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The American Religion of Self-Storage Facilities

240 points by pseudolus 11d ago

https://archive.ph/F77tj https://archive.ph/F77tj

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bell-cot 11d ago
tl;dr; version: While there are good use cases - > The United States is the world leader, with roughly ninety per cent of global capacity. [...] there are more self-storage facilities in the U.S. than there are Starbucks, McDonald’s, Walmart, Home Depot, Domino’s, Dunkin’, and Costco locations combined. Annual revenues are estimated to be more than forty billion dollars. > I asked a Welsh facility manager I met in Las Vegas what his customers keep in their units, and he said, “It’s . . . it’s . . . rubbish.” > My wife and I have a friend whose mother died in 2006. She and her siblings decided to sell their mother’s furniture and donate the proceeds to a charity that she would have approved of. “We put everything in storage temporarily, and it’s all still there,” our friend told me. She figures that they’ve spent at least fifty thousand dollars in rental fees so far—more than they could get from selling the furniture.
- micromacrofoot 11d ago
  People can get unusually attached to their stuff regardless of its objective value.
- close04 11d ago
  > She figures that they’ve spent at least fifty thousand dollars in rental fees so far—more than they could get from selling the furniture. That probably doesn't even consider inflation, $1 in 2006 was worth $1.60 in today's money. People are really bad at long term financial planning but also get really attached to objects with some sentimental value. So this is a market where it's even easier to exploit that poor financial education.
  - lateatdesk 11d ago
    Even without the sentimental part, cancelling means sorting everything out and finding people to take it away.
    - bell-cot 11d ago
      In theory, one can just hand the keys to a Junk Busters-type company. But yeah - actually doing that is another barrier to action.
    - mrguyorama 11d ago
      Rather than just not paying and letting the owner auction off the contents, maybe you can tell the owner of the storage facility you'd be fine with them auctioning off the contents without ever going into debt?
- lastofthemojito 11d ago
  My mother-in-law could have been a case study for this article too. A couple decades ago she was short on cash and long on wanderlust, and her kids were grown so she packed her stuff (mainly unexceptional furniture) into a storage unit, got a cheap 1 bedroom apartment in a new city and made a new life. A decade later, she decided to try in another new city, with another tiny apartment. All the while paying for the storage unit, occasionally talking about the cherished "family heirlooms" therein; those things she'd bring out of storage when she got a bigger place. Especially a china cabinet she had to fight her sister for when her mother died. Now she's having health problems and is approaching the end of her life. I'm sure she'll keep paying for the storage unit until the end but soon enough the day will come my wife and I have to travel several states away to empty the contents of the storage unit into a dumpster. Including the "beloved" china cabinet that her kids have already decided they have zero interest in (and probably smells of mildew and mouse urine at this point). I don't know the total amount spent on the storage unit over the years but I've got to think it's in the 5 figures. Enough to pay for a car, or some nice trips, or ... to keep old bedframes in a big closet.
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Jaauthor 11d ago
Taking this moment to remind everyone that 'Swedish death cleaning' is a healthy, holistic way to not give a storage unit your money. https://www.thespruce.com/swedish-death-cleaning-4801461 https://www.thespruce.com/swedish-death-cleaning-4801461
- dylan604 11d ago
  I'm in the midst of trying to decide on getting a storage unit or totally downsizing like this. To the point I was thinking of asking my landlord who they would use if a tenant died and left their rental property full of stuff just to see who I could call to make it all go a way. A one time fee vs monthly fees seems like a decent trade off to me.
- AdmiralAsshat 11d ago
  Do they blast Entombed albums while performing Swedish death cleaning?
  - emj 11d ago
    Anything produced by Max Martin is ok.
- pinkmuffinere 11d ago
  > Swedish death cleaning is a decluttering practice from Sweden that emphasizes organizing your belongings before you die Well I haven't died yet, so I suppose the time is right.
- officeplant 11d ago
  Apparently the Swede's have a term for how I live my life in general. Gotta minimize the work for whoever shows up after I pull the eject lever.
- abraxas 11d ago
  And a somewhat lighthearted meme to go with it: https://i.redd.it/v8h0q00xs2371.jpg https://i.redd.it/v8h0q00xs2371.jpg
- 10d ago
eth0up 11d ago
We also happen to have an extremely serious homelessness problem, which is not relegated to CA. Go to any warm state in the country and ride through the parking lots at night. If you are the observant type, you should see an astonishing number of folks living in their vehicles. And home ownership is not only downward, but no longer part of the American dream for most people now. Storage facilities for many, are a place to lay down, or rent hope that things won't always be "this way". We need to fix this. It's not just drugs and mental problems anymore.
- DanielHB 11d ago
  It is very interesting that in most big cities around the world, but especially Europe having a car is a big luxury while in the US homeless people have cars.
  - AbsurdCensor 11d ago
    And that per capita Europe has a bigger unhoused problem than the United States. There aren't simple solutions, because the real solutions would change how society needs to work. Maybe less about money and more about the right to survive or something.
    - huurtehoog 11d ago
      Not all European countries. There are 20 European countries bellow the per 100.000 level of homelessness than the US.
      - pessimizer 11d ago
        If you want to split up Europe to make the comparison favorable, split up the US to make it less favorable again. How many US states are below the per capita level of homelessness in the US?
        huurtehoog 11d ago
ryandrake 11d ago
> There’s probably a fifth D: the delusion that your children will want the items you’re planning to bequeath to them, especially the kind of furniture that used to be called antiques I'm at the age where a lot of friends are starting to deal with parents passing away, and it is very stressful for the next-of-kin to not only have to deal with the grief of loss, but then have to figure out what to do with houses and storage units full of junk. Some attempt to pick through the crap to find the 0.1% with legit sentimental value, others have more energy and try to do yard sales / estate sales, but most just call the truck and haul everything to the dump. I don't know where people get this idea that their children are going to appreciate garages full of falling-apart furniture, "fine china" and 1970s era stereo equipment. If you want to pass on something to your children they will appreciate, pass them a cleaned-out home or pre-arrange a junk hauler.
- neutronicus 11d ago
  It's just the ultimate procrastination. Like you can literally put this task (getting rid of junk) off for your whole life. Why wouldn't you?
- applfanboysbgon 11d ago
  For most of human history, children very much would appreciate inheriting crafted goods. The kind of rampant, commoditized consumerism where we routinely snub our noses at and throw away perfectly useful goods is a rather recent trend.
  - scottLobster 11d ago
    For most of human history we were riddled with parasites and children would appreciate being less riddled with parasites. My wife and I are both the youngest in our families, and all of our extended family uses us as a dumping ground for stuff to they're too guilty to throw away or donate. About 10% of the time it's something actually useful, 90% we already have a better version of whatever it is or simply don't want or need it. No, I'm not taking my father in law's perfectly good TV. I have a TV, and the one he bought was mediocre at best when it was new.
freetime2 11d ago
Personally I have an almost neurotic aversion to recurring monthly payments. I'll cancel a $6/mo Netflix subscription if I feel it's not being used, and start it up again later when there's something I want to watch. I also hate junk. If anything I own doesn't get used for more than a year, I'll sell it or trash it (with a few exceptions). So even the thought of paying a monthly fee to store junk gives me real anxiety.
- fedreg 11d ago
  ...you may be my long lost twin...
- OutOfHere 11d ago
  Since when does Netflix cost only $6? Anyhow, I am sorry but your logic of "trashing what's not used for a year" is extremely aggressive, unreasonably so. There are way too many exceptions. Examples are critical medicines, emergency food and other products, weapons, that are good to store indefinitely or until real expiration. Medicines can actually become useful at times and they easily last several years after the official expiration. Other examples are certain expensive electronic gadgets that are needed sometimes for diagnostic purposes, rarely, but absolutely. Books too. Yes, one should donate/dispose what's never going to be needed, but the criteria have to be more discerning than a simple one year limit. I think ten years is a better limit, although I easily have worthwhile unused items going back further.
  - PaulHoule 11d ago
    I would say I struggle with cables and USB chargers and such. Like after years of being involved with tech I have multiple VGA and DVI cables that I hardly ever use unless I am messing with some weird SBC. Sometimes I go through and throw a lot of stuff out. We have a reuse center in town where you can get that sort of cable for $2 so it is not like you have to pay Best Buy prices
    - yourusername 10d ago
      Organizing can help. When you put all your VGA cables in place you realize you probably don't need 15 but the 4 best ones are fine (which you also won't use but hey progress). I'm still hoarding IDE cables but at least not a excessive ammount.
ToucanLoucan 11d ago
I often think about this while watching Hoarders, and this is hitting similar neurons so if you'll forgive the off-topic-ish nature... I think more than anything this is the ooze you get out of the sides of societies that focus so terribly much on consumer culture. Advertising nowadays is absolutely incredible at driving the creation of what feels like "needs" in people. In my thirties I started transitioning to a woman, full time, and as a result I've bought and donated shit tons of clothes. This experience has made me realize how bizarrely attached I am to those clothes, and also to so many other things I own that I wouldn't have remotely called sentimental. Yet between growing up in a heavily consumerist society, and my environmental side, I feel so much regret and shame when simply throwing things away. Worthless things. Things my rational mind knows damn well I have no use for, that have no reason to exist in my home. Mind you I'm someone who is familiar with facing down my inner demons. I can't fathom trying to deal with this if you're not someone like me who has gone to lengths to educate myself, to get therapy, and not only gone those lengths but had the resources to do so! Then I watch hoarders and I see these old, broken down people who have massive, beautiful homes I would love to have, and they've stacked every room to the ceiling with... shit. Sometimes literally shit, but more often it's just junk. Things that were on sale. Each thing advertised to them, promised that it would make them the person they were meant to be, or to help them lose that weight they've been trying to lose for 50 years. That piece of furniture that would finally complete the room. And they did that on, and on, and on, and now their beautiful home is ruined, and most of the stuff is too. And oftentimes the person themselves are harmed too, with early onset illness and injury. America needs to get our shit together. And worse still we've exported our disease in great quantity to the rest of the world, both as trash, and as the vacuous hollow culture that consumerism drives.
stuff4ben 11d ago
I have 2 kids in college and I'm trying to sell my house. So I've decluttered to make the house presentable and I'm waiting for my kids to graduate and get their own places so I can give them their crap back. Storage unit makes sense for me. But this is likely to last only 2-4 years and then I'll have downsized enough.
- zeroonetwothree 11d ago
  Are you sure they even will want it back? Might be better to just donate it all now and save the money.
  - w0m 11d ago
    > Are you sure they even will want it back? 75 y/o MIL is still fighting my wife to take her middle/highschool 'stuff' back to this day. She won't throw it out though.
    - gboss 11d ago
      Your wife should just pick it up and throw it out then to relieve her mother of the burden.
      - coldpie 11d ago
        Yeah. My mom hung onto my old school stuff and finally wanted to get rid of it when she moved. I took it graciously with thanks, and then tossed it in the trash when I got home.
      - w0m 7d ago
        I'd feel guilty, but you're likely correct.
  - SubmarineClub 11d ago
    If my parents had done that I would have been pissed. They just recently cleared out the attic and unloaded my childhood stuff on me, and I gladly took it all back.
ph1lw 11d ago
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ethagnawl 11d ago
It's to the point where whenever I see vacant land being cleared around me in NY, I assume it's for a new storage facility.
rootbear 11d ago
I'm in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC, and self storage facilities are popping up around here like weeds. I have a storage unit and I'm trying to clear it out. I'm tired of the monthly fees that keep going up. I got it when I had to clear out my late sister's house and I wanted time to go through things and decide what to keep. When I moved last year, I got a larger unit, thinking I would need to declutter my townhouse prior to showing it. It turned out my agent wasn't that concerned about my clutter, but I did move some idle tech stuff into the unit. I was hoping to get a house with a big basement for my future tech hoarding needs, and I wanted to keep this stuff. As it turned out, I ended up in a rancher with no basement, so now I'm getting rid of old tech I'll never have space for. I'd have saved a lot of money if I'd just done that a year ago. I now have a much smaller unit that I hope to be rid of next year. Self storage units are definitely a mixed blessing. I also have all of the family antique furniture, some of which goes back three or more generations. I have no heirs and no idea what I'll do with it all, but I don't want to leave it for my executor to deal with. At least it's in the house and not in an expensive storage unit.
- memcg 11d ago
  I'm also in the Maryland suburbs and I'm trying to dispose of several generations worth of stuff while avoiding having to use a storage unit. Thankfully, we have a lot of deserving organizations that take charitable donations. However, my old tech collection just seems to grow and fill any space I gain from getting rid of what I consider junk.
  - 0xDEAFBEAD 10d ago
    Take a few quick photos and ask an AI to assess if any nearby museum might be interested?
- red-iron-pine 11d ago
  the DC area is a different story tho -- tons of rotation through the area due to military and fed gov. they come, they go, sometimes they come back, etc. you're rounding out a 26 year military career and looking at retirement but are going to do one more 2-year stint in Norfolk/Missouri/Georgia/whatever and don't feel like selling your house -- storage unit you work for a junior house rep who may not make it through the next election cycle, and since youre a staffer you can't afford anything larger than a shoebox, but still need to bring your stuff, some of which you can't fit -- storage unit etc. etc.
diegolas 11d ago
i always thought they were a neat idea (they only barely started appearing where i live in the last ~10 years) but it seemed a bit strange that they were so common
epochbtc 11d ago
This article takes the view of the consumer, "Why do so many people pay to store items they almost never use?". But in actuality, the interesting part of this is why is there so much supply of self-storage businesses? The answer is: cash flow. Self-storage businesses are the almost perfect solution for someone with a good size (but not enormous) bucket of money that they want to put to work generating cashflow: 1. Cheap build out (cheap land, cheap facilities) 2. Almost entirely hands-off (no employees, automated entry) 3. Low liability (low risk of customers suing you) 4. Low overhead (just pay for taxes, electricity, minimal maintenance) 5. Reliable monthly cash flow The abundant supply of these businesses, I suspect, tends to generate demand: it's easier to pay $80/month to store your junk than spend the time and emotional labor of picking through what you want to keep and what you want to get rid of. That ends up being captive long-term revenue.
- browningstreet 11d ago
  I disagree with the last point -- it's a pain to gather a bunch of things up, put them in vehicles (or rent a truck), find a storage facility that isn't full, rent the unit, haul your things over to the unit.. all the while ignoring that you're putting off whatever culling and disposal ceremony you should actually be engaging in. My local town gives you two free visits to the garbage transfer station per year. Choosing storage over that seems harder.
  - neutronicus 11d ago
    You're hauling the stuff regardless. Dealing with renting a storage unit vs deciding to throw away your Pokemon cards feels like kind of a wash.
    - diskzero 11d ago
      Are you infinitely wealthy? Storage units are a slow leak on finances, just like uncanceled subscriptions and mobile phone plan features.
      - 11d ago
pelagicAustral 11d ago
It's crazy the kind of crap people keep, of course is not crap to them, but I've known people that have literal container loads of unorganized crap they will never ever see again... Most of the people I know that have loads of stuff store always claim they'll need these things at some point and so they rather have them there in storage instead of dumping or giving them away, and I have never seen them pick a single item, because of course after a few years of storing things there is literally no way to know where things are. It's infuriating... I dump stuff all the time... I probably have like 50 things in my life including t-shirts, which obviously contributes to my enragement.
- tk75x 10d ago
  I challenge you to count the things you own and post the actual number.
bluGill 11d ago
Most people I know with a self storage place are not using them like the article. (though some do - YMMV). Some use it as a warehouse for their business - they rotate stuff in and out. A carpenter might buy a pallet of nails once every few months and use the storage every few days to refill the truck. Several people keep off-season holiday decorations in storage and rotate it back home for the season. Others keep fishing stuff in storage and stop by storage on their way to/from the fishing spot. If you have anything in storage you should look at it at least once a year to decide if it is worth saving. It is okay to say that "I love this thing from Grandma even though I don't have room for it", but you need to decide it is still worth it.
- xp84 11d ago
  I tend to think the people who use it for seasonal stuff are definitely Doing It Right. After all, using it that way just enables you to have a smaller (or less cluttered) house but have the same things. When I had one, it was definitely not that. It was just a way to procrastinate doing something with stuff that I could have replaced anything useful with the year’s rental fees.
milkytron 11d ago
There was a solid analysis of these facilities done by Modern MBA. https://modern-mba.com/case/self-storage https://modern-mba.com/case/self-storage tl;dw - As far as businesses go, they require low capital to construct, have low operational costs, and also operate as a way to hold real estate/land while also generating revenue. The people that use them are usually dealing with some life event such as moving, a death in the family, divorce, and just want some solution to house possessions.
- danny_codes 11d ago
  Yet another reason for land value taxes. It's astonishing how many problems they solve
- martinpw 11d ago
  > dealing with some life event such as moving, a death in the family, divorce The 4 Ds of self storage: Death, divorce, dislocation, downsizing
- ragazzina 10d ago
  > a solid analysis This is AI slop.
black_13 11d ago
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MisterTea 11d ago
They're good for small/independent businesses who need to store a few things instead of renting a full space or have no spare storage at home.
dlcarrier 11d ago
He liked travelling in it, but what he really liked was hanging out inside it while drinking cocktails with friends and family, and if he could have done that while parked in an air-conditioned man cave he might never have taken it on the road. There were a few house boats at a dry storage facility I occasionally drove by, and once there were a bunch of people hanging out on one drinking and partying, miles from the water. I thought it was hilarious, but it did show how much of the cost is the view. Slip fees aren't cheap, and house boat rentals are crazily expensive.
- cucumber3732842 11d ago
  I've always thought that it would be cool to buy wetland and go in the reverse direction. Instead of illegally fill it illegally dredge it. Then put a house boat on it. They'll never see it coming. The whole system is designed to prevent filling.
- xp84 11d ago
  This reminds me of the endearing ex-husband in the show Cougar Town. He lived (and hung out) on just such a boat. I know, the name sounds cheesy af, but the show was a great one.
mike_bob 11d ago
My personal experience with this is my father, who lives in a rural area with 10+ acres, has placed several shipping containers on the property as storage for his junk. He's charged just over $500/mo for them. He's had them for 18 years. The value of property in those containers is maybe $5000. Consumerism is a disease, and the USA is super good at it.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 11d ago
  I thought you could buy a used shipping container for like a grand, so that is a ridiculous rental rate.
  - mike_bob 11d ago
    These are slightly higher end, and from what I've seen they go for $2-3000. But still yes, it is ridiculous, and the company wont offer them for sale per the current contract! For convenience sake he'd rather pay the monthly fee than haul all his junk out, get them to pick the container up, buy new ones, and put all his cheap useless junk back in. It's maddening!
    - nsvd2 11d ago
      He could probably find someone to move the stuff for him for a small fee.
      - mike_bob 11d ago
        If only you knew my father and his distrust of most things. He's been watching 5+ hours of Fox News daily for 30+ years. There isn't much left in that mind.
        adammarples 11d ago
        Just sorting it out for him
        Henchman21 11d ago
josefritzishere 11d ago
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toasty228 11d ago
In Europe we just fill the garage to the fucking ceiling and park the car outside. And of course nothing ever gets out of the garage until you die, then it's your kids problem and usually everything goes straight to a landfill.
- MBCook 11d ago
  Oh, people already do that here too. The storage unit is the next bucket of overflow.
- qingcharles 11d ago
  There was a study done in Los Angeles and found that 80% of garages are used for storage with the car parked outside.
  - pkul 11d ago
    Hopefully developers take notice then, maybe we can build new neighborhoods with the garage off to the side in an awkward position for the occasional boat haul. Then we can clear up the fronts of homes and replace it with something prettier.
UltraSane 11d ago
I have never paid for self-storage and have never understood why they are so popular. I've known people paying for a self-storage unit to store furniture they are also still making payments on.
manoDev 11d ago
The US population is anxious [1]. The last thing an anxious person does is get rid of stuff they "might need one day". > An estimated 19.1% of U.S. adults had any anxiety disorder in the past year. [1] https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/any-anxiety-disorder https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/any-anxiety-disor...
autoexec 11d ago
> the delusion that your children will want the items you’re planning to bequeath to them, especially the kind of furniture that used to be called antiques but that young people for some time have referred to derisively as “brown.” This is madness talking. A nice "brown" bookcase or dresser is made of solid wood and will last your entire life. The alternative these days is either insanely priced and still of questionable quality or cheap, badly constructed particleboard that outgasses formaldehyde and other toxins into your home and needs to be replaced every few years. There used to be a much larger amount of inexpensive high quality furniture on the second hand market, but now its harder to find locally. If you have kids who are allergic to the color brown, you should donate any good furniture you have. Someone will absolutely want it.
- pixl97 11d ago
  >larger amount of inexpensive high quality furniture on the second hand market, There is no second hand market, it's just a used primary market. Before the invention of the internet getting rid of second hand items meant tossing it, or selling it at a garage sale, or for more expensive things taking out an (pretty expensive) ad in the paper. This had a lot of friction. Sellers also had any real idea of what their items were worth. Stuff ranged from wildly expensive to impossibly cheap. The internet broke this. If I post something too cheap, in seconds a bot picks it up and a person that retails stuff buys it up. Then 30 minute later you find the same item on the same forum for way more. This has a second order effect that these high price posts sit in the forum for long periods of time, so when Jon shows up to sell his table, he sees 50 other tables to $200 and thinks that's an appropriate price. Good deals appear to no longer exist!
  - cucumber3732842 11d ago
    These flippers fancy themselves "liquidity providers". Like god forbid it take a couple days for someone to bite on your "too cheap" listing.
- Sprocklem 10d ago
  > A nice "brown" bookcase or dresser is made of solid wood and will last your entire life. The alternative these days is either insanely priced and still of questionable quality or cheap, badly constructed particleboard that [...] needs to be replaced every few years. It is truly baffling that most modern book cases have shelves that seemingly can't hold up to the weight of books – the very thing they were made to hold.
tayistay 11d ago
Viewable from the commuter train (BART), there is a large storage facility in Oakland which advertises air conditioned units. Outside is a large homeless encampment. Sigh.
MarkusWandel 11d ago
Storage space inevitably fills up with stuff. I have the stereotypical "garage too full of stuff to park the car in" but it's one side of a 2-car garage and the other side, and this the wife and I are in perfect agreement on, is reserved for the car. Then I inherited a second car, which for various reasons is barely practical to keep while it works. It lives outside so that the stuff in the garage (a clutter of far too many bicycles, mostly) can stay accessible. But in winter, it is possible - barely - to park the car inside, with bicycles hanging only inches above it. Some stuff had to be disposed of to make this possible, and I fear some additional stuff will have to go this fall. But you have to set yourself limits or the stuff will grow infinitely. Meanwhile premium locations all over town are sprouting Dymon Self Storage units. That's the local brand of "premium climate controlled storage". There's one less than a mile, as the crow flies, from my house.
- dave78 11d ago
  I've always wanted to have a "shop" - a detached space, like a pole barn, where I could work on projects and store things. A lot of people I know in my life have such an arrangement and I'm occasionally jealous. These days, I live on a large enough piece of land that I could pretty easily construct such a building. However, I've stopped myself because I've realized that I just fill up whatever space I have. If there's room to store something, you can just put it there and plan to deal with it later (of course, later almost never comes). I'm the type of person that has a hard time getting rid of things that I paid good money for or that have sentimental value, and as I get older I'm increasingly envious of those people who have less hesitation about throwing stuff out. For some things, selling is an option, but that has its own set of hassles. I have a garage like you that has one stall full of stuff - family bikes, tools, a table saw, grill, etc. Stuff that we do use, though some of it is probably not used enough to justify the space it takes up. Every time I clean up the garage now I try to make a point to get rid of some things, though all that does is tend to break even with the new stuff that inevitably gets added.
flerchin 11d ago
When I moved to a big city from a medium sized town I had to put some stuff in storage while we lived in a small apartment and searched for a house to purchase. My bbq, lawn mower, other random stuff. Two months later I went to the office to move out and they couldn't find the paperwork. No one does that!
redwood 11d ago
It must be valuable if an earlier version of myself bought it kept it found it or stored it
RajT88 11d ago
I rented one of these for a while after my wife and I moved in together. After a bit, I realized what we had paid for it was close to exceeding the value of the items stored within . Just get rid of your stuff when you can. Life will be better.
pcoyne 11d ago
Its interesting in America because we are both a very throw away society but also want to keep everything.
michael_michael 11d ago
Near my house I saw two large blocky buildings being constructed on a main thoroughfare. Different construction companies, but within about 100 yards of each other. "Fantastic!", I thought. New apartment buildings. That means new restaurants, stores, and other conveniences. Not to mention desperately-needed housing. I'll never forget my despair upon learning that they were BOTH going to be large multi-level self-storage facilities.
- aryadee 11d ago
  Don’t dox yourself but this sounds just like Irvine, CA. It feels like every two years I see a new track of homes + block storage facilities being built
  - officeplant 11d ago
    I'm on the other side of the country, and I can watch new super deluxe drive-thru carwashes being built with a storage facility neighbor. The crazy part being two blocks over is a competing super deluxe-carwash with storage facility neighbor. At this point my city is up to dozens of these pairs of property squatting businesses.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 11d ago
  My childhood baseball field is now a self-storage.
- tobinfekkes 11d ago
  This was exactly Mount Vernon, Washington. I was so disappointed.
  - kridsdale1 11d ago
    About half of Whidbey Island.
- pavel_lishin 11d ago
  Yeah, but consider! There's a high likelihood that they'll still be housing for someone.
dcdc123 11d ago
I live in a small downtown condo. I don't have room to store a whole lot of extra stuff but I also have hobbies like camping, watersports, etc. I keep all of that stuff in a storage unit and I access it fairly often. Since I have it I also use it to save all the boxes for my electronics (77" OLED is impossible to move safely without original box for example), car maintenance stuff, larger tools I use less frequently, etc. It is about 3 minutes drive 10 minute walk from my house. I definitely do not use it to hoard stuff I will never touch again.
- Havoc 11d ago
  >77" OLED is impossible to move safely without original box for example) Exactly same here - well curved super ultrawide. Without the curved box styrofoam it can't move. Though in hindsight it was a bad deal...at ~60 bucks a month I could have replaced the screen...
  - rconti 11d ago
    my 10 year old 75" TV cost me upwards of $70, probably $100, to move across town -- at the cost of the boxes and packing material and labor the movers provided. When I move again in a few months I think I'll just throw it in the back of my SUV and hope it doesn't break.
    - masfuerte 11d ago
      Wrap it in a blanket and it'll probably be fine.
      - s0rce 11d ago
        In your own car, sure, in a moving van, probably not.
    - lokar 11d ago
      I moved my large tv cross country twice. The movers build a wooden and cardboard crate for it. Very safe.
pandinus 11d ago
My late father was a child during the depression era and so he grew up to be very resourceful/thrifty, hard working, and epitomized the "waste not, want not" slogan. So yes it can come off as hoarding and it was a lot to go through after he passed. Yet after a lifetime of scrimping, saving, reusing, and repurposing, he ended up with quite a lot to show for it. He never paid for storage, didn't clutter any open spaces, but every closet or spare room of his home was packed. If you have the storage then by all means keep whatever you value. If it would require paying a recurring fee to keep it, then it better be worth it.
- SoftTalker 11d ago
  Even if you have the space I'd caution against it. Cleaning out my parent's house after my mother's death was a chore, and they weren't hoarders in the classic sense but they had a lot of stuff. Thousands of family photographs, in boxes, that had never been organized or put in albums. Clothing, in suitcases, that hadn't been worn in decades. Toys from my childhood. Furniture with almost zero resale value. It all went in a dumpster. It was emotionally draining to get rid of some of it because I had memories attached to it. The thing is, if they had gotten rid of that stuff themselves, I would never have missed it. Even after all that I probably ended up keeping too much of it. I now have several shelves in my basement with boxes from my parent's house, that I have never opened since bringing them home. I have promised myself that I will not leave that kind of accumulated junk for my kids to sort through some day, but I honestly wonder if I will get around to doing my own purge. It hasn't happened yet.
  - xp84 11d ago
    Relatable. In my case my dad passed away and at the time my relationship with him wasn’t the best. It wasn’t until I had a child of my own, about 5 years later, that I started to empathize with him orders of magnitude more - and to wish I had more of his things to help me feel closer to him. Sadly, I had kept almost none of it because I lived in a 1-bedroom condo in the city at that time and didn’t feel like I could spare any space for any of it.
    - 10d ago
pglevy 11d ago
We call these "above-ground landfills." After watching (and helping) my parents shuffle stuff around these facilities for years, we drew a hard line in our household: no external storage. If it doesn't fit in the space we live in, we're not keeping it. Great article!
- wildzzz 11d ago
  My wife and I needed a storage locker due to a very slow house move along with her parents giving us some (wanted) furniture from their recent move. The spare bedroom we had been using as an office and storage space needed to be cleared out for a friend that was going to live with us for a bit. We just couldn't keep everything in our apartment and the house just wasn't ready for most of our stuff. I knew plenty of stories of people keeping storage units full of forgotten junk and I didn't want that happening with us. We made a promise to each other that we would get the unit empty within the month we finally could move into the house. The unit was of a decent size and only $20/month for the 2 or 3 months we had it so it was pretty inexpensive but we were pretty cash strapped at the time. The rate was going to jump up a lot more if we had kept it longer. We barely had enough to pay movers to help move the big stuff, we did all the small stuff ourselves. Intentionally, the storage unit was on the route between the apartment and house so it was easy to just pickup a few things at a time. Finally when it was time to move things in, we were able to get it done in about a week, right before the increased renewal rate was about to be charged. I was doing reno work for the landlord during this time so we technically had a house to live in but it's pretty annoying trying to live in a place while you're sanding drywall and replacing flooring.
  - pglevy 11d ago
    Way to have a plan and stick to it. If it's necessary, good idea to set a deadline.
- kccqzy 11d ago
  Yeah I just don’t understand. I sold so much second hand furniture online. Each sale you get a little bit of adrenaline rush from a buyer handing you cash while you get rid of old stuff. (No adrenaline with electronic direct deposits.)
neuralkoi 11d ago
According to George Carlin, "that's the whole meaning of life, trying to find a place for your stuff". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvgN5gCuLac https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvgN5gCuLac
Aurornis 11d ago
> A self-storage facility is a business that rents lockable space to people who own more stuff than they know what to do with This has turned into another topic where people look down upon others or culture in general while assuming the worst. Self-storage facilities can be really nice for those of us who like to live in areas where larger houses or garages aren't easy options. I can put the winter gear in there during the summer and the summer gear in there during the winter. If I need to renovate a part of the house, I can rent a storage unit for a few months and move that room's contents into it and free up space. When an older family member passes away and the estate needs to sell the house, moving the important belongings into a storage unit while the family works on dividing them up or selling them is something that happens all the time. I don't currently have a unit, but when I was making a lot of trips to the self-storage place there were a lot of people doing all the things I mentioned above. I'm sure there are a lot of units with forgotten and unnecessary things that are basically hoarded because their owners can't let go, but I have to roll my eyes at articles that talk about it like an "American religion".
diogenescynic 11d ago
Great business model but terrible thing to actually use. If you have so much junk you need a storage unit, you probably need to declutter. Most people have too much junk. On the other hand, new homes are not being built and this may be a way to compensate for so many people still acquiring the same level of junk but not owning enough homes or space to store it all. Previous generations wouldn’t have had as much of an issue when real estate was much cheaper.
INTPenis 11d ago
I've seen a few American self storage units on Youtube and a lot of times their units are open at the top. Which blows my mind. All it takes is for one bad customer to setup a ladder and just loot whatever unit they want.
croemer 11d ago
Wendover made a nice video about this 10 months ago: https://youtu.be/uEVv8SOJ6Is?is=Er27clBvXZ4TzAlj https://youtu.be/uEVv8SOJ6Is?is=Er27clBvXZ4TzAlj I'm a big Wendover fan, I think many here would like it.
gverrilla 11d ago
So much stuff and so little soul.
gnopgnip 11d ago
Macys went out of business in Sacramento. In a built up area, near a movie theater grocery store mall etc. The best thing that could fill this multi floor space in a developed area is a storage unit.
arwhatever 10d ago
I was angered and frustrated to find (the hard way) that some states have statutes which explicitly relieve storage companies from responsibility in the event of loss from theft. The entity in the best position to know how to secure the premises is not liable to do so at all in some states. Oh, and don’t get me started on ballooning but opaque rental rates. I wanted to pay up front for 2-3 years of storage but most places “couldn’t” quote me what the rate would be beyond 3 months in advance. Such a scammy industry.
meetingthrower 10d ago
My idea for innovative self storage pricing: offer free month 1, $1 month 2, $2 month three, $4 month four and so on. Very soon it obviously will become untenable, and you will either stop paying and get your shit out of there. I probably would be adversely selected by people who really only need a couple months of storage. But would force people to work against their instincts to store all their trash.
alexpotato 10d ago
A lot of small businesses use self storage facilities as mini warehouses. e.g. let's say you are starting a painting business You have a lot of equipment you need (ladders, sprayers, buckets, etc) but you live in a small apartment. A self storage unit can hold all of the above and the storage price is probably tax deductible.
- stasomatic 10d ago
  Not just warehouses. In one facility here in South Florida a family member who is a general contractor, uses the storage just as you described, but a couple of units over, there is a gun range, a gun smith shop, a tattoo shop running out of these "self-storage" units. It's legal too, kind of strange how it would be, but I see cops at the range often enough.
  - GenerWork 10d ago
    A gun range being run out of a storage unit? I realize that Florida has gun laws that people would consider nuts (you can have a gun range in your backyard and nobody can really stop you), but I'd think that the contract of the storage unit would absolutely say no gun ranges.
    - stasomatic 10d ago
      I may have expanded the definition of self-storage, apologies, but here's the place I was talking about. There is definitely storage and there are definitely guns and gunsmith shops. Crazy, hey? There are people living out of these, this part of Florida is bananas. https://maps.app.goo.gl/iKnViouaU2inoT82A https://maps.app.goo.gl/iKnViouaU2inoT82A
      - GenerWork 10d ago
        Ah ok, this makes a lot more sense. We have places that look exactly like this near my area of Florida as well, and it's 100% in the "industrial" zoned area. No homes, only commercial businesses and small industrial setups. >this part of Florida is bananas All parts of Florida are bananas :)
msarrel 10d ago
It's interesting that the article doesn't seem to even take into consideration that the housing market has made it impossible for people to have storage at home. It's not a religion of story, it's desperation.
ksudb 10d ago
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grumpy_coder 10d ago
Cities have started to fix it, but it was mostly a zoning loophole. Protected industrial zoning typically allowed building 'mini warehouses' with limited public comment, no parking, on land that was fairly cheap. Made self storage plentiful and cheap in areas where housing lot sqft was limited.
spicyusername 9d ago
They are a blight on every new little town, stealing land that could go to literally anything else that would benefit the community more. In nearly 100% of cases, they are owned by some rich schmuck somewhere that's just trying to "cash flow". I hate them and I hate the culture that produces so many people that own them. Throw your stuff away people! Patronize businesses that make the world more interesting!

240 points by pseudolus 11d ago

https://archive.ph/F77tj https://archive.ph/F77tj

deleted 11d ago

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bell-cot 11d ago

tl;dr; version: While there are good use cases - > The United States is the world leader, with roughly ninety per cent of global capacity. [...] there are more self-storage facilities in the U.S. than there are Starbucks, McDonald’s, Walmart, Home Depot, Domino’s, Dunkin’, and Costco locations combined. Annual revenues are estimated to be more than forty billion dollars. > I asked a Welsh facility manager I met in Las Vegas what his customers keep in their units, and he said, “It’s . . . it’s . . . rubbish.” > My wife and I have a friend whose mother died in 2006. She and her siblings decided to sell their mother’s furniture and donate the proceeds to a charity that she would have approved of. “We put everything in storage temporarily, and it’s all still there,” our friend told me. She figures that they’ve spent at least fifty thousand dollars in rental fees so far—more than they could get from selling the furniture.

micromacrofoot 11d ago
People can get unusually attached to their stuff regardless of its objective value.
close04 11d ago
> She figures that they’ve spent at least fifty thousand dollars in rental fees so far—more than they could get from selling the furniture. That probably doesn't even consider inflation, $1 in 2006 was worth $1.60 in today's money. People are really bad at long term financial planning but also get really attached to objects with some sentimental value. So this is a market where it's even easier to exploit that poor financial education.
- lateatdesk 11d ago
  Even without the sentimental part, cancelling means sorting everything out and finding people to take it away.
  - bell-cot 11d ago
    In theory, one can just hand the keys to a Junk Busters-type company. But yeah - actually doing that is another barrier to action.
  - mrguyorama 11d ago
    Rather than just not paying and letting the owner auction off the contents, maybe you can tell the owner of the storage facility you'd be fine with them auctioning off the contents without ever going into debt?
lastofthemojito 11d ago
My mother-in-law could have been a case study for this article too. A couple decades ago she was short on cash and long on wanderlust, and her kids were grown so she packed her stuff (mainly unexceptional furniture) into a storage unit, got a cheap 1 bedroom apartment in a new city and made a new life. A decade later, she decided to try in another new city, with another tiny apartment. All the while paying for the storage unit, occasionally talking about the cherished "family heirlooms" therein; those things she'd bring out of storage when she got a bigger place. Especially a china cabinet she had to fight her sister for when her mother died. Now she's having health problems and is approaching the end of her life. I'm sure she'll keep paying for the storage unit until the end but soon enough the day will come my wife and I have to travel several states away to empty the contents of the storage unit into a dumpster. Including the "beloved" china cabinet that her kids have already decided they have zero interest in (and probably smells of mildew and mouse urine at this point). I don't know the total amount spent on the storage unit over the years but I've got to think it's in the 5 figures. Enough to pay for a car, or some nice trips, or ... to keep old bedframes in a big closet.

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Jaauthor 11d ago

Taking this moment to remind everyone that 'Swedish death cleaning' is a healthy, holistic way to not give a storage unit your money. https://www.thespruce.com/swedish-death-cleaning-4801461 https://www.thespruce.com/swedish-death-cleaning-4801461

dylan604 11d ago
I'm in the midst of trying to decide on getting a storage unit or totally downsizing like this. To the point I was thinking of asking my landlord who they would use if a tenant died and left their rental property full of stuff just to see who I could call to make it all go a way. A one time fee vs monthly fees seems like a decent trade off to me.
AdmiralAsshat 11d ago
Do they blast Entombed albums while performing Swedish death cleaning?
- emj 11d ago
  Anything produced by Max Martin is ok.
pinkmuffinere 11d ago
> Swedish death cleaning is a decluttering practice from Sweden that emphasizes organizing your belongings before you die Well I haven't died yet, so I suppose the time is right.
officeplant 11d ago
Apparently the Swede's have a term for how I live my life in general. Gotta minimize the work for whoever shows up after I pull the eject lever.
abraxas 11d ago
And a somewhat lighthearted meme to go with it: https://i.redd.it/v8h0q00xs2371.jpg https://i.redd.it/v8h0q00xs2371.jpg
10d ago

eth0up 11d ago

We also happen to have an extremely serious homelessness problem, which is not relegated to CA. Go to any warm state in the country and ride through the parking lots at night. If you are the observant type, you should see an astonishing number of folks living in their vehicles. And home ownership is not only downward, but no longer part of the American dream for most people now. Storage facilities for many, are a place to lay down, or rent hope that things won't always be "this way". We need to fix this. It's not just drugs and mental problems anymore.

DanielHB 11d ago
It is very interesting that in most big cities around the world, but especially Europe having a car is a big luxury while in the US homeless people have cars.
- AbsurdCensor 11d ago
  And that per capita Europe has a bigger unhoused problem than the United States. There aren't simple solutions, because the real solutions would change how society needs to work. Maybe less about money and more about the right to survive or something.
  - huurtehoog 11d ago
    Not all European countries. There are 20 European countries bellow the per 100.000 level of homelessness than the US.
    - pessimizer 11d ago
      If you want to split up Europe to make the comparison favorable, split up the US to make it less favorable again. How many US states are below the per capita level of homelessness in the US?
      - huurtehoog 11d ago

ryandrake 11d ago

> There’s probably a fifth D: the delusion that your children will want the items you’re planning to bequeath to them, especially the kind of furniture that used to be called antiques I'm at the age where a lot of friends are starting to deal with parents passing away, and it is very stressful for the next-of-kin to not only have to deal with the grief of loss, but then have to figure out what to do with houses and storage units full of junk. Some attempt to pick through the crap to find the 0.1% with legit sentimental value, others have more energy and try to do yard sales / estate sales, but most just call the truck and haul everything to the dump. I don't know where people get this idea that their children are going to appreciate garages full of falling-apart furniture, "fine china" and 1970s era stereo equipment. If you want to pass on something to your children they will appreciate, pass them a cleaned-out home or pre-arrange a junk hauler.

neutronicus 11d ago
It's just the ultimate procrastination. Like you can literally put this task (getting rid of junk) off for your whole life. Why wouldn't you?
applfanboysbgon 11d ago
For most of human history, children very much would appreciate inheriting crafted goods. The kind of rampant, commoditized consumerism where we routinely snub our noses at and throw away perfectly useful goods is a rather recent trend.
- scottLobster 11d ago
  For most of human history we were riddled with parasites and children would appreciate being less riddled with parasites. My wife and I are both the youngest in our families, and all of our extended family uses us as a dumping ground for stuff to they're too guilty to throw away or donate. About 10% of the time it's something actually useful, 90% we already have a better version of whatever it is or simply don't want or need it. No, I'm not taking my father in law's perfectly good TV. I have a TV, and the one he bought was mediocre at best when it was new.

freetime2 11d ago

Personally I have an almost neurotic aversion to recurring monthly payments. I'll cancel a $6/mo Netflix subscription if I feel it's not being used, and start it up again later when there's something I want to watch. I also hate junk. If anything I own doesn't get used for more than a year, I'll sell it or trash it (with a few exceptions). So even the thought of paying a monthly fee to store junk gives me real anxiety.

fedreg 11d ago
...you may be my long lost twin...
OutOfHere 11d ago
Since when does Netflix cost only $6? Anyhow, I am sorry but your logic of "trashing what's not used for a year" is extremely aggressive, unreasonably so. There are way too many exceptions. Examples are critical medicines, emergency food and other products, weapons, that are good to store indefinitely or until real expiration. Medicines can actually become useful at times and they easily last several years after the official expiration. Other examples are certain expensive electronic gadgets that are needed sometimes for diagnostic purposes, rarely, but absolutely. Books too. Yes, one should donate/dispose what's never going to be needed, but the criteria have to be more discerning than a simple one year limit. I think ten years is a better limit, although I easily have worthwhile unused items going back further.
- PaulHoule 11d ago
  I would say I struggle with cables and USB chargers and such. Like after years of being involved with tech I have multiple VGA and DVI cables that I hardly ever use unless I am messing with some weird SBC. Sometimes I go through and throw a lot of stuff out. We have a reuse center in town where you can get that sort of cable for $2 so it is not like you have to pay Best Buy prices
  - yourusername 10d ago
    Organizing can help. When you put all your VGA cables in place you realize you probably don't need 15 but the 4 best ones are fine (which you also won't use but hey progress). I'm still hoarding IDE cables but at least not a excessive ammount.

ToucanLoucan 11d ago

I often think about this while watching Hoarders, and this is hitting similar neurons so if you'll forgive the off-topic-ish nature... I think more than anything this is the ooze you get out of the sides of societies that focus so terribly much on consumer culture. Advertising nowadays is absolutely incredible at driving the creation of what feels like "needs" in people. In my thirties I started transitioning to a woman, full time, and as a result I've bought and donated shit tons of clothes. This experience has made me realize how bizarrely attached I am to those clothes, and also to so many other things I own that I wouldn't have remotely called sentimental. Yet between growing up in a heavily consumerist society, and my environmental side, I feel so much regret and shame when simply throwing things away. Worthless things. Things my rational mind knows damn well I have no use for, that have no reason to exist in my home. Mind you I'm someone who is familiar with facing down my inner demons. I can't fathom trying to deal with this if you're not someone like me who has gone to lengths to educate myself, to get therapy, and not only gone those lengths but had the resources to do so! Then I watch hoarders and I see these old, broken down people who have massive, beautiful homes I would love to have, and they've stacked every room to the ceiling with... shit. Sometimes literally shit, but more often it's just junk. Things that were on sale. Each thing advertised to them, promised that it would make them the person they were meant to be, or to help them lose that weight they've been trying to lose for 50 years. That piece of furniture that would finally complete the room. And they did that on, and on, and on, and now their beautiful home is ruined, and most of the stuff is too. And oftentimes the person themselves are harmed too, with early onset illness and injury. America needs to get our shit together. And worse still we've exported our disease in great quantity to the rest of the world, both as trash, and as the vacuous hollow culture that consumerism drives.

stuff4ben 11d ago

I have 2 kids in college and I'm trying to sell my house. So I've decluttered to make the house presentable and I'm waiting for my kids to graduate and get their own places so I can give them their crap back. Storage unit makes sense for me. But this is likely to last only 2-4 years and then I'll have downsized enough.

zeroonetwothree 11d ago
Are you sure they even will want it back? Might be better to just donate it all now and save the money.
- w0m 11d ago
  > Are you sure they even will want it back? 75 y/o MIL is still fighting my wife to take her middle/highschool 'stuff' back to this day. She won't throw it out though.
  - gboss 11d ago
    Your wife should just pick it up and throw it out then to relieve her mother of the burden.
    - coldpie 11d ago
      Yeah. My mom hung onto my old school stuff and finally wanted to get rid of it when she moved. I took it graciously with thanks, and then tossed it in the trash when I got home.
    - w0m 7d ago
      I'd feel guilty, but you're likely correct.
- SubmarineClub 11d ago
  If my parents had done that I would have been pissed. They just recently cleared out the attic and unloaded my childhood stuff on me, and I gladly took it all back.

ph1lw 11d ago

[flagged]

ethagnawl 11d ago

It's to the point where whenever I see vacant land being cleared around me in NY, I assume it's for a new storage facility.

rootbear 11d ago

I'm in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC, and self storage facilities are popping up around here like weeds. I have a storage unit and I'm trying to clear it out. I'm tired of the monthly fees that keep going up. I got it when I had to clear out my late sister's house and I wanted time to go through things and decide what to keep. When I moved last year, I got a larger unit, thinking I would need to declutter my townhouse prior to showing it. It turned out my agent wasn't that concerned about my clutter, but I did move some idle tech stuff into the unit. I was hoping to get a house with a big basement for my future tech hoarding needs, and I wanted to keep this stuff. As it turned out, I ended up in a rancher with no basement, so now I'm getting rid of old tech I'll never have space for. I'd have saved a lot of money if I'd just done that a year ago. I now have a much smaller unit that I hope to be rid of next year. Self storage units are definitely a mixed blessing. I also have all of the family antique furniture, some of which goes back three or more generations. I have no heirs and no idea what I'll do with it all, but I don't want to leave it for my executor to deal with. At least it's in the house and not in an expensive storage unit.

memcg 11d ago
I'm also in the Maryland suburbs and I'm trying to dispose of several generations worth of stuff while avoiding having to use a storage unit. Thankfully, we have a lot of deserving organizations that take charitable donations. However, my old tech collection just seems to grow and fill any space I gain from getting rid of what I consider junk.
- 0xDEAFBEAD 10d ago
  Take a few quick photos and ask an AI to assess if any nearby museum might be interested?
red-iron-pine 11d ago
the DC area is a different story tho -- tons of rotation through the area due to military and fed gov. they come, they go, sometimes they come back, etc. you're rounding out a 26 year military career and looking at retirement but are going to do one more 2-year stint in Norfolk/Missouri/Georgia/whatever and don't feel like selling your house -- storage unit you work for a junior house rep who may not make it through the next election cycle, and since youre a staffer you can't afford anything larger than a shoebox, but still need to bring your stuff, some of which you can't fit -- storage unit etc. etc.

diegolas 11d ago

i always thought they were a neat idea (they only barely started appearing where i live in the last ~10 years) but it seemed a bit strange that they were so common

epochbtc 11d ago

This article takes the view of the consumer, "Why do so many people pay to store items they almost never use?". But in actuality, the interesting part of this is why is there so much supply of self-storage businesses? The answer is: cash flow. Self-storage businesses are the almost perfect solution for someone with a good size (but not enormous) bucket of money that they want to put to work generating cashflow: 1. Cheap build out (cheap land, cheap facilities) 2. Almost entirely hands-off (no employees, automated entry) 3. Low liability (low risk of customers suing you) 4. Low overhead (just pay for taxes, electricity, minimal maintenance) 5. Reliable monthly cash flow The abundant supply of these businesses, I suspect, tends to generate demand: it's easier to pay $80/month to store your junk than spend the time and emotional labor of picking through what you want to keep and what you want to get rid of. That ends up being captive long-term revenue.

browningstreet 11d ago
I disagree with the last point -- it's a pain to gather a bunch of things up, put them in vehicles (or rent a truck), find a storage facility that isn't full, rent the unit, haul your things over to the unit.. all the while ignoring that you're putting off whatever culling and disposal ceremony you should actually be engaging in. My local town gives you two free visits to the garbage transfer station per year. Choosing storage over that seems harder.
- neutronicus 11d ago
  You're hauling the stuff regardless. Dealing with renting a storage unit vs deciding to throw away your Pokemon cards feels like kind of a wash.
  - diskzero 11d ago
    Are you infinitely wealthy? Storage units are a slow leak on finances, just like uncanceled subscriptions and mobile phone plan features.
    - 11d ago

pelagicAustral 11d ago

It's crazy the kind of crap people keep, of course is not crap to them, but I've known people that have literal container loads of unorganized crap they will never ever see again... Most of the people I know that have loads of stuff store always claim they'll need these things at some point and so they rather have them there in storage instead of dumping or giving them away, and I have never seen them pick a single item, because of course after a few years of storing things there is literally no way to know where things are. It's infuriating... I dump stuff all the time... I probably have like 50 things in my life including t-shirts, which obviously contributes to my enragement.

tk75x 10d ago
I challenge you to count the things you own and post the actual number.

bluGill 11d ago

Most people I know with a self storage place are not using them like the article. (though some do - YMMV). Some use it as a warehouse for their business - they rotate stuff in and out. A carpenter might buy a pallet of nails once every few months and use the storage every few days to refill the truck. Several people keep off-season holiday decorations in storage and rotate it back home for the season. Others keep fishing stuff in storage and stop by storage on their way to/from the fishing spot. If you have anything in storage you should look at it at least once a year to decide if it is worth saving. It is okay to say that "I love this thing from Grandma even though I don't have room for it", but you need to decide it is still worth it.

xp84 11d ago
I tend to think the people who use it for seasonal stuff are definitely Doing It Right. After all, using it that way just enables you to have a smaller (or less cluttered) house but have the same things. When I had one, it was definitely not that. It was just a way to procrastinate doing something with stuff that I could have replaced anything useful with the year’s rental fees.

milkytron 11d ago

There was a solid analysis of these facilities done by Modern MBA. https://modern-mba.com/case/self-storage https://modern-mba.com/case/self-storage tl;dw - As far as businesses go, they require low capital to construct, have low operational costs, and also operate as a way to hold real estate/land while also generating revenue. The people that use them are usually dealing with some life event such as moving, a death in the family, divorce, and just want some solution to house possessions.

danny_codes 11d ago
Yet another reason for land value taxes. It's astonishing how many problems they solve
martinpw 11d ago
> dealing with some life event such as moving, a death in the family, divorce The 4 Ds of self storage: Death, divorce, dislocation, downsizing
ragazzina 10d ago
> a solid analysis This is AI slop.

black_13 11d ago

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MisterTea 11d ago

They're good for small/independent businesses who need to store a few things instead of renting a full space or have no spare storage at home.

dlcarrier 11d ago

He liked travelling in it, but what he really liked was hanging out inside it while drinking cocktails with friends and family, and if he could have done that while parked in an air-conditioned man cave he might never have taken it on the road. There were a few house boats at a dry storage facility I occasionally drove by, and once there were a bunch of people hanging out on one drinking and partying, miles from the water. I thought it was hilarious, but it did show how much of the cost is the view. Slip fees aren't cheap, and house boat rentals are crazily expensive.

cucumber3732842 11d ago
I've always thought that it would be cool to buy wetland and go in the reverse direction. Instead of illegally fill it illegally dredge it. Then put a house boat on it. They'll never see it coming. The whole system is designed to prevent filling.
xp84 11d ago
This reminds me of the endearing ex-husband in the show Cougar Town. He lived (and hung out) on just such a boat. I know, the name sounds cheesy af, but the show was a great one.

mike_bob 11d ago

My personal experience with this is my father, who lives in a rural area with 10+ acres, has placed several shipping containers on the property as storage for his junk. He's charged just over $500/mo for them. He's had them for 18 years. The value of property in those containers is maybe $5000. Consumerism is a disease, and the USA is super good at it.

0cf8612b2e1e 11d ago
I thought you could buy a used shipping container for like a grand, so that is a ridiculous rental rate.
- mike_bob 11d ago
  These are slightly higher end, and from what I've seen they go for $2-3000. But still yes, it is ridiculous, and the company wont offer them for sale per the current contract! For convenience sake he'd rather pay the monthly fee than haul all his junk out, get them to pick the container up, buy new ones, and put all his cheap useless junk back in. It's maddening!
  - nsvd2 11d ago
    He could probably find someone to move the stuff for him for a small fee.
    - mike_bob 11d ago
      If only you knew my father and his distrust of most things. He's been watching 5+ hours of Fox News daily for 30+ years. There isn't much left in that mind.
      - adammarples 11d ago
        Just sorting it out for him
      - Henchman21 11d ago

josefritzishere 11d ago

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toasty228 11d ago

In Europe we just fill the garage to the fucking ceiling and park the car outside. And of course nothing ever gets out of the garage until you die, then it's your kids problem and usually everything goes straight to a landfill.

MBCook 11d ago
Oh, people already do that here too. The storage unit is the next bucket of overflow.
qingcharles 11d ago
There was a study done in Los Angeles and found that 80% of garages are used for storage with the car parked outside.
- pkul 11d ago
  Hopefully developers take notice then, maybe we can build new neighborhoods with the garage off to the side in an awkward position for the occasional boat haul. Then we can clear up the fronts of homes and replace it with something prettier.

UltraSane 11d ago

I have never paid for self-storage and have never understood why they are so popular. I've known people paying for a self-storage unit to store furniture they are also still making payments on.

manoDev 11d ago

The US population is anxious [1]. The last thing an anxious person does is get rid of stuff they "might need one day". > An estimated 19.1% of U.S. adults had any anxiety disorder in the past year. [1] https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/any-anxiety-disorder https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/any-anxiety-disor...

autoexec 11d ago

> the delusion that your children will want the items you’re planning to bequeath to them, especially the kind of furniture that used to be called antiques but that young people for some time have referred to derisively as “brown.” This is madness talking. A nice "brown" bookcase or dresser is made of solid wood and will last your entire life. The alternative these days is either insanely priced and still of questionable quality or cheap, badly constructed particleboard that outgasses formaldehyde and other toxins into your home and needs to be replaced every few years. There used to be a much larger amount of inexpensive high quality furniture on the second hand market, but now its harder to find locally. If you have kids who are allergic to the color brown, you should donate any good furniture you have. Someone will absolutely want it.

pixl97 11d ago
>larger amount of inexpensive high quality furniture on the second hand market, There is no second hand market, it's just a used primary market. Before the invention of the internet getting rid of second hand items meant tossing it, or selling it at a garage sale, or for more expensive things taking out an (pretty expensive) ad in the paper. This had a lot of friction. Sellers also had any real idea of what their items were worth. Stuff ranged from wildly expensive to impossibly cheap. The internet broke this. If I post something too cheap, in seconds a bot picks it up and a person that retails stuff buys it up. Then 30 minute later you find the same item on the same forum for way more. This has a second order effect that these high price posts sit in the forum for long periods of time, so when Jon shows up to sell his table, he sees 50 other tables to $200 and thinks that's an appropriate price. Good deals appear to no longer exist!
- cucumber3732842 11d ago
  These flippers fancy themselves "liquidity providers". Like god forbid it take a couple days for someone to bite on your "too cheap" listing.
Sprocklem 10d ago
> A nice "brown" bookcase or dresser is made of solid wood and will last your entire life. The alternative these days is either insanely priced and still of questionable quality or cheap, badly constructed particleboard that [...] needs to be replaced every few years. It is truly baffling that most modern book cases have shelves that seemingly can't hold up to the weight of books – the very thing they were made to hold.

tayistay 11d ago

Viewable from the commuter train (BART), there is a large storage facility in Oakland which advertises air conditioned units. Outside is a large homeless encampment. Sigh.

MarkusWandel 11d ago

Storage space inevitably fills up with stuff. I have the stereotypical "garage too full of stuff to park the car in" but it's one side of a 2-car garage and the other side, and this the wife and I are in perfect agreement on, is reserved for the car. Then I inherited a second car, which for various reasons is barely practical to keep while it works. It lives outside so that the stuff in the garage (a clutter of far too many bicycles, mostly) can stay accessible. But in winter, it is possible - barely - to park the car inside, with bicycles hanging only inches above it. Some stuff had to be disposed of to make this possible, and I fear some additional stuff will have to go this fall. But you have to set yourself limits or the stuff will grow infinitely. Meanwhile premium locations all over town are sprouting Dymon Self Storage units. That's the local brand of "premium climate controlled storage". There's one less than a mile, as the crow flies, from my house.

dave78 11d ago
I've always wanted to have a "shop" - a detached space, like a pole barn, where I could work on projects and store things. A lot of people I know in my life have such an arrangement and I'm occasionally jealous. These days, I live on a large enough piece of land that I could pretty easily construct such a building. However, I've stopped myself because I've realized that I just fill up whatever space I have. If there's room to store something, you can just put it there and plan to deal with it later (of course, later almost never comes). I'm the type of person that has a hard time getting rid of things that I paid good money for or that have sentimental value, and as I get older I'm increasingly envious of those people who have less hesitation about throwing stuff out. For some things, selling is an option, but that has its own set of hassles. I have a garage like you that has one stall full of stuff - family bikes, tools, a table saw, grill, etc. Stuff that we do use, though some of it is probably not used enough to justify the space it takes up. Every time I clean up the garage now I try to make a point to get rid of some things, though all that does is tend to break even with the new stuff that inevitably gets added.

flerchin 11d ago

When I moved to a big city from a medium sized town I had to put some stuff in storage while we lived in a small apartment and searched for a house to purchase. My bbq, lawn mower, other random stuff. Two months later I went to the office to move out and they couldn't find the paperwork. No one does that!

redwood 11d ago

It must be valuable if an earlier version of myself bought it kept it found it or stored it

RajT88 11d ago

I rented one of these for a while after my wife and I moved in together. After a bit, I realized what we had paid for it was close to exceeding the value of the items stored within . Just get rid of your stuff when you can. Life will be better.

pcoyne 11d ago

Its interesting in America because we are both a very throw away society but also want to keep everything.

michael_michael 11d ago

Near my house I saw two large blocky buildings being constructed on a main thoroughfare. Different construction companies, but within about 100 yards of each other. "Fantastic!", I thought. New apartment buildings. That means new restaurants, stores, and other conveniences. Not to mention desperately-needed housing. I'll never forget my despair upon learning that they were BOTH going to be large multi-level self-storage facilities.

aryadee 11d ago
Don’t dox yourself but this sounds just like Irvine, CA. It feels like every two years I see a new track of homes + block storage facilities being built
- officeplant 11d ago
  I'm on the other side of the country, and I can watch new super deluxe drive-thru carwashes being built with a storage facility neighbor. The crazy part being two blocks over is a competing super deluxe-carwash with storage facility neighbor. At this point my city is up to dozens of these pairs of property squatting businesses.
2OEH8eoCRo0 11d ago
My childhood baseball field is now a self-storage.
tobinfekkes 11d ago
This was exactly Mount Vernon, Washington. I was so disappointed.
- kridsdale1 11d ago
  About half of Whidbey Island.
pavel_lishin 11d ago
Yeah, but consider! There's a high likelihood that they'll still be housing for someone.

dcdc123 11d ago

I live in a small downtown condo. I don't have room to store a whole lot of extra stuff but I also have hobbies like camping, watersports, etc. I keep all of that stuff in a storage unit and I access it fairly often. Since I have it I also use it to save all the boxes for my electronics (77" OLED is impossible to move safely without original box for example), car maintenance stuff, larger tools I use less frequently, etc. It is about 3 minutes drive 10 minute walk from my house. I definitely do not use it to hoard stuff I will never touch again.

Havoc 11d ago
>77" OLED is impossible to move safely without original box for example) Exactly same here - well curved super ultrawide. Without the curved box styrofoam it can't move. Though in hindsight it was a bad deal...at ~60 bucks a month I could have replaced the screen...
- rconti 11d ago
  my 10 year old 75" TV cost me upwards of $70, probably $100, to move across town -- at the cost of the boxes and packing material and labor the movers provided. When I move again in a few months I think I'll just throw it in the back of my SUV and hope it doesn't break.
  - masfuerte 11d ago
    Wrap it in a blanket and it'll probably be fine.
    - s0rce 11d ago
      In your own car, sure, in a moving van, probably not.
  - lokar 11d ago
    I moved my large tv cross country twice. The movers build a wooden and cardboard crate for it. Very safe.

pandinus 11d ago

My late father was a child during the depression era and so he grew up to be very resourceful/thrifty, hard working, and epitomized the "waste not, want not" slogan. So yes it can come off as hoarding and it was a lot to go through after he passed. Yet after a lifetime of scrimping, saving, reusing, and repurposing, he ended up with quite a lot to show for it. He never paid for storage, didn't clutter any open spaces, but every closet or spare room of his home was packed. If you have the storage then by all means keep whatever you value. If it would require paying a recurring fee to keep it, then it better be worth it.

SoftTalker 11d ago
Even if you have the space I'd caution against it. Cleaning out my parent's house after my mother's death was a chore, and they weren't hoarders in the classic sense but they had a lot of stuff. Thousands of family photographs, in boxes, that had never been organized or put in albums. Clothing, in suitcases, that hadn't been worn in decades. Toys from my childhood. Furniture with almost zero resale value. It all went in a dumpster. It was emotionally draining to get rid of some of it because I had memories attached to it. The thing is, if they had gotten rid of that stuff themselves, I would never have missed it. Even after all that I probably ended up keeping too much of it. I now have several shelves in my basement with boxes from my parent's house, that I have never opened since bringing them home. I have promised myself that I will not leave that kind of accumulated junk for my kids to sort through some day, but I honestly wonder if I will get around to doing my own purge. It hasn't happened yet.
- xp84 11d ago
  Relatable. In my case my dad passed away and at the time my relationship with him wasn’t the best. It wasn’t until I had a child of my own, about 5 years later, that I started to empathize with him orders of magnitude more - and to wish I had more of his things to help me feel closer to him. Sadly, I had kept almost none of it because I lived in a 1-bedroom condo in the city at that time and didn’t feel like I could spare any space for any of it.
  - 10d ago

pglevy 11d ago

We call these "above-ground landfills." After watching (and helping) my parents shuffle stuff around these facilities for years, we drew a hard line in our household: no external storage. If it doesn't fit in the space we live in, we're not keeping it. Great article!

wildzzz 11d ago
My wife and I needed a storage locker due to a very slow house move along with her parents giving us some (wanted) furniture from their recent move. The spare bedroom we had been using as an office and storage space needed to be cleared out for a friend that was going to live with us for a bit. We just couldn't keep everything in our apartment and the house just wasn't ready for most of our stuff. I knew plenty of stories of people keeping storage units full of forgotten junk and I didn't want that happening with us. We made a promise to each other that we would get the unit empty within the month we finally could move into the house. The unit was of a decent size and only $20/month for the 2 or 3 months we had it so it was pretty inexpensive but we were pretty cash strapped at the time. The rate was going to jump up a lot more if we had kept it longer. We barely had enough to pay movers to help move the big stuff, we did all the small stuff ourselves. Intentionally, the storage unit was on the route between the apartment and house so it was easy to just pickup a few things at a time. Finally when it was time to move things in, we were able to get it done in about a week, right before the increased renewal rate was about to be charged. I was doing reno work for the landlord during this time so we technically had a house to live in but it's pretty annoying trying to live in a place while you're sanding drywall and replacing flooring.
- pglevy 11d ago
  Way to have a plan and stick to it. If it's necessary, good idea to set a deadline.
kccqzy 11d ago
Yeah I just don’t understand. I sold so much second hand furniture online. Each sale you get a little bit of adrenaline rush from a buyer handing you cash while you get rid of old stuff. (No adrenaline with electronic direct deposits.)

neuralkoi 11d ago

According to George Carlin, "that's the whole meaning of life, trying to find a place for your stuff". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvgN5gCuLac https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvgN5gCuLac

Aurornis 11d ago

> A self-storage facility is a business that rents lockable space to people who own more stuff than they know what to do with This has turned into another topic where people look down upon others or culture in general while assuming the worst. Self-storage facilities can be really nice for those of us who like to live in areas where larger houses or garages aren't easy options. I can put the winter gear in there during the summer and the summer gear in there during the winter. If I need to renovate a part of the house, I can rent a storage unit for a few months and move that room's contents into it and free up space. When an older family member passes away and the estate needs to sell the house, moving the important belongings into a storage unit while the family works on dividing them up or selling them is something that happens all the time. I don't currently have a unit, but when I was making a lot of trips to the self-storage place there were a lot of people doing all the things I mentioned above. I'm sure there are a lot of units with forgotten and unnecessary things that are basically hoarded because their owners can't let go, but I have to roll my eyes at articles that talk about it like an "American religion".

diogenescynic 11d ago

Great business model but terrible thing to actually use. If you have so much junk you need a storage unit, you probably need to declutter. Most people have too much junk. On the other hand, new homes are not being built and this may be a way to compensate for so many people still acquiring the same level of junk but not owning enough homes or space to store it all. Previous generations wouldn’t have had as much of an issue when real estate was much cheaper.

INTPenis 11d ago

I've seen a few American self storage units on Youtube and a lot of times their units are open at the top. Which blows my mind. All it takes is for one bad customer to setup a ladder and just loot whatever unit they want.

croemer 11d ago

Wendover made a nice video about this 10 months ago: https://youtu.be/uEVv8SOJ6Is?is=Er27clBvXZ4TzAlj https://youtu.be/uEVv8SOJ6Is?is=Er27clBvXZ4TzAlj I'm a big Wendover fan, I think many here would like it.

gverrilla 11d ago

So much stuff and so little soul.

gnopgnip 11d ago

Macys went out of business in Sacramento. In a built up area, near a movie theater grocery store mall etc. The best thing that could fill this multi floor space in a developed area is a storage unit.

arwhatever 10d ago

I was angered and frustrated to find (the hard way) that some states have statutes which explicitly relieve storage companies from responsibility in the event of loss from theft. The entity in the best position to know how to secure the premises is not liable to do so at all in some states. Oh, and don’t get me started on ballooning but opaque rental rates. I wanted to pay up front for 2-3 years of storage but most places “couldn’t” quote me what the rate would be beyond 3 months in advance. Such a scammy industry.

meetingthrower 10d ago

My idea for innovative self storage pricing: offer free month 1, $1 month 2, $2 month three, $4 month four and so on. Very soon it obviously will become untenable, and you will either stop paying and get your shit out of there. I probably would be adversely selected by people who really only need a couple months of storage. But would force people to work against their instincts to store all their trash.

alexpotato 10d ago

A lot of small businesses use self storage facilities as mini warehouses. e.g. let's say you are starting a painting business You have a lot of equipment you need (ladders, sprayers, buckets, etc) but you live in a small apartment. A self storage unit can hold all of the above and the storage price is probably tax deductible.

stasomatic 10d ago
Not just warehouses. In one facility here in South Florida a family member who is a general contractor, uses the storage just as you described, but a couple of units over, there is a gun range, a gun smith shop, a tattoo shop running out of these "self-storage" units. It's legal too, kind of strange how it would be, but I see cops at the range often enough.
- GenerWork 10d ago
  A gun range being run out of a storage unit? I realize that Florida has gun laws that people would consider nuts (you can have a gun range in your backyard and nobody can really stop you), but I'd think that the contract of the storage unit would absolutely say no gun ranges.
  - stasomatic 10d ago
    I may have expanded the definition of self-storage, apologies, but here's the place I was talking about. There is definitely storage and there are definitely guns and gunsmith shops. Crazy, hey? There are people living out of these, this part of Florida is bananas. https://maps.app.goo.gl/iKnViouaU2inoT82A https://maps.app.goo.gl/iKnViouaU2inoT82A
    - GenerWork 10d ago
      Ah ok, this makes a lot more sense. We have places that look exactly like this near my area of Florida as well, and it's 100% in the "industrial" zoned area. No homes, only commercial businesses and small industrial setups. >this part of Florida is bananas All parts of Florida are bananas :)

msarrel 10d ago

It's interesting that the article doesn't seem to even take into consideration that the housing market has made it impossible for people to have storage at home. It's not a religion of story, it's desperation.

ksudb 10d ago

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grumpy_coder 10d ago

Cities have started to fix it, but it was mostly a zoning loophole. Protected industrial zoning typically allowed building 'mini warehouses' with limited public comment, no parking, on land that was fairly cheap. Made self storage plentiful and cheap in areas where housing lot sqft was limited.

spicyusername 9d ago

They are a blight on every new little town, stealing land that could go to literally anything else that would benefit the community more. In nearly 100% of cases, they are owned by some rich schmuck somewhere that's just trying to "cash flow". I hate them and I hate the culture that produces so many people that own them. Throw your stuff away people! Patronize businesses that make the world more interesting!