squirreled away "in case". I personally believe that most people would be happier following a less is more philosophy which can be approached simply by throwing out or selling or donating anything you haven't worn/used in the last year (or two).
  - larrik 9y ago
    A lot of these ideas assume childless adults. Bringing kids into things makes everything a lot different.
    - icebraining 9y ago
      Yet most of the world manages to live in much smaller homes than Americans, and without self-storage. Getting rid of thing is a necessity especially when you have kids, since their current needs take so much space.
  - patentatt 9y ago
    Yeah, I've seen the reality TV shows where they auction these things off, even the cherry-picked units for TV are like 1/2 absolute junk that literally goes strait into a dumpster.
    - jcater 9y ago
      Sure, but that's a somewhat self-selecting group of units -- ones that the renters let fall behind and get auctioned off.
      - bluGill 9y ago
        In fact that is one solution to the junk problem sometimes recommended: if you are not sure put something in a storage unit, pay rent for a year. Anything you haven't gone back for in a years must not be important so let them clean it out for you. In theory you could clean it our yourself for more value (craigslist/ebay), but you run the risk of trying to justify keeping something.
  - tbirrell 9y ago
    Throwing stuff out is hard to do if you are poor or were raised poor. Everything you save now does not have to be bought later. There is a potential use for anything and everything, so you might as well keep it. Granted, at a certain point the cost of the storage facility exceeds the amount saved, but the mindset is still there.
    - komali2 9y ago
      Man this rings so true for me, even as I pull an engineer salary now. Keep moving a car around free parking spaces even though I haven't "used' it in a year, still squirrel away a bunch of useless shit because what if! I still have trouble turning down free food even if it isn't in line with my diet x.x poverty habits just stay with you
      - rcr 9y ago
        I just finally rid myself of boxes worth of old computer parts and cables. But what if I need 7 VGA adapters???
        tbirrell 9y ago
        Murphy's Law dictates you will need them next week.
        cr0sh 9y ago
        > But what if I need 7 VGA adapters??? All depending on what they were - you might wish someday you had kept one of them! As somebody who "collects" old computer crap (ok, ok - hoards might be a better term), I had a situation not too long back where I needed one of those old adapters. I had purchased an AMD motherboard that had onboard VGA; having gone so long since I last upgraded, I didn't read the fine print saying that onboard VGA was dependent on having an AMD processor with VGA built in (APU I think they called it). I had purchased a different processor for the socket, without that feature - thinking "naw, don't need it, because I'm gonna drop my GPU in there - and switch the BIOS over to use it". I get everything together and I boot it. I get nothing on the monitor, and beeping - POST code saying no video, and I'm like "wtf?". Some quick research and such reveals my mistake: Without the APU version of the CPU, I can't change the BIOS to use the GPU in the PCI-E slot. But I don't want to spend a boatload more money on a CPU just to get this setup. So I have a plan: Somewhere out in my junk I know I have a PCI slot VGA card (like an old S3 Virge or such) - I just have to find it. An hour of digging around finally nets me the card - has 4 meg on it - I figure that's enough to see the BIOS, right? I boot it - and it sorta comes up, but everything's all glitched out, nothing's really working right, then it dumps to a screen with a "not enough video memory" error, and now I'm wondering "huh?". So I go dig some more... 30 minutes of digging, I find a different PCI video card with 8 meg; surely this will work. I slot it in and boot it; finally it boots - and I am greeted with this entire super-graphical fancy GUI for a BIOS setup, complete with mouse and everything! That's how long since I last did anything PC building-wise (I was replacing a Core2Duo machine); my last BIOS was textual. It was pretty apparent why it ran out of memory; honestly, I thought it was stupid - but what'r gunna do, right? So after some orientation and such - I find where on the BIOS it was looking for the video card (of course, defaulting to "on board" - but you would think that if it didn't find it, it would then try the PCI-E slot, but nooooo), change it out, save and shutdown, then re-install my GPU on the PCI-E slot, reboot... ...and it worked. Had I not had that old VGA card (granted, it's not the oldest I have - I have an EISA VGA card somewhere) - I would've been hosed.
  - cortesoft 9y ago
    How would throwing stuff away that is in storage make you happier? I mean, I understand saying it is a waste of money, but if it is in storage and you never look at it or even think about it really, how would it make you happier for it to not be there?
    - mjrpes 9y ago
      Everyone is different, but it feels like a weight is lifted off my shoulders when I get rid of stuff I don't need or can't justify keeping. Marie Kondo wrote a book on this: The Japanese Art of Decluttering. https://www.amazon.com/Life-Changing-Magic-Tidying-Decluttering-Organizing/dp/1607747308 https://www.amazon.com/Life-Changing-Magic-Tidying-Declutter...
- larrik 9y ago
  Exactly, I once had one for a couple of months midway between my condo and the house I was moving into, because the house wasn't going to be empty until the day I was moving into it. Before that I had another one to keep things like decorations (like you said), but also all the kids stuff that my older son had grown out of, but the younger hadn't grown into yet (plus seasonal swap outs). Condo living didn't leave a ton of storage.
- patentatt 9y ago
  Sure, what if the rent/mortgage you pay per square foot in your home is greater than the rent for a storage locker down the road? And there are reasonable use cases for medium-long term storage, such as seasonal items. I don't know how many people use them this way, but I can see reasonable uses too.
  - daveslash 9y ago
    This is exactly the situation I'm in. My storage unit is about 200 yards away, and the size of a small walk-in closet. I visit it about once a week. It's, essentially, a detached closet for my wife and me. Mostly seasonal items, camping/backpacking gear, and a small number of keepsakes.
  - tbihl 9y ago
    To add another use case: I know a lot of military people who throw all their stuff in storage when they deploy. Faced with no costs except a storage unit and low-mileage car insurance, a lot of them come back after the better part of a year with a down payment on a house.
  - thaumaturgy 9y ago
    One is that I sort of accidentally ended up becoming the keeper of a whole pile of family history -- documents, photographs, memorabilia, handmade things -- and I trust the fire suppression and security systems in my storage unit much more than whatever small apartment I'm renting at the time.
    - kbutler 9y ago
      For the documents and photos, could I suggest https://www.familysearch.org/ https://www.familysearch.org/ ? Pictures of the rest could go a long way to making the memory of them more accessible as well.
    - bluGill 9y ago
      For documents have you considered donating to the local historical society? Depending on what they are they might be of general interest and the historical society is probably better equipped to save them.
- TaylorGood 9y ago
  Wouldn't call it all junk, but there is a high statistic of storage units filled by people who "set it and forget it"
- cornholio 9y ago
  As we have all learned from reality-TV, a good quarter of the units are choke-full with anything but junk: you will find sculpted furniture in pristine condition, civil war artifacts, expensive professional equipment and tens of thousands of dollars in rare baseball cards. The industry must be really struggling to provide adequate security.
  - JoeAltmaier 9y ago
    But they show only the cream of the crop. never gonna air that episode where they found water-logged bundles of newspapers, old Byte magazines in mouse-chewed boxes and a raccoon mummy.
    - kazagistar 9y ago
      Dunno, that too would make for some compelling TV drama.
    - jiveturkey 9y ago
      your sarcasm filter is broken
      - JoeAltmaier 9y ago
        yeah its harder in print to detect. If it had been a tad more over the top I would have got it!
    - lfowles 9y ago
      They're also not going to show the storage units that students use to hold furniture while they go off for a summer internship elsewhere.
  - the-dude 9y ago
    I once watched an episode with a unit full of money ( on a pallet ).
    - tonyedgecombe 9y ago
- Spooky23 9y ago
  It's junk if you don't know what it is. My sister's mother-in-law spends about $1000/mo on storage units in 6 cities. They were a military family and moved frequently. The problem is that they don't remember what is in the storage units, and the cost of traveling across the country to go through a closet is steep and of questionable value. So she is stuck in a cycle of paying for things that she may or may not need. My understanding is that many people are in similar circumstances.
  - wolfgang42 9y ago
    That is an astonishing amount of money. Is it not possible to have everything packed up and shipped to their current location? Even if paying someone to do this cost $2000 for each unit that would still pay itself back after a year.
    - Spooky23 9y ago
      My guess is that there are other personal issues at play. I think that there is "heirloom" furniture involved, etc. From articles I've read and conversations that I've had with different folks, I don't think that scenario is uncommon.
      - opportune 9y ago
        A common theme with hoarders is that they'll acknowledge they have too much stuff in general, but when it becomes time to get rid of an individual item, they always have a reason to hold on to it. For my mother, the reason she hoards is 100% due to things being "heirlooms" and every individual item having a story. After her dad died she couldn't throw away any of his old stuff because she grew up with most of it and it reminded her of her parents (who were at that point both deceased). It's a difficult situation because it's quite reasonable to hang on to a large number of old items, just not all of them. But each individual item still seems incredibly important to her
        pessimizer 9y ago
- heartbreak 9y ago
  My (non-tech) small business uses "warehouses" (mini storage) for temporary and long-term storage. In one unit you can find crates of inventory, in another you can find equipment we produced for a one-off event job. We don't have enough to warrant an actual warehouse, and the units are significantly cheaper than renting extra office space to store this stuff. I keep it there to keep it out of my garage.
  - enobrev 9y ago
    My mother has an online business that has grown far beyond the capacity of her house / garage (which now includes 5 sheds in the yard for storage). She does the same, as storage facilities are still cheaper than a warehouse. She keeps an eye on commercial real estate as her business continues to grow, but in the interim, the storage facilities are as essential as they are affordable.
  - bluGill 9y ago
    While your point stands as a whole, why are you storing the equipment for the one-off event. Storage is for things you will need again.
- ant6n 9y ago
  > Calling things in these storage units "junk" is a moral judgement (...) Junk is just what you call other people's stuff.
  - icebraining 9y ago
    "Have you noticed that their stuff is shit and your shit is stuff?" George Carlin on Stuff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvgN5gCuLac https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvgN5gCuLac
- chiefalchemist 9y ago
  I agree that "junk" might be heavy handed. That said, if it's in storage 6 to 12+ months, you haven't need it, life has gone on with it, __and__ you're paying some multiple of it's value (i.e., it would be cheaper to replace) then what would call it? It, based on said math, has no value. Obviously, we're not talking about personal items (e.g., family photos) but stuff that could be replaced via a few bucks and perhaps freecycle. I don't think you can call it senseless, can you? :)
jamesbelucci789 9y ago
Very simple explanation, living space for people has shrunk. Hard to store your holiday items or old equipment in the basement of your house, if you can't afford a house in the first place.
- rwmj 9y ago
  There's definitely an element of this. My grandmother's basement was full of junk (in a very real sense - growing up in the War she could never throw away a jam jar or bottle). Now I don't know anyone with a basement, even a spare bedroom is luxury in London.
- DanTheManPR 9y ago
  That's exactly where I'm at. I downsized to a much smaller house, and I keep a lot of my uncommonly used and seasonal equipment in there. I'll be swapping out my snowblower for my lawnmower and grill pretty soon. I pay an extra monthly fee for the storage unit, of course, and it's not very convenient to have to drive a few miles to reach it... but my overall living expenses have been so dramatically reduced by living in a much smaller house, that it's an obvious win. This article's headline is weirdly condescending; the "personal junk" I own are things I value, and the self storage industry has provided an efficient way for me to store it without having to own a gigantic house or a shed.
  - gormz 9y ago
    I don't really understand this though. You say you're in a house so I would assume you have a yard? Why wouldn't you just build (or buy) a small shed in the back. Storage units aren't usually much bigger than a normal sized shed and would fit things like grills, bikes, and snow blowers perfectly fine.
- saalweachter 9y ago
  Storage units are also quite nice if you are renting and want to be able to move every 1-3 years for the variety of reasons people do so. Keeping the bulk of your low frequency of use items in storage both reduces what you need from an apartment, and keeps you from needing to move all that crap with the rest of your stuff. You pack your clothes, throw your sofa, bed and TV in the back of a friend's truck, and you're done before lunch.
jlgaddis 9y ago
Seeing the title of this entry reminded me that I need to get a lot of my junk out of a storage unit that I've had for a few years.
mathattack 9y ago
A lot of storage is a real estate play. Buy land in the direction of where cities are growing. Pay your mortgage with storage facilities sitting on top until the land appreciates.
- ataturk 9y ago
  Last year, I looked at buying a turnkey storage business. It was $4M and it wasn't that big of a place. I think the owners were smoking crack, but it does seem to be the going price. I ended up not going forwards with the project because it would take too many years to recover the investment much less make any money.
- djrogers 9y ago
  Interesting theory, but I've never seen a storage facility close down and be turned in to other real-estate...
  - SlowRobotAhead 9y ago
    I have. Some of my extended family almost certainly by luck built their storage unit complex right where the state decided to move the highway. The made millions.
  - conductr 9y ago
    Land is usually a very long play (trust funds, REITs, endowments, etc), I'd say this is a relatively new strategy in the past 10-20 years in most places. They likely won't be looking to do that until the storage building reaches its useful life and needs major repair. Then, the question is, do we have a thriving storage business or is there a better use for this land?
    - Tiktaalik 9y ago
      Yep. Buy industrial land relatively close to residential/commercial areas. Build self storage, wait 20-40 years. Eventually people are going to feel the need to upzone that under utilized industrial land that is so close to a thriving, gentrified neighbourhood. The City of Vancouver recently upzoned its Flats industrial area, and went to the extra step of banning self storage to ensure people actually build buildings that are capable of employing people.
sol_remmy 9y ago
Living space cost per sq-ft has grown while storage space cost per sq-ft has stayed the same. Why? Handicap accessibility regulations, parking regulations, etc etc have greatly increased the construction cost of new houses. i.e. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/05/19/upshot/forty-percent-of-manhattans-buildings-could-not-be-built-today.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/05/19/upshot/forty-... Storage facilities do not have people living in them and are therefore immune from lots of these expensive regulations. Hence, they are now an increasingly good deal compare to residential real estate.
- eganist 9y ago
  Are you speaking more generally, or about urban centers specifically (which tend to be more regulated anyway)? The citation you provided doesn't assert anything about cost per sqft of living space; it's mostly focused on the feel and vibe of NYC post-regulation. And I'm willing to put money on the fact that these particular regulations are no match to the outsized demand for housing in more regulated municipalities.
- ethbro 9y ago
  Ah, so that's how we end up at Snow Crash-esque storage-units-turned-housing...
  - blhack 9y ago
    People not living in storage units is definitely not a cost thing, it's a regulatory thing. If it were allowed, I would have absolutely lived in a storage unit through most of my 20s, and I think a lot of my friends would have too.
    - ethbro 9y ago
      Agreed! I was specifically alluding to the fact that if we continue to pile up building regulations, but don't increase regulations on storage units, then a lot of people will only be able to afford living in "storage" units. To be fair, storage units with a communal bathroom and power are more than most folks had circa 1930.
hownottowrite 9y ago
Very similar story in the Boston Globe on the same day. http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2018/03/27/years-into-war-clutter-and-still-overwhelmed-stuff-what-going/R9jktrIH2ySut5cMCHOSoM/story.html http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2018/03/27/years-into-war-c...
rowyourboat 9y ago
Well, it's much cheaper per area than an apartment, so for seldomly-used stuff, it may make sense.
xefer 9y ago
One thing I've noticed over the years reading old wills and probate records (16th -18th century) is just how few physical possessions even fairly well-off people owned. Estate inventories often list individual coats, shirts, bedding, bowls, tools, etc. I think the material wealth we have today is so incredible we don't even realize how much we've accumulated and could probably do without.
- sbinthree 9y ago
  Based on a phase I went through involving getting rid of almost all my possessions, you can get rid of ~50% of your stuff and barely notice. But that last 10-20% is so amazingly critical, you come to appreciate it and the work that must have gone into it more. That said, having things that are useful and last never gets old, just make donating something you do as often as shopping. Also that is a pretty strange but interesting hobby.
  - sporkenfang 9y ago
    I've had a thing ever since grad school (I lived in a 400 sq. ft. apartment, so it was necessity then) that if I buy a thing, I have to donate something else -- particularly for clothes. It's amazing how much less crap I've accumulated than friends and family of a similar age.
  - hathawsh 9y ago
    I'm think the hobby you're referring to is genealogy. It's actually a very common and useful hobby. :-) https://blogs.ancestry.com/cm/genealogy-second-most-popular-hobby-us/ https://blogs.ancestry.com/cm/genealogy-second-most-popular-...
  - fegu 9y ago
    A lot of divorced people know this from experience. I certainly do. Don't miss any of it.
- michaelbuckbee 9y ago
  Modern manufacturing is sufficiently weird that it messes with my sense of thriftiness. That it really is possible to manufacture new items less expensively than it is to repair them (especially counting my own time to do so). Like I can remember my grandmother knitting and darning socks. But she wished she had one of these sock knitting machines: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7N7hsho4Sjg&feature=youtu.be&t=822 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7N7hsho4Sjg&feature=youtu.be... And now you can buy a 10 pack of decent socks for $1/pair (and they may objectively be of higher quality). I'm trying to think how I'd even explain this to someone from another time: "10% of your net worth is this pair of socks? And they took you a day each to make? I just threw away a pair because my toe poked through the top."
CodeSheikh 9y ago
Storage Wars tv show is my guilty pleasure.
everyone 9y ago
How common is it for people to live in them? Any data on that?
- dboreham 9y ago
  Likely illegal in 1st world countries. Safety reasons, zoning, etc.
  - TazeTSchnitzel 9y ago
    Also the storage company might not be too happy with you.
- msantos 9y ago
  That's likely against all sorts of health and safety regulations . Having said that, there lots of small business in the UK being run from storage units - eBay shops, mail order, and even a karate training IIRC. Edit: links http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-25336446 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-25336446 https://www.safestore.co.uk/blog/2016/07/martial-arts-self-storage-unit/ https://www.safestore.co.uk/blog/2016/07/martial-arts-self-s...
- ghostly_s 9y ago
  Anecdotally, there are definitely several homeless customers of the storage facility I use, but I don't think they live there, per se; if only because there are cameras and a check-in/out security system that would catch them if they were sleeping there regularly. I think they just store whatever possessions they still have and use it as a secure place to change clothes, even sit and have some peace for an hour (it's a conditioned indoor building).
johnmaguire2013 9y ago
Are there any apps to buy and sell spare space, e.g. in your garage, or basement?
- mebreuer 9y ago
  Check out Neighbor (I have no connection) https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/28/neighbor-a-p2p-self-storage-marketplace-bags-2-5m-seed/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/28/neighbor-a-p2p-self-storag...
- msantos 9y ago
  I've heard of a couple of startups in London giving that a go. The same person who I was discussing that also told me that they had problems with illegal goods and potential insurance voiding - in case of fire/pests home insurance wouldn't pay for the damages because that would be considered running a business from your property which is likely not covered by your average house insurance . Edit: some UK based startups in the area http://ww.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/business-38211628 http://ww.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/business-38211628
- sedachv 9y ago
  Craigslist Parking & Storage section.
NiklasMort 9y ago
have to post this: George Carlin Talks About "Stuff" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvgN5gCuLac https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvgN5gCuLac
yters 9y ago
People get a weird sentimental attachment to stuff. I used to have a lot of books, and looking through them would give me a good feeling, though I rarely read them. Got rid of most of them and haven't noticed their absence. But it feel bad getting rid of them. I can see why people accumulate a lot of things they never use, and why it looks weird from the outside. But, I don't want to end up on that 'Hoarders' show.
jakelarkin 9y ago
its a huge amount of mental and emotional work to decide what to get rid off. the storage industry capitalizes on people's procrastination.
smadge 9y ago
The article presumed that the rise in the self storage industry is caused by overflow from the American dream and rampant consumerism, when I think it might be more characterized by the death of the American dream. How many people who rent self storage are homeless and storing their stuff away hoping they can retrieve it when they get back on their feet? How many people who rent storage units just can’t afford a house or a larger rental, but don’t want to abandon sentimental possessions like their books, clothes, childhood furniture, etc. A graph in the article shows investment in self storage increasing sharply after the Great Recession. Is this a coincidence, or is it because a new economic reality that requires thriftiness had arrived
- DoreenMichele 9y ago
  I started a long reply earlier and decided to turn in into a blog post instead. Part of what I touched on is that a lot of homeless people pay for storage and, in recent years, I have talked to a lot of people online whose finances are in the toilet and they are paying for storage, often in another state, while they live with parents or whatever and don't make enough money to support themselves. Years ago, I took a college class on homelessness. It suggested that homeless people pay for storage in order to hold onto hope that they will shortly be back in housing and will need that furniture. But the reality is that it often just eats into their limited funds for covering current living expenses and trying to problem solve. I did not pay for storage while homeless. I put my limited resources into taking care of myself in the present, improving things and building a future. Holding on to stuff like you "might need it someday" is rooted in a poverty mentality. Those mental models help keep people poor. In many cases, you could have handily replaced it for less than you spent to store it for years, especially if you had also sold those items you stuck in storage. Tldr: I generally agree that storage is often about the death of the American dream. The hell of it is that it often serves as an obstacle to personal rebirth.
- ams6110 9y ago
  I've known of people who not only had all their stuff in self-storage, they also lived in the storage unit themselves.
- zjaffee 9y ago
jayess 9y ago
After dealing with the aftermath of my grandparents dying at close to the same time, I realized that I had waaaay too much junk. I felt terrible basically throwing their entire lives away, but came to the conclusion that if I die, no one will give a crap about 95% of the things I own. I've tossed all non-essential things to the point where I have two plastic bins of things that are important to my life and that I like to sort through and think about past moments in my life. Everything else is surplussage and disposable. I tell family not to buy me trinkets or souvenirs when they travel. No Christmas gifts either.
cs702 9y ago
...and a majority of that personal junk probably could be given away or thrown out without the owners noticing. The 'dirty little secret' of the personal storage industry is that a majority of customers never, ever access their stored junk -- yes, never. Their stuff just sits there, unused, in an enclosure in some warehouse, while the service provider collects fees month after month. I say this based on my own and certain friends' past experiences with personal storage services over the years.
lovemenot 9y ago
I like the model of the start-up called Clutter which was mentioned in the article. Because you never visit the physical location of your property - it is picked up and delivered to you - there is scope for virtualization and end-to-end automation of this service. Also they photograph your items, so you can inventory more easily.

202 points by kawera 9y ago

I try to be pretty slow to criticize people for taking advantage of a service that they find valuable. Calling things in these storage units "junk" is a moral judgement that's repeated a bit early on and then cast off to make room for the more mundane rundown of the market analysis. In the end, there's no way to know the ratio of people getting good value out of this storage to the number of people throwing good money after bad.

snarf21 9y ago
I agree with you and there are short term reasons to put everything in storage. There is another group that just has stuff squirreled away "in case". I personally believe that most people would be happier following a less is more philosophy which can be approached simply by throwing out or selling or donating anything you haven't worn/used in the last year (or two).
- larrik 9y ago
  A lot of these ideas assume childless adults. Bringing kids into things makes everything a lot different.
  - icebraining 9y ago
    Yet most of the world manages to live in much smaller homes than Americans, and without self-storage. Getting rid of thing is a necessity especially when you have kids, since their current needs take so much space.
- patentatt 9y ago
  Yeah, I've seen the reality TV shows where they auction these things off, even the cherry-picked units for TV are like 1/2 absolute junk that literally goes strait into a dumpster.
  - jcater 9y ago
    Sure, but that's a somewhat self-selecting group of units -- ones that the renters let fall behind and get auctioned off.
    - bluGill 9y ago
      In fact that is one solution to the junk problem sometimes recommended: if you are not sure put something in a storage unit, pay rent for a year. Anything you haven't gone back for in a years must not be important so let them clean it out for you. In theory you could clean it our yourself for more value (craigslist/ebay), but you run the risk of trying to justify keeping something.
- tbirrell 9y ago
  Throwing stuff out is hard to do if you are poor or were raised poor. Everything you save now does not have to be bought later. There is a potential use for anything and everything, so you might as well keep it. Granted, at a certain point the cost of the storage facility exceeds the amount saved, but the mindset is still there.
  - komali2 9y ago
    Man this rings so true for me, even as I pull an engineer salary now. Keep moving a car around free parking spaces even though I haven't "used' it in a year, still squirrel away a bunch of useless shit because what if! I still have trouble turning down free food even if it isn't in line with my diet x.x poverty habits just stay with you
    - rcr 9y ago
      I just finally rid myself of boxes worth of old computer parts and cables. But what if I need 7 VGA adapters???
      - tbirrell 9y ago
        Murphy's Law dictates you will need them next week.
      - cr0sh 9y ago
        > But what if I need 7 VGA adapters??? All depending on what they were - you might wish someday you had kept one of them! As somebody who "collects" old computer crap (ok, ok - hoards might be a better term), I had a situation not too long back where I needed one of those old adapters. I had purchased an AMD motherboard that had onboard VGA; having gone so long since I last upgraded, I didn't read the fine print saying that onboard VGA was dependent on having an AMD processor with VGA built in (APU I think they called it). I had purchased a different processor for the socket, without that feature - thinking "naw, don't need it, because I'm gonna drop my GPU in there - and switch the BIOS over to use it". I get everything together and I boot it. I get nothing on the monitor, and beeping - POST code saying no video, and I'm like "wtf?". Some quick research and such reveals my mistake: Without the APU version of the CPU, I can't change the BIOS to use the GPU in the PCI-E slot. But I don't want to spend a boatload more money on a CPU just to get this setup. So I have a plan: Somewhere out in my junk I know I have a PCI slot VGA card (like an old S3 Virge or such) - I just have to find it. An hour of digging around finally nets me the card - has 4 meg on it - I figure that's enough to see the BIOS, right? I boot it - and it sorta comes up, but everything's all glitched out, nothing's really working right, then it dumps to a screen with a "not enough video memory" error, and now I'm wondering "huh?". So I go dig some more... 30 minutes of digging, I find a different PCI video card with 8 meg; surely this will work. I slot it in and boot it; finally it boots - and I am greeted with this entire super-graphical fancy GUI for a BIOS setup, complete with mouse and everything! That's how long since I last did anything PC building-wise (I was replacing a Core2Duo machine); my last BIOS was textual. It was pretty apparent why it ran out of memory; honestly, I thought it was stupid - but what'r gunna do, right? So after some orientation and such - I find where on the BIOS it was looking for the video card (of course, defaulting to "on board" - but you would think that if it didn't find it, it would then try the PCI-E slot, but nooooo), change it out, save and shutdown, then re-install my GPU on the PCI-E slot, reboot... ...and it worked. Had I not had that old VGA card (granted, it's not the oldest I have - I have an EISA VGA card somewhere) - I would've been hosed.
- cortesoft 9y ago
  How would throwing stuff away that is in storage make you happier? I mean, I understand saying it is a waste of money, but if it is in storage and you never look at it or even think about it really, how would it make you happier for it to not be there?
  - mjrpes 9y ago
    Everyone is different, but it feels like a weight is lifted off my shoulders when I get rid of stuff I don't need or can't justify keeping. Marie Kondo wrote a book on this: The Japanese Art of Decluttering. https://www.amazon.com/Life-Changing-Magic-Tidying-Decluttering-Organizing/dp/1607747308 https://www.amazon.com/Life-Changing-Magic-Tidying-Declutter...
larrik 9y ago
Exactly, I once had one for a couple of months midway between my condo and the house I was moving into, because the house wasn't going to be empty until the day I was moving into it. Before that I had another one to keep things like decorations (like you said), but also all the kids stuff that my older son had grown out of, but the younger hadn't grown into yet (plus seasonal swap outs). Condo living didn't leave a ton of storage.
patentatt 9y ago
Sure, what if the rent/mortgage you pay per square foot in your home is greater than the rent for a storage locker down the road? And there are reasonable use cases for medium-long term storage, such as seasonal items. I don't know how many people use them this way, but I can see reasonable uses too.
- daveslash 9y ago
  This is exactly the situation I'm in. My storage unit is about 200 yards away, and the size of a small walk-in closet. I visit it about once a week. It's, essentially, a detached closet for my wife and me. Mostly seasonal items, camping/backpacking gear, and a small number of keepsakes.
- tbihl 9y ago
  To add another use case: I know a lot of military people who throw all their stuff in storage when they deploy. Faced with no costs except a storage unit and low-mileage car insurance, a lot of them come back after the better part of a year with a down payment on a house.
- thaumaturgy 9y ago
  One is that I sort of accidentally ended up becoming the keeper of a whole pile of family history -- documents, photographs, memorabilia, handmade things -- and I trust the fire suppression and security systems in my storage unit much more than whatever small apartment I'm renting at the time.
  - kbutler 9y ago
    For the documents and photos, could I suggest https://www.familysearch.org/ https://www.familysearch.org/ ? Pictures of the rest could go a long way to making the memory of them more accessible as well.
  - bluGill 9y ago
    For documents have you considered donating to the local historical society? Depending on what they are they might be of general interest and the historical society is probably better equipped to save them.
TaylorGood 9y ago
Wouldn't call it all junk, but there is a high statistic of storage units filled by people who "set it and forget it"
cornholio 9y ago
As we have all learned from reality-TV, a good quarter of the units are choke-full with anything but junk: you will find sculpted furniture in pristine condition, civil war artifacts, expensive professional equipment and tens of thousands of dollars in rare baseball cards. The industry must be really struggling to provide adequate security.
- JoeAltmaier 9y ago
  But they show only the cream of the crop. never gonna air that episode where they found water-logged bundles of newspapers, old Byte magazines in mouse-chewed boxes and a raccoon mummy.
  - kazagistar 9y ago
    Dunno, that too would make for some compelling TV drama.
  - jiveturkey 9y ago
    your sarcasm filter is broken
    - JoeAltmaier 9y ago
      yeah its harder in print to detect. If it had been a tad more over the top I would have got it!
  - lfowles 9y ago
    They're also not going to show the storage units that students use to hold furniture while they go off for a summer internship elsewhere.
- the-dude 9y ago
  I once watched an episode with a unit full of money ( on a pallet ).
  - tonyedgecombe 9y ago
Spooky23 9y ago
It's junk if you don't know what it is. My sister's mother-in-law spends about $1000/mo on storage units in 6 cities. They were a military family and moved frequently. The problem is that they don't remember what is in the storage units, and the cost of traveling across the country to go through a closet is steep and of questionable value. So she is stuck in a cycle of paying for things that she may or may not need. My understanding is that many people are in similar circumstances.
- wolfgang42 9y ago
  That is an astonishing amount of money. Is it not possible to have everything packed up and shipped to their current location? Even if paying someone to do this cost $2000 for each unit that would still pay itself back after a year.
  - Spooky23 9y ago
    My guess is that there are other personal issues at play. I think that there is "heirloom" furniture involved, etc. From articles I've read and conversations that I've had with different folks, I don't think that scenario is uncommon.
    - opportune 9y ago
      A common theme with hoarders is that they'll acknowledge they have too much stuff in general, but when it becomes time to get rid of an individual item, they always have a reason to hold on to it. For my mother, the reason she hoards is 100% due to things being "heirlooms" and every individual item having a story. After her dad died she couldn't throw away any of his old stuff because she grew up with most of it and it reminded her of her parents (who were at that point both deceased). It's a difficult situation because it's quite reasonable to hang on to a large number of old items, just not all of them. But each individual item still seems incredibly important to her
      - pessimizer 9y ago
heartbreak 9y ago
My (non-tech) small business uses "warehouses" (mini storage) for temporary and long-term storage. In one unit you can find crates of inventory, in another you can find equipment we produced for a one-off event job. We don't have enough to warrant an actual warehouse, and the units are significantly cheaper than renting extra office space to store this stuff. I keep it there to keep it out of my garage.
- enobrev 9y ago
  My mother has an online business that has grown far beyond the capacity of her house / garage (which now includes 5 sheds in the yard for storage). She does the same, as storage facilities are still cheaper than a warehouse. She keeps an eye on commercial real estate as her business continues to grow, but in the interim, the storage facilities are as essential as they are affordable.
- bluGill 9y ago
  While your point stands as a whole, why are you storing the equipment for the one-off event. Storage is for things you will need again.
ant6n 9y ago
> Calling things in these storage units "junk" is a moral judgement (...) Junk is just what you call other people's stuff.
- icebraining 9y ago
  "Have you noticed that their stuff is shit and your shit is stuff?" George Carlin on Stuff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvgN5gCuLac https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvgN5gCuLac
chiefalchemist 9y ago
I agree that "junk" might be heavy handed. That said, if it's in storage 6 to 12+ months, you haven't need it, life has gone on with it, __and__ you're paying some multiple of it's value (i.e., it would be cheaper to replace) then what would call it? It, based on said math, has no value. Obviously, we're not talking about personal items (e.g., family photos) but stuff that could be replaced via a few bucks and perhaps freecycle. I don't think you can call it senseless, can you? :)

jamesbelucci789 9y ago

Very simple explanation, living space for people has shrunk. Hard to store your holiday items or old equipment in the basement of your house, if you can't afford a house in the first place.

rwmj 9y ago
There's definitely an element of this. My grandmother's basement was full of junk (in a very real sense - growing up in the War she could never throw away a jam jar or bottle). Now I don't know anyone with a basement, even a spare bedroom is luxury in London.
DanTheManPR 9y ago
That's exactly where I'm at. I downsized to a much smaller house, and I keep a lot of my uncommonly used and seasonal equipment in there. I'll be swapping out my snowblower for my lawnmower and grill pretty soon. I pay an extra monthly fee for the storage unit, of course, and it's not very convenient to have to drive a few miles to reach it... but my overall living expenses have been so dramatically reduced by living in a much smaller house, that it's an obvious win. This article's headline is weirdly condescending; the "personal junk" I own are things I value, and the self storage industry has provided an efficient way for me to store it without having to own a gigantic house or a shed.
- gormz 9y ago
  I don't really understand this though. You say you're in a house so I would assume you have a yard? Why wouldn't you just build (or buy) a small shed in the back. Storage units aren't usually much bigger than a normal sized shed and would fit things like grills, bikes, and snow blowers perfectly fine.
saalweachter 9y ago
Storage units are also quite nice if you are renting and want to be able to move every 1-3 years for the variety of reasons people do so. Keeping the bulk of your low frequency of use items in storage both reduces what you need from an apartment, and keeps you from needing to move all that crap with the rest of your stuff. You pack your clothes, throw your sofa, bed and TV in the back of a friend's truck, and you're done before lunch.

jlgaddis 9y ago

Seeing the title of this entry reminded me that I need to get a lot of my junk out of a storage unit that I've had for a few years.

mathattack 9y ago

A lot of storage is a real estate play. Buy land in the direction of where cities are growing. Pay your mortgage with storage facilities sitting on top until the land appreciates.

ataturk 9y ago
Last year, I looked at buying a turnkey storage business. It was $4M and it wasn't that big of a place. I think the owners were smoking crack, but it does seem to be the going price. I ended up not going forwards with the project because it would take too many years to recover the investment much less make any money.
djrogers 9y ago
Interesting theory, but I've never seen a storage facility close down and be turned in to other real-estate...
- SlowRobotAhead 9y ago
  I have. Some of my extended family almost certainly by luck built their storage unit complex right where the state decided to move the highway. The made millions.
- conductr 9y ago
  Land is usually a very long play (trust funds, REITs, endowments, etc), I'd say this is a relatively new strategy in the past 10-20 years in most places. They likely won't be looking to do that until the storage building reaches its useful life and needs major repair. Then, the question is, do we have a thriving storage business or is there a better use for this land?
  - Tiktaalik 9y ago
    Yep. Buy industrial land relatively close to residential/commercial areas. Build self storage, wait 20-40 years. Eventually people are going to feel the need to upzone that under utilized industrial land that is so close to a thriving, gentrified neighbourhood. The City of Vancouver recently upzoned its Flats industrial area, and went to the extra step of banning self storage to ensure people actually build buildings that are capable of employing people.

sol_remmy 9y ago

Living space cost per sq-ft has grown while storage space cost per sq-ft has stayed the same. Why? Handicap accessibility regulations, parking regulations, etc etc have greatly increased the construction cost of new houses. i.e. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/05/19/upshot/forty-percent-of-manhattans-buildings-could-not-be-built-today.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/05/19/upshot/forty-... Storage facilities do not have people living in them and are therefore immune from lots of these expensive regulations. Hence, they are now an increasingly good deal compare to residential real estate.

eganist 9y ago
Are you speaking more generally, or about urban centers specifically (which tend to be more regulated anyway)? The citation you provided doesn't assert anything about cost per sqft of living space; it's mostly focused on the feel and vibe of NYC post-regulation. And I'm willing to put money on the fact that these particular regulations are no match to the outsized demand for housing in more regulated municipalities.
ethbro 9y ago
Ah, so that's how we end up at Snow Crash-esque storage-units-turned-housing...
- blhack 9y ago
  People not living in storage units is definitely not a cost thing, it's a regulatory thing. If it were allowed, I would have absolutely lived in a storage unit through most of my 20s, and I think a lot of my friends would have too.
  - ethbro 9y ago
    Agreed! I was specifically alluding to the fact that if we continue to pile up building regulations, but don't increase regulations on storage units, then a lot of people will only be able to afford living in "storage" units. To be fair, storage units with a communal bathroom and power are more than most folks had circa 1930.

hownottowrite 9y ago

Very similar story in the Boston Globe on the same day. http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2018/03/27/years-into-war-clutter-and-still-overwhelmed-stuff-what-going/R9jktrIH2ySut5cMCHOSoM/story.html http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2018/03/27/years-into-war-c...

rowyourboat 9y ago

Well, it's much cheaper per area than an apartment, so for seldomly-used stuff, it may make sense.

xefer 9y ago

One thing I've noticed over the years reading old wills and probate records (16th -18th century) is just how few physical possessions even fairly well-off people owned. Estate inventories often list individual coats, shirts, bedding, bowls, tools, etc. I think the material wealth we have today is so incredible we don't even realize how much we've accumulated and could probably do without.

sbinthree 9y ago
Based on a phase I went through involving getting rid of almost all my possessions, you can get rid of ~50% of your stuff and barely notice. But that last 10-20% is so amazingly critical, you come to appreciate it and the work that must have gone into it more. That said, having things that are useful and last never gets old, just make donating something you do as often as shopping. Also that is a pretty strange but interesting hobby.
- sporkenfang 9y ago
  I've had a thing ever since grad school (I lived in a 400 sq. ft. apartment, so it was necessity then) that if I buy a thing, I have to donate something else -- particularly for clothes. It's amazing how much less crap I've accumulated than friends and family of a similar age.
- hathawsh 9y ago
  I'm think the hobby you're referring to is genealogy. It's actually a very common and useful hobby. :-) https://blogs.ancestry.com/cm/genealogy-second-most-popular-hobby-us/ https://blogs.ancestry.com/cm/genealogy-second-most-popular-...
- fegu 9y ago
  A lot of divorced people know this from experience. I certainly do. Don't miss any of it.
michaelbuckbee 9y ago
Modern manufacturing is sufficiently weird that it messes with my sense of thriftiness. That it really is possible to manufacture new items less expensively than it is to repair them (especially counting my own time to do so). Like I can remember my grandmother knitting and darning socks. But she wished she had one of these sock knitting machines: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7N7hsho4Sjg&feature=youtu.be&t=822 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7N7hsho4Sjg&feature=youtu.be... And now you can buy a 10 pack of decent socks for $1/pair (and they may objectively be of higher quality). I'm trying to think how I'd even explain this to someone from another time: "10% of your net worth is this pair of socks? And they took you a day each to make? I just threw away a pair because my toe poked through the top."

CodeSheikh 9y ago

Storage Wars tv show is my guilty pleasure.

everyone 9y ago

How common is it for people to live in them? Any data on that?

dboreham 9y ago
Likely illegal in 1st world countries. Safety reasons, zoning, etc.
- TazeTSchnitzel 9y ago
  Also the storage company might not be too happy with you.
msantos 9y ago
That's likely against all sorts of health and safety regulations . Having said that, there lots of small business in the UK being run from storage units - eBay shops, mail order, and even a karate training IIRC. Edit: links http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-25336446 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-25336446 https://www.safestore.co.uk/blog/2016/07/martial-arts-self-storage-unit/ https://www.safestore.co.uk/blog/2016/07/martial-arts-self-s...
ghostly_s 9y ago
Anecdotally, there are definitely several homeless customers of the storage facility I use, but I don't think they live there, per se; if only because there are cameras and a check-in/out security system that would catch them if they were sleeping there regularly. I think they just store whatever possessions they still have and use it as a secure place to change clothes, even sit and have some peace for an hour (it's a conditioned indoor building).

johnmaguire2013 9y ago

Are there any apps to buy and sell spare space, e.g. in your garage, or basement?

mebreuer 9y ago
Check out Neighbor (I have no connection) https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/28/neighbor-a-p2p-self-storage-marketplace-bags-2-5m-seed/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/28/neighbor-a-p2p-self-storag...
msantos 9y ago
I've heard of a couple of startups in London giving that a go. The same person who I was discussing that also told me that they had problems with illegal goods and potential insurance voiding - in case of fire/pests home insurance wouldn't pay for the damages because that would be considered running a business from your property which is likely not covered by your average house insurance . Edit: some UK based startups in the area http://ww.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/business-38211628 http://ww.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/business-38211628
sedachv 9y ago
Craigslist Parking & Storage section.

NiklasMort 9y ago

have to post this: George Carlin Talks About "Stuff" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvgN5gCuLac https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvgN5gCuLac

yters 9y ago

People get a weird sentimental attachment to stuff. I used to have a lot of books, and looking through them would give me a good feeling, though I rarely read them. Got rid of most of them and haven't noticed their absence. But it feel bad getting rid of them. I can see why people accumulate a lot of things they never use, and why it looks weird from the outside. But, I don't want to end up on that 'Hoarders' show.

jakelarkin 9y ago

its a huge amount of mental and emotional work to decide what to get rid off. the storage industry capitalizes on people's procrastination.

smadge 9y ago

The article presumed that the rise in the self storage industry is caused by overflow from the American dream and rampant consumerism, when I think it might be more characterized by the death of the American dream. How many people who rent self storage are homeless and storing their stuff away hoping they can retrieve it when they get back on their feet? How many people who rent storage units just can’t afford a house or a larger rental, but don’t want to abandon sentimental possessions like their books, clothes, childhood furniture, etc. A graph in the article shows investment in self storage increasing sharply after the Great Recession. Is this a coincidence, or is it because a new economic reality that requires thriftiness had arrived

DoreenMichele 9y ago
I started a long reply earlier and decided to turn in into a blog post instead. Part of what I touched on is that a lot of homeless people pay for storage and, in recent years, I have talked to a lot of people online whose finances are in the toilet and they are paying for storage, often in another state, while they live with parents or whatever and don't make enough money to support themselves. Years ago, I took a college class on homelessness. It suggested that homeless people pay for storage in order to hold onto hope that they will shortly be back in housing and will need that furniture. But the reality is that it often just eats into their limited funds for covering current living expenses and trying to problem solve. I did not pay for storage while homeless. I put my limited resources into taking care of myself in the present, improving things and building a future. Holding on to stuff like you "might need it someday" is rooted in a poverty mentality. Those mental models help keep people poor. In many cases, you could have handily replaced it for less than you spent to store it for years, especially if you had also sold those items you stuck in storage. Tldr: I generally agree that storage is often about the death of the American dream. The hell of it is that it often serves as an obstacle to personal rebirth.
ams6110 9y ago
I've known of people who not only had all their stuff in self-storage, they also lived in the storage unit themselves.
zjaffee 9y ago

jayess 9y ago

After dealing with the aftermath of my grandparents dying at close to the same time, I realized that I had waaaay too much junk. I felt terrible basically throwing their entire lives away, but came to the conclusion that if I die, no one will give a crap about 95% of the things I own. I've tossed all non-essential things to the point where I have two plastic bins of things that are important to my life and that I like to sort through and think about past moments in my life. Everything else is surplussage and disposable. I tell family not to buy me trinkets or souvenirs when they travel. No Christmas gifts either.

cs702 9y ago

...and a majority of that personal junk probably could be given away or thrown out without the owners noticing. The 'dirty little secret' of the personal storage industry is that a majority of customers never, ever access their stored junk -- yes, never. Their stuff just sits there, unused, in an enclosure in some warehouse, while the service provider collects fees month after month. I say this based on my own and certain friends' past experiences with personal storage services over the years.

lovemenot 9y ago

I like the model of the start-up called Clutter which was mentioned in the article. Because you never visit the physical location of your property - it is picked up and delivered to you - there is scope for virtualization and end-to-end automation of this service. Also they photograph your items, so you can inventory more easily.