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How warehouses for personal junk became a $38B industry

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Re: How warehouses for personal junk became a $38B industry

#51

Post by heartbreak »

chasingthewind wrote: post #2

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

My (non-tech) small business uses "warehouses" (mini storage) for temporary and long-term storage. In one unit you can find crates of inventory, in another you can find equipment we produced for a one-off event job. We don't have enough to warrant an actual warehouse, and the units are significantly cheaper than renting extra office space to store this stuff. I keep it there to keep it out of my garage.

Re: How warehouses for personal junk became a $38B industry

#52

Post by lfowles »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #29
cornholio wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As we have all learned from reality-TV, a good quarter of the units are choke-full with anything but junk: you will find sculpted furniture in pristine condition, civil war artifacts, expensive professional equipment and tens of thousands of dollars in rare baseball cards. The industry must be really struggling to provide adequate security.

But they show only the cream of the crop. never gonna air that episode where they found water-logged bundles of newspapers, old Byte magazines in mouse-chewed boxes and a raccoon mummy.

They're also not going to show the storage units that students use to hold furniture while they go off for a summer internship elsewhere.

Re: How warehouses for personal junk became a $38B industry

#53

Post by komali2 »

tbirrell wrote: post #31
snarf21 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you and there are short term reasons to put everything in storage. There is another group that just has stuff squirreled away "in case". I personally believe that most people would be happier following a less is more philosophy which can be approached simply by throwing out or selling or donating anything you haven't worn/used in the last year (or two).

Throwing stuff out is hard to do if you are poor or were raised poor. Everything you save now does not have to be bought later. There is a potential use for anything and everything, so you might as well keep it. Granted, at a certain point the cost of the storage facility exceeds the amount saved, but the mindset is still there.

Man this rings so true for me, even as I pull an engineer salary now. Keep moving a car around free parking spaces even though I haven't "used' it in a year, still squirrel away a bunch of useless shit because what if!

I still have trouble turning down free food even if it isn't in line with my diet x.x poverty habits just stay with you

Re: How warehouses for personal junk became a $38B industry

#55

Post by conductr »

djrogers wrote: post #35
mathattack wrote: post #13

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

Interesting theory, but I've never seen a storage facility close down and be turned in to other real-estate...

Land is usually a very long play (trust funds, REITs, endowments, etc), I'd say this is a relatively new strategy in the past 10-20 years in most places. They likely won't be looking to do that until the storage building reaches its useful life and needs major repair. Then, the question is, do we have a thriving storage business or is there a better use for this land?

Re: How warehouses for personal junk became a $38B industry

#56

Post by forapurpose »

sol_remmy wrote: post #14

Living space cost per sq-ft has grown while storage space cost per sq-ft has stayed the same. Why? Handicap accessibility regulations, parking regulations, etc etc have greatly increased the construction cost of new houses. i.e. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/05/19/upshot/forty-... Storage facilities do not have people living in them and are therefore immune from lots of these expensive regulations. Hence,…

A well-regulated community which accommodates the needs of its members, rather than a compassionless free-for-all, is attractive to people and may increase demand. After all, those people passed those laws and regulations. I know that's the kind of place I want to live.

Re: How warehouses for personal junk became a $38B industry

#57

Post by wolfgang42 »

Spooky23 wrote: post #48
chasingthewind wrote: post #2

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

It's junk if you don't know what it is. My sister's mother-in-law spends about $1000/mo on storage units in 6 cities. They were a military family and moved frequently. The problem is that they don't remember what is in the storage units, and the cost of traveling across the country to go through a closet is steep and of questionable value. So she is stuck in a cycle of paying for things that she may or may not need.…

That is an astonishing amount of money. Is it not possible to have everything packed up and shipped to their current location? Even if paying someone to do this cost $2000 for each unit that would still pay itself back after a year.

Re: How warehouses for personal junk became a $38B industry

#58

Post by tonyedgecombe »

the-dude wrote: post #45
cornholio wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As we have all learned from reality-TV, a good quarter of the units are choke-full with anything but junk: you will find sculpted furniture in pristine condition, civil war artifacts, expensive professional equipment and tens of thousands of dollars in rare baseball cards. The industry must be really struggling to provide adequate security.

I once watched an episode with a unit full of money ( on a pallet ).

I think that was Breaking Bad.

Re: How warehouses for personal junk became a $38B industry

#59

Post by doomlaser »

michaelbuckbee wrote: post #50
xefer wrote: post #21

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

Modern manufacturing is sufficiently weird that it messes with my sense of thriftiness. That it really is possible to manufacture new items less expensively than it is to repair them (especially counting my own time to do so). Like I can remember my grandmother knitting and darning socks. But she wished she had one of these sock knitting machines: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7N7hsho4Sjg&feature=youtu.be... And no…

I was shocked and pleasantly surprised recently at $3 high quality plain tshirts (in multiple colors) that you can order online: http://www.michaels.com/apparel-crafts/t-shirts/876004921

I'm wearing a magenta one now.. Then I found out there are tons of online outfits doing this. https://www.jiffyshirts.com/

I've always shopped at Salvation Army and other thrift stores, with occasional trips to malls to pick up Levi's Slim Straight jeans, but the last pair of those I bought from Amazon since I know my size. It's kind of been a revelation, and the big box stores are going to have to get creative to stay around I think. I used to be picky about favoring American Apparel shirts as well, in their heydey, but the ones I got from Michaels are surprisingly good.

Re: How warehouses for personal junk became a $38B industry

#60

Post by stevenwoo »

jamesbelucci789 wrote: post #3

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

Is it just Americans who got large houses while land is/was cheap-ish? I remember having to go on a work trip and staying overnight with a coworker in Reading, UK to make a morning train and was amazed at how small their house was for a family of four (and they said it was typical for Europeans) compared to how large the house I had back in Austin where I just bought something in a nice neighborhood and would have had to been an early adopter in the not so nice part of town to get a house as small as the UK one.
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