Hooked on Storage

Suzanne Gannon
New York Times
Thursday, March 8th, 2007
Pg D1, D6
The Story
The Summary: Americans are using more long-term rented storage units than ever before. The average American family has shrunk, the average American home has increased, and Americans have more stuff than ever before.

They are not the only ones taking this approach to clutter. According to Michael T. Scanlon Jr., president of the Self Storage Association, a trade group, 11 million American households currently rent storage space, an increase of 90 percent since 1995 — even as the size of new American houses has grown and the size of the American family has shrunk.

We are a nation addicted to stuff. What are we putting into these storage spaces? What is so important that we can't throw it away, but not important enough to keep in our households? Yes, there are pleanty of people who benefit from paying an extra $75 or so a month and storing seasonal things such as Christmas decorations, while housing with enough room to store such items would cost much more, and probably more space than most people need for every-day living.

The people observed for this story all had different reasons for keeping long-term storage, most didn't plan keeping their storage for as long as they did. The reasons for keeping long-term storage is the same as short-term, moving, divorce, waiting for a larger place.

Storage-space users have traditionally rented for short periods, Mr. Scanlon said, most commonly during life changes like divorce or relocation. But in recent years a new kind of renter has emerged, one who rents for longer periods, sometimes paying thousands of dollars a year, sometimes for units in faraway cities. These new renters seem compelled to keep trading up, from a cozy “personal closet,” say, to a garage-like room, and then to a second unit or even a third. They represent what Diane Piegza, a spokeswoman for Sovran Self Storage, which owns the Uncle Bob’s chain of storage facilities in 22 states, calls “a segment of the population that has truly embedded storage into its lifestyle.”

Pack-rat syndrome effects everyone at some point, but never has their been an industry that catered to it so well. We all keep things for a little longer than we should, whether it's a term paper that we got an "A" on, or that cute shirt that used to fit, and only if we loose a few more pounds. There just comes a time that we have to throw things out, or sell them, or donate them. Rented storage is just another way people can live outside their means. It's like the credit card of stuff: "I don't have room for it now, but I might later"

Which creates a perfect segway for the next issue: the money spent on storage units.

...They rented their first unit in 2005 and filled it within six months, then added a larger, 10-by-15-foot space just down the hall. They now pay $335 a month for the two, or roughly $4,000 a year, a figure that Ms. Wagner said took her by surprise when her husband recently checked the bills...
...added to Mr. Balis’s space constraints, so he rented a 10-by-6-foot walk-in unit in Kingston, N.Y., for which he pays $97 a month, as well as a 5-by-5-foot closet at Manhattan Mini Storage, for which he pays $65...
...Together, the Manhattan and the Huntington Station units cost $325 a month, but Ms. Silver Pilchik considers it money well spent...

If some of these people could chuck or sell the stuff they're keeping in storage, they might be able to afford that new place sooner than they think. Imagine having an extra $4000/year. Saving classic, well built peices of furniture or seasonal items(that come back every year) that you may not have room for otherwise might turn out to be profitable, but trendy items and stuff you haven't used in a year or two can probably go. Donations to such charities as Goodwill can actually be written off, similar to a nominal donation. Ask your accountant about the details.

Storage is a beautiful example of American excess. Not only do we live in big houses and drive fancy cars, we also have more things than we can stuff in our big houses. The sad thing is, very few of us aren't guilty of this at least a little bit. After reading this article, I'm really tempted to start cleaning. I am moving in a mere three months.