How warehouses for personal junk became a $38B industry
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Re: How warehouses for personal junk became a $38B industry
#2I try to be pretty slow to criticize people for taking advantage of a service that they find valuable. Calling things in these storage units "junk" is a moral judgement that's repeated a bit early on and then cast off to make room for the more mundane rundown of the market analysis.
In the end, there's no way to know the ratio of people getting good value out of this storage to the number of people throwing good money after bad.
Re: How warehouses for personal junk became a $38B industry
#3Very 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.
Re: How warehouses for personal junk became a $38B industry
#4I 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…
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).
Re: How warehouses for personal junk became a $38B industry
#5I 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…
Exactly, I once had one for a couple of months midway between my condo and the house I was moving into, because the house wasn't going to be empty until the day I was moving into it.
Before that I had another one to keep things like decorations (like you said), but also all the kids stuff that my older son had grown out of, but the younger hadn't grown into yet (plus seasonal swap outs). Condo living didn't leave a ton of storage.
Re: How warehouses for personal junk became a $38B industry
#6I 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…
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).
A lot of these ideas assume childless adults. Bringing kids into things makes everything a lot different.
Re: How warehouses for personal junk became a $38B industry
#7Very 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.
There's definitely an element of this. My grandmother's basement was full of junk (in a very real sense - growing up in the War she could never throw away a jam jar or bottle). Now I don't know anyone with a basement, even a spare bedroom is luxury in London.
Re: How warehouses for personal junk became a $38B industry
#8I 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…
Sure, what if the rent/mortgage you pay per square foot in your home is greater than the rent for a storage locker down the road? And there are reasonable use cases for medium-long term storage, such as seasonal items. I don't know how many people use them this way, but I can see reasonable uses too.
Re: How warehouses for personal junk became a $38B industry
#9I 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…
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).
Yeah, I've seen the reality TV shows where they auction these things off, even the cherry-picked units for TV are like 1/2 absolute junk that literally goes strait into a dumpster.
Re: How warehouses for personal junk became a $38B industry
#10Very 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.
That's exactly where I'm at. I downsized to a much smaller house, and I keep a lot of my uncommonly used and seasonal equipment in there. I'll be swapping out my snowblower for my lawnmower and grill pretty soon. I pay an extra monthly fee for the storage unit, of course, and it's not very convenient to have to drive a few miles to reach it... but my overall living expenses have been so dramatically reduced by living in a much smaller house, that it's an obvious win.
This article's headline is weirdly condescending; the "personal junk" I own are things I value, and the self storage industry has provided an efficient way for me to store it without having to own a gigantic house or a shed.