Yet another Hacker News

The American Religion of Self-Storage Facilities

85 points pseudolus 4 hours ago 138 comments

bell-cot 4 hours ago | parent

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 3 hours ago | parent

People can get unusually attached to their stuff regardless of its objective value.

close04 3 hours ago | parent

> 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 3 hours ago | parent

Even without the sentimental part, cancelling means sorting everything out and finding people to take it away.

bell-cot 2 hours ago | parent

In theory, one can just hand the keys to a Junk Busters-type company. But yeah - actually doing that is another barrier to action.

Jaauthor 4 hours ago | parent

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

dylan604 3 hours ago | parent

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 3 hours ago | parent

Do they blast Entombed albums while performing Swedish death cleaning?

emj 3 hours ago | parent

Anything produced by Max Martin is ok.

eth0up 4 hours ago | parent

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 4 hours ago | parent

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 3 hours ago | parent

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 3 hours ago | parent

Not all European countries. There are 20 European countries bellow the per 100.000 level of homelessness than the US.

zulux 3 hours ago | parent

One problem that poorer American people have is too much food, leading to obesity.

bronco21016 3 hours ago | parent

Do they have too much food? It seems to me that calorically dense foods that provide almost no nutritional value are “cheap” and abundant while healthy food choices are expensive and require time and effort to store and prep.

For example, if I’m living out of a car I’m more likely to use EBT to buy some bags of chips I can toss in the car rather than some cheap chicken and fresh veggies or eggs. How would I store chicken or cook any of it if I live in a car?

Yes, I know there are solutions here like small fridges and hot plates. But those cost money and require time and effort. Again, scenario is living in a car or the streets.

mschuster91 3 hours ago | parent

> Yes, I know there are solutions here like small fridges and hot plates. But those cost money and require time and effort. Again, scenario is living in a car or the streets.

There's at least one benefit to China dumping solar cells and other stuff all over the world: even as a homeless person... at least as long as you got a car, an EcoFlow Glacier and a shit solar panel are less than a grand, and it provides both a refrigerator, a small freezer and a way to keep your devices charging.

diskzero 3 hours ago | parent

A thousand dollars may as well be a million dollars. In my personal experience, gifting a thousand dollars to someone in housing distress will not lead to the purchase of a solar panel.

mschuster91 1 hour ago | parent

I'm talking about "working homeless" here. There are many people living out of their cars because they can't afford a proper home but still have money they can spend, and many of them in fact are living some kind of "stealth camper" setup with accompanying gear.

But that gear would have been infeasible even ten years ago - the status quo outside of luxury campers for six figures was absorber refrigeration [1] that needs a heat source - either powered by natural gas, which has challenges relating to safety as well as high consumption, or by electricity, which was lead-acid batteries back then.

The power density of lithium cells today is what makes that possible in the first place.

Poverty-homeless people however are a different thing, agreed on that. If you don't have a lockable place to store stuff you might as well have nothing at all...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absorption_refrigerator

diskzero 28 minutes ago | parent

Got it. I mainly work with people who have severely fallen off the cliff with almost no way to climb back out. I totally see how this new gear could keep someone from reaching a critical breaking point.

automatic6131 3 hours ago | parent

Btw calorically dense foods are, in fact, hyper nutritious. While you may imagine healthy foods to be green vegetables and raw meats, you can buy - from regular supermarkets - roast chickens ready to eat, salad bowls and fresh fruit. You need not even store it, but buy and eat on the go.

People repeat the myth that healthy food choices are expensive (they aren't) and time & space consuming to make (they can be) so often that most people believe it. But it just isn't so: you can eat at McDonalds every day, and if it's only a part of your diet, it's healthy. If you can get fibre and some vitamins elsewhere, and aren't overeating, the protein and calories in a fries and a hamburger are fine. Good, actually.

Healthy foods are simply principally marketed to, sold at a large markup to, middle to upper class Americans so they believe that's the usual market value.

Now, it can be expensive in time, effort and equipment for struggling, hard working, irregular shift workers. That's a different issue though.

diskzero 3 hours ago | parent

You are correct, but regular supermarkets can even be scarce or non-existent in many areas.

bluGill 3 hours ago | parent

Cars have space. A camp stove in the trunk and you can cook anything. Likewise a cooler and you can store things for a short time. Since you have a car you can drive to a supermarket regularly and thus not need to store anything for longer than the cooler can keep them fresh.

Food deserts don't exist if you have a car in any American city since it is never that far to a suburb. (if you don't have a car getting is much much harder)

I have done the above - as a contractor working in a place a significant distance from home on a short term job. There were a lot of people like me in the cheap hotels I was staying at. OTOH, none of us were homeless - the homeless generally have other issues making them homeless and so even though that options would be cheap and work that doesn't mean they would be able to do it

CalRobert 3 hours ago | parent

Cheap carbs and starches but expensive vegetables and protein sources.

diskzero 3 hours ago | parent

One problem with what? Also, a problem is not “too much food”. This is an absurd statement. The problem is non nutritive, unhealthy food loaded with calories. Work in any troubled urban center and you will encounter a complete lack of actual grocery stores selling healthy food. Instead you get fast food, bodegas and convenience stores selling low quality, cheap items. We have known of this problem for decades. The poor are poor and certainly don’t have the income for “too much food”.

eth0up 3 hours ago | parent

I find little of interest in that. The US enforces private property in a far more aggressive manner than most other countries, and the definition of public property, and functional amount thereof, are also very different. Merely laying down behind a bush can be a violation of "Illegal Camping within City Limits"/

Additionally, rent can easily be inaccessible for the employed. And for those who don't have vehicles, 'just moving to a cheaper area" is not a practical option.

diskzero 3 hours ago | parent

Cars are plentiful and cheap in America and can be had next to free in many cases. They will be in terrible shape, operated without insurance, registration and driven by someone without a license. They will also be gross polluters but won’t be taken off the street unless there are a series of criminal actions. Many states will only cite and not tow for lack of insurance or a valid license. The chance of getting pulled over is also quite low in many areas due to distribution of police resources. These vehicles are allowed to be parked and serve as shelters in many cities who choose to allow this as a tacit form of shelter. Just look at the transformation of the streets in Seattle, parts of the Bay Area, Los Angeles, and more. This is an ad hoc solution to a situation that can’t be addressed effectively.

DanielHB 3 hours ago | parent

It is not even the cost of the car, but the upkeep. In large European cities parking alone can be prohibitive. In Sweden cars older than 2006 pay extra tax because they don't have emissions testing data.

diskzero 3 hours ago | parent

The issue in America is that you can own a car, not pay for upkeep, not pay registration, not pay for insurance, not pay to park and still drive it many times without consequence.

DaSHacka 2 hours ago | parent

That's a feature, not a bug.

bluGill 3 hours ago | parent

In the US car taxes are based on value. Where I live once a car is 10 years old the tax is $50/year. Buy a cheap car for $5000, pay $1000/year to insure it, and $50/year for a license and it is fully legal. You still have to pay for fuel, but that is fairly cheap. You also have maintenance expenses, but generally the poor have a network of mechanics to do the labor for free (in exchange for your labor for something else). Even if you buy a different car every year, you will be hard pressed to find an apartment for $6000/year.

Downtown in US cities parking is prohibitive, but that is only a small part of the city. Most of the city you can park for free. You want to move the car every day just so it doesn't look abandoned, but otherwise this is a cheap way to live and you get transportation as a bonus.

DanielHB 2 hours ago | parent

In Sweden large cities even in the suburbs parking can be quite expensive. But I guess it is because "the big city suburbs" in Sweden are still mostly 4-6 story tall apartments.

At my current place (apartment in a suburb about 10km from the city center) our parking would cost ~180 USD per month. From a tech worker perspective it is not like unaffordable, but definetily a luxury for most of the population. The median after-tax income in Sweden is like 3k USD.

That tax I mentioned before also makes very old beat-up cars not worth keeping (which is the intent of the tax to be fair).

One of the main upsides of living in a detached house in Sweden is not having to pay for parking. But even so the increase heating bills in winter can easily cost more than a car installment depending on your HVAC and insulation.

dlcarrier 1 hour ago | parent

My 25-year-old car gets 30+ miles to the gallon, far better than an F-series truck, which is the best selling vehicle in the US.

It's been 30 years since anyone sold a new carbureted production car in the US, for just as long cars have had OBDII, and it's been 50 years since cars were sold without catalytic converters.

There was a time, immediately after those technologies were developed, when older cars polluted significantly more than newer cars, but modern engine designs have been around long enough that cars old enough to be big polluters are expensive collectors pieces.

There may be an occasional car with a blown head gasket or piston ring polluting excessively, but they won't run for long in that condition. Thanks to CAFE standards increasingly limiting the availability of smaller vehicles in the US, the average 20-to-30-year-old gasoline engine probably pollutes less per mile than the average 0-to-5-year-old gasoline engine.

neutronicus 3 hours ago | parent

I assure you we have plenty of homeless people without cars.

When people are falling into homelessness, they keep the car for longer because (a) it generates income, either directly through something like Uber or by getting you to a job on time, (b) lower cost of ownership and (c) it serves as shelter in a pinch.

dlcarrier 1 hour ago | parent

Many areas make it difficult to build housing, especially small units with low market rates, so living in your car is a much cheaper option. It's a secure area to sleep and house belongings, and while most jurisdictions limit parking in one spot to 36 hours, cars are easy to move, and the limits are rarely enforced, and usually with a warning first.

api 4 hours ago | parent

Required link I always leave in these discussions:

https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-housing-theory-of-every...

IMO high housing prices are destroying civilization.

Swizec 3 hours ago | parent

> IMO high housing prices are destroying civilization.

It's like a game of musical chairs. There aren't enough houses to go around. You go around and the music stops. Everyone scrambles to their nearest chair. Obviously the person on crutches will be the first to fall out of the game. The rest then talk about laziness, drugs, bootstraps, and all the rest. But add 1 more chair and there's no problem, even the dude with the broken leg can sit.

cousin_it 3 hours ago | parent

Yeah. I like how Kat Woods phrased it: "You can give the slowest child sprinting lessons, but there are still nine chairs."

titzer 3 hours ago | parent

Well, for generations now, exponential growth in all things has been state policy and it was good (tm). Because of population growth, there's always a shortage of housing. Population is projected to peak this century. Whatever will we do when there are already enough houses for everyone to have one?

Swizec 3 hours ago | parent

> Whatever will we do when there are already enough houses for everyone to have one?

In many places in Europe and Asia, the govt will essentially pay you to go live in near-abandoned villages and revitalize them.

In USA it’s just ghost towns. See also Detroit

The problem is better described as "There aren't enough homes where people want to live". We have plenty of houses, even in america. The "where people want to live" part largely comes down to density, zoning laws, and the fact that for most people their primary residence represents their entire net worth and it would be materially impactful if the price went down (by building more/better homes nearby). So everyone resists building.

But it's okay, if you resist building for long enough then your town will eventually collapse and your house will be worth nothing anyway. Many american Towns are essentially insolvent and can't afford realistic upkeep prices for services like sewage, roads, good schools, etc., and are living on borrowed time until infrastructure collapses and nobody wants to buy there. See Strong Towns the book.

mschuster91 3 hours ago | parent

> The "where people want to live" part largely comes down to density, zoning laws, and the fact that for most people their primary residence represents their entire net worth and it would be materially impactful if the price went down (by building more/better homes nearby).

Infrastructure is a major deal. You can't really exist as a member of modern society without broadband Internet, unless you're Amish or whatever and even they have begun to shift attitudes. Starlink changed the calculation quite a bit, and it definitely helps, but other things such as cellphone reception and emergency services that arrive in a reasonable time are also important.

cobbzilla 3 hours ago | parent

Someone tried to build the extra chair but the endless required studies and legal challenges from existing chair-sitters bankrupted the would-be chair builder.

Also the chair, if actually built, would be so expensive that one legged guy can’t afford it. His best hope is someone with a worse chair takes it, then he tries to take their seat, but there’s already a dozen two-legged guys in front of him.

Swizec 3 hours ago | parent

> Also the chair, if actually built, would be so expensive that one legged guy can’t afford it. His best hope is someone with a worse chair takes it, then he tries to take their seat, but there’s already a dozen two-legged guys in front of him.

Maybe you need 5 chairs? Here in SF supply has fallen decades behind the demand curve to the point it may be impossible to catch up even if all you did was build build build.

cobbzilla 41 minutes ago | parent

POSIWID

decades of reasonable, consistently applied housing policy led to the creation of islands of wealth, surrounded by oceans of poverty. ergo, this is the purpose. this is how the people there want to live. I left many years ago when I realized the futility of it all.

ricree 3 hours ago | parent

Surely at least part of it is the concentration of wealth and economic activity. There's large masses of decaying rural towns where houses are cheap, but at the same time the whole reason they're decaying is because there just isn't enough economic opportunity to afford even these cheap houses.

I have no clue what the overall balance of housing looks like, but surely it doesn't help that big chunks of the housing market are being deprecated at the same time.

mschuster91 3 hours ago | parent

> It's like a game of musical chairs. There aren't enough houses to go around.

Actually, there are. In Germany for example, we have millions of units left empty... the catch is, these are in (extremely) rural areas. Areas that used to be populated, but no longer are because the government has let them fall extremely behind in modern amenities. Some even do not have cellphone service.

Normally, you'd expect people and companies to do a pricing arbitrage and move where housing is cheap, but unfortunately, when there is no local employment or the infrastructure does not support remote employment, or other crucial requirements (safe potable water, electrical grid, grocery stores, schools, some sort of entertainment) are lacking, this does not work out any more.

ecshafer 3 hours ago | parent

The solution is deregulation and land-value taxes. Tax land so that it reaches its maximum utilization. Deregulate so that buildings can actually be built.

micromacrofoot 4 hours ago | parent

Of course the storage unit living has been romanticized in literature too, I recall the unit in Snow Crash being a whopping 600 square feet. A palace compared to the reality of storage unit and car living today.

chrsw 3 hours ago | parent

600 sq ft is about the size of my apartment, which at market rate is about $3k/mo.

diskzero 3 hours ago | parent

As someone who has worked directly with these people in Los Angeles and Seattle, I tend to focus locally, otherwise the enormity of the situation is overwhelming and fills me with despair.

When you say “we need to fix this” no one can agree what “this” is. There is no one “this” and it becomes a morass of generational systemic issues, localized problems, competing views on economics, morality, government and more. It reminds me of when tech people show up to “fix” education. It just isn’t a single issue.

I agree we need to fix something, but as soon as I think about the big picture it feels futile and I have been involved in efforts for decades.

ryandrake 3 hours ago | parent

> 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 3 hours ago | parent

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 3 hours ago | parent

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 3 hours ago | parent

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.

applfanboysbgon 3 hours ago | parent

> 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.

Look, I'm not saying there aren't reasons for it. Obviously the economic value of a TV is now low. If you're posting on HN, chances are you can afford a new TV in a day's work, which may be less overhead than storing a TV for when you or someone else might need it in the future. At the same time, this is a historical abnormality. A television is a miracle device made with extremely advanced, relatively speaking, technology. 50 years ago, it would have been insane to snub your nose at that. To you it's a disposable good, to an older generation there is no reason to view it as such (and, I'd argue, this cultural value of disposability that is being forged is extremely bad and not actually sustainable for our society long-term).

CalRobert 3 hours ago | parent

All very true, but doesn't change the fact that my dad's house is more than 1000 sqft bigger than mine and when he goes I will have literally no place to put his stuff.

scottLobster 2 hours ago | parent

The point of the article is that most of what's being left is low economic value. When my great aunt died she had a collection of painted glass/plaster birds (not by any famous artist or anything, just mass produced stuff) that had been sitting in display cabinets for decades and nobody wanted.

It isn't an artifact of modernity that people don't want stuff like that. And as for stuff that is an artifact of modernity, the generation entering their 80s today lived through the widespread adoption of color TV, the moon landings, the space shuttle, cable TV, mainframes, PCs, CDs, VHS, DVDs, the internet, cellphones, smartphones, and freaking microwaves, never mind all the advancements in autos. You'd think someone with that lived experience would understand that times change and their kids might not want all their old stuff for the same reason it's been sitting unused in their garage/basement for decades.

My diagnosis is it was boomers who wrote the script for "The Goonies", specifically the line "Goonies never say die!". They came up in an era where rampant consumerism was encouraged and even directly subsidized as a political policy, hell it was how we beat the commies! Hard to be a good consumer past a certain point if you're too aware of your own mortality.

close04 3 hours ago | parent

These days the inheritance will include mostly junk. Old, worn out, low quality items, clothes, furniture, appliances, etc. Nobody says no to the one thing they need but can't afford, they say no to having yet another item they have no need for and its only value could be sentimental but otherwise it's a burden, one other thing among many to store somewhere, or throw out/donate/sell.

Do you need and can afford to keep somewhere another 6 creaky chairs, a big worn out dining table, bags of old clothes that don't fit anyone, outdated and broken electronics that probably don't work anymore, and so on? Even memories like pictures and videos are sometimes too much. They used to be a couple of photo albums, half with people you wouldn't even recognize, now there are TB of digital ones.

CalRobert 3 hours ago | parent

It’s the perfectly useless goods that are the problem.

intrikate 3 hours ago | parent

My parents aren't leaving me any crafted goods when they pass.

They had beautiful, carved wooden dressers and wardrobes from their parents that they, naturally, did not appreciate and take care of, so they turned into garbage and were thrown away when they became too dilapidated to move to another building. They were replaced with the standard fare particle-board-and-laminate Ikea-type trash that I definitely do not want. It's falling apart already and they've only had it a few years.

If they had maintained the furniture they were given by their parents, I would love to keep them around in my home and give them to my children when I pass, too. But I don't want cheap, mass-produced garbage from my parents simply because it belonged to my parents.

xionon 3 hours ago | parent

For most of human history, children and parents lived together or close by, and parents died earlier in the child's life. If your parents died and left you an heirloom dining room table, it was quite likely you just didn't have a table, and at most you lived a few blocks away, so acquiring it was easy.

I'm in my 40s. Both my parents are alive, and have a house full of stuff. I live in a different house, 3.5 hours away at highway speeds, full of different stuff. It doesn't really matter to me if my parent's dining room table is a nicely crafted table - I have a nice table, and I don't need two dining room tables. Getting it to my house is a tremendous hassle. Picking between them is a tremendous hassle. And then I still have all the other stuff - the hutch, the chairs, the couches, the beds - and only one sibling to split them with.

"Rampant, commoditization consumerism" didn't cause this, longevity, freedom of movement, and independent living caused this, and I wouldn't trade those away for an heirloom table.

Ekaros 3 hours ago | parent

Well for most of human history if you inherited something you inherited the building that contained that stuff. And the industry around it that used that stuff.

BigTTYGothGF 3 hours ago | parent

> The kind of rampant, commoditized consumerism where we routinely snub our noses at and throw away perfectly useful goods is a rather recent trend.

By and large the kids already have perfectly useful goods but no room for more.

ethagnawl 3 hours ago | parent

> 1970s era stereo equipment

Some of what glitters _is_ gold!

memcg 1 hour ago | parent

I bought a Scott tube amplifier at a yard sale for $2 and sold it on Craigslist the same day for $40. At least I found someone who wanted to restore it or harvest parts instead of trashing it.

evan_ 32 minutes ago | parent

or brushed aluminium

Ekaros 3 hours ago | parent

If they are sufficiently adult. Just ask them now do they want it. I can manage to pick stuff I want and then later dispose if I made mistake. If all children refuse just get rid off it already.

browningstreet 3 hours ago | parent

Those parents will neither ask, nor accept the answer they hear.

bell-cot 3 hours ago | parent

> I don't know where people get this idea that...

Kinda legit: Most people who lived through the Great Depression learned a "never throw any possibly-useful thing away" ethos as a survival skill. And they often taught that to their own children. And stuff became obsolete far more slowly back then, and furniture repair was a normal things, and ...

More commonly - "leave it to my children" is an excellent self-delusion...er, I mean psychological dodge, if you don't want to deal with the physical work, time required, or mental grief of proper sorting and disposal. But note that the "mental grief" may not be internal to the person deciding to procrastinate. If some of their family really don't get along with each other, then paying rent to put off the angry family drama may be their least-bad option.

rootbear 3 hours ago | parent

When my sister died five years ago, her best friend, who was local and I wasn't, was a huge help to me in getting her house cleaned out. While neither my sister nor I have kids, my sister's two best friends do have kids who were her effective nieces and nephews. So we offered the kids anything they wanted that I didn't want (which wasn't much - just family stuff) and they took a surprising amount of it. Most of it was more modern furniture in good shape, which I didn't want. I got the antiques. One of the nieces wanted the very old china and crystal. So it is possible to get rid of a house full of things without trashing it all, but it can take time and that's not always practical.

bluGill 3 hours ago | parent

There is the problem: the people who need your old stuff are rarely your heirs. You are still using your perfectly good furniture when your kids (and grandkids) first move out on their own and so you can't give it up to them unless you buy all new. Then you die (downside, go to a nursing home...) and no longer need it - there are lots of people who need/want your old stuff (at least some of it), but good luck finding them.

rootbear 2 hours ago | parent

It is a logistic problem at some level. A bunch of my parent's and sister's stuff went to Habitat ReStore or Goodwill. We have an architectural salvage place nearby that takes some things (like light fixtures) that the others don't.

phil21 3 minutes ago | parent

It’s such an annoying problem to solve.

I have all sorts of “stuff” I would give away to someone who can use it. I just don’t want to spend 3 hours per object doing so via posting on Facebook marketplace, having 8 people flake out on pickup, and a Saturday afternoon killed because I need to wait around for someone to show up.

It gets worse with more esoteric things like nerdy electronic gear which is absolutely worth something to the right person, but that person happening to be in my area and also searching for that particular bit and bob at that exact moment are almost nothing. Some of these things can be hundreds of dollars if you need to order new or off eBay.

I’d be fine with giving it away to a reseller if I could. Just very difficult to throw it away since it’s so wasteful.

ThrowawayR2 3 hours ago | parent

The Silent Generation had a standard of living, particularly among the working classes and rural folk, well below what millenials/GenZ are used to. They kept stuff, took good care of it to make it last as long as they could, jury-rigged things with what they could to conserve money, and so forth. No ordering cheap stuff from Temu, no electrical devices so cheap that they're disposable, no fast fashion, none of that. That submitter recently who broke apart a book for their own convenience probably would have been soundly thrashed for it. So, yeah, of course, at the end of their lives they wind up with a pile of worn out household items and what their grandchildren view as a hoarding problem. But one can hardly blame them.

We live in an era of immense wealth and convenience relative to them.

m_w_ 2 hours ago | parent

Woah woah woah - don’t lump 1970s era stereo equipment in with that. If any of these friends have vintage Pioneer (SX-##50/80) that’s “junk” to them, I could take it off their hands ;)

graemep 28 minutes ago | parent

If its falling apart its not good furniture.

A lot of old furniture is better than all but very expensive new stuff. My kids like my parents' and grandparents' furniture.

freetime2 3 hours ago | parent

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 3 hours ago | parent

...you may be my long lost twin...

OutOfHere 2 hours ago | parent

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.

ToucanLoucan 3 hours ago | parent

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 3 hours ago | parent

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 3 hours ago | parent

Are you sure they even will want it back? Might be better to just donate it all now and save the money.

w0m 3 hours ago | parent

> 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 3 hours ago | parent

Your wife should just pick it up and throw it out then to relieve her mother of the burden.

SubmarineClub 3 hours ago | parent

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.

neutronicus 3 hours ago | parent

They gave away my Charizard ;_;

diskzero 3 hours ago | parent

This must be a generational issue. My kids took “their” things with them when they became autonomous adults. As parents, we raised our children that they would move out and establish their own identities and futures. We never created any expectation that their childhood home would serve as a storage facility, extended stay facility or even exist. We of course offer help and support when needed.

I know this is in conflict with a lot of modern parenting for many reasons. Our primary goal was to create independent, autonomous, fully functional adults capable of funding their own lives and determining their own future.

SubmarineClub 2 hours ago | parent

Kind of hard to take my stuff when I was attending college and then working clear on the other side of the country.

Other than renting a U-Haul and driving 2,800 miles, there weren’t many options. Which I even suggested, to which my parents insisted they were happy to hang on to the stuff until it was easier to do the handover.

>never created any expectation that their childhood home would serve…facility, extended stay facility or even exist.

Sounds like a pretty sad mindset to me. Between me and your kids, I wonder which are happier to visit their parents?

diskzero 2 hours ago | parent

I somewhat expected my post would generate this type of attack and then lead to my parenting style is better than years, my kids are more successful than yours, my kids are happier to visit us than you, ad nauseam.

Parenting is hard and there are multiple approaches that lead to successful outcomes. Your approach worked and I am happy for you. Congratulations on your successful approach.

HildeHolden 1 hour ago | parent

>I know this is in conflict with a lot of modern parenting for many reasons. Our primary goal was to create independent, autonomous, fully functional adults capable of funding their own lives and determining their own future.

This heavily implies that the children of other "modern" parents are dysfunctional adults. As they say "to throw the stone and hide the hand". The funnier thing is that your parenting style is a modern post-WW2 phenomenon.

diskzero 46 minutes ago | parent

There is no implication here. It is clearly stated as "Our primary goal", not your primary goal. You are reading way too much into this.

I agree it is a modern post-WW2 phenomenon, but not sure what is funny about it. Societies and systems constantly change and evolve. This is part of progress, and yes, can also cause setbacks.

My use of the term "conflict" might be what is triggering. Maybe "bucks the trend" or "not in line with" would be better.

Many approaches to parenting are successful. I presented my approach. Others work.

mindslight 20 minutes ago | parent

Honestly telling your kid going off to college (or elsewhere) "you have to take everything from you care about, the rest is going to go away" seems like a good way to stunt their independence. The natural reaction would be to take as much as they can to preserve the context they currently know, which is then going to be a burden preventing them from growing into a new life.

dyauspitr 4 minutes ago | parent

What stuff do you have that is worth keeping that wouldn’t fit in one or two storage totes. I would think anything of sentimental value like pictures, art, trophies, books, paperwork etc would be quite small.

scottLobster 1 hour ago | parent

As a father of 3 kids under 5, we bought our house 2.5 years ago and it has appreciated so much that had we saved every penny for the last 2.5 years we couldn't have afforded it today.

It doesn't matter how high performing your kids are if no good opportunities exist. So while we hope the world will allow our independent, high performance kids to succeed on their own, we're planning on having to provide unique opportunities via resources/connections ourselves to make that happen. Accordingly we're treating our house as something of a family estate, to be held in perpetuity and they can live in as long as it's good for them. It's not about keeping them as forever-children, it's about providing a base with a secure perimeter from which they can marshal their resources. For instance, we're right in the middle of two major metros. So if they land an unpaid/underpaid but prestigious internship in one of them, they won't have to worry about housing.

diskzero 30 minutes ago | parent

A very interesting and valid observation. You and your children are super fortunate and your approach seems like a very good hedge against some serious uncertainty coming up.

We weren’t quite in the same position until much later, and I am somewhat envious of your position. Best of luck!

bluGill 3 hours ago | parent

Probably not - but it isn't his decision, and the kids are not yet in a place in life where they can make the decision.

Until the kids figure out where their life will take them they can't know. I have some heirlooms that I'm really glad to have now, but when I was in college living in dorms I wouldn't have had space for them.

You have no clue what somebody else finds important and will throw the wrong things.

diskzero 3 hours ago | parent

My parents gave me my “crap” back and it went straight into the trash. When my kids moved out, their “crap” went to Goodwill or the trash.

SubmarineClub 3 hours ago | parent

On the other hand, I’m very glad my parents hung on to my stuff until I could take it back. I see no reason to throw it out.

bluGill 3 hours ago | parent

Going to college should not be considered moving out. They have moved out only after they have been done with college for at least a year. Until then they are trying to figure out life. Home is still your house, they are just not living there.

Once they are out of college and on their own though they need to figure out what to do about their stuff.

diskzero 3 hours ago | parent

This is a difference in parenting approaches. For our kids, going to college, or in one case the military and another no college, was moving out. You have your approach, we had ours. They were perfectly capable and successful in figuring out their lives without flying back to the nest every summer.

ethagnawl 3 hours ago | parent

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 3 hours ago | parent

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 2 hours ago | parent

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.

red-iron-pine 24 minutes ago | parent

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 3 hours ago | parent

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 3 hours ago | parent

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 3 hours ago | parent

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 3 hours ago | parent

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 2 hours ago | parent

Are you infinitely wealthy? Storage units are a slow leak on finances, just like uncanceled subscriptions and mobile phone plan features.

neutronicus 54 minutes ago | parent

No, I'm not, and I've also never rented a storage unit.

It seems hard to imagine the sums involved becoming comparable to other amounts of money lit on fire to avoid fights with family though (i.e. home renovation, travel).

diskzero 50 minutes ago | parent

Interesting comparison and one I didn't consider. Thanks for the insight!

vel0city 30 minutes ago | parent

Rebuying decorations every year is also a leak on finances. Rebuying a bunch of camping gear (more than I can comfortably store in my home) is also a leak on finances.

It's far cheaper to use a storage unit for a lot of this stuff I do routinely use than buying and selling a house just to get more storage space at home.

I'm not blind to the fact not everyone just stores junk they never use. I'm certain there's a percentage of stuff in mine that is probably better off sold or trashed. But until we stop changing decorations for the different seasons, stop a number of hobbies with bulky stuff, or move to a giant mansion I just don't have the space and could use a few more square feet of pure storage space.

OutOfHere 2 hours ago | parent

Why assume that disposal is warranted? Sometimes, people actually reuse what they store. Also, it's better to donate than to dispose.

browningstreet 2 hours ago | parent

Sure.. donation is easy, doesn't require a storage unit.

When I've had storage units and spent time there, and saw open doors and what people had in theirs, I stand by my take.

The whole point of the article posted above was that it's a bit weird how numerous and prevalent self-storage has gotten in the US.

nemomarx 34 minutes ago | parent

I'm glad you have free visits to the dump for it. I've never lived anywhere where I wouldn't have to also pay to get my trash hauled away, so it's a big pain with old mattresses or furniture honestly.

ninalanyon 26 minutes ago | parent

> My local town gives you two free visits to the garbage transfer station per year.

Where I live in Norway the recycling station is open three days a week and I can take stuff there free as often as I like up to 2 000 kg of stuff per year.

It has never occurred to me that there would be a limit on the number of visits. Or have I misunderstood?

throw5678 10 minutes ago | parent

US here. where I am: Recycling is free, hazardous waste is open a few days a month (also free), appliances are free, and rubbish is measured by weight (they weigh your vehicle on the way in and out). They pay you to take metal.

bluGill 3 hours ago | parent

You are missing one other issue: it seems easier than it really is. There are only so many people who would use self storage. You see a full self storage place in town and thing you can get a share if you just build one. What you don't understand is demand is not elastic: if you build a second site in town you go from 100 units with 90 used (a good usage rate), do 200 units in town but still only 90 used.

cucumber3732842 2 hours ago | parent

Eventually price crashes far enough below retail that commercial users start filling out a lot of the space because the cost per square foot is lower than their own space.

Like you shove your winter PPE, your emergency stash of spare parts for process equipment, etc, etc, in some self storage lockers and get the same job done using less square footage with extensive compliance burden (or get more job done using same square footage).

dlcarrier 1 hour ago | parent

Demand is outpacing supply, so new supply is serving that unmet demand, not creating it.

gffrd 39 minutes ago | parent

That assumes the market is saturated, and there's nothing you could do to convince a non-customer to become a customer.

jboggan 30 minutes ago | parent

You are missing the biggest benefit of a self storage business - the appreciation of the underlying real estate. When you dig into the financials of the major self storage businesses you'll see they are essentially REITs that have better cashflow. They can pick an up-and-coming area, do a minimal build-out with low annual overhead, and then down the road when the facility would be needing overhauls and maintenance the underlying property has typically appreciated so much that it dwarfs all other associated revenue streams and makes sense to sell and raze the existing structure. Great business model if you have a long enough timeline.

This is also why some startups trying to revolutionize the self storage model had extreme headwinds - if you are renting the underlying properties and trying to make the storage business profitable you are at an extreme disadvantage to the larger players who can subsidize operating costs with portfolio appreciation.

sehugg 3 minutes ago | parent

$80/month that becomes $120/month and then $200/month within a year or two, and they mail you a postcard to tell you about it. I guess that's another nice perk of the business.

pelagicAustral 3 hours ago | parent

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.

bluGill 3 hours ago | parent

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.

milkytron 2 hours ago | parent

There was a solid analysis of these facilities done by Modern MBA. 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.

MisterTea 1 hour ago | parent

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 1 hour ago | parent

    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.

mike_bob 27 minutes ago | parent

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 22 minutes ago | parent

I thought you could buy a used shipping container for like a grand, so that is a ridiculous rental rate.

mike_bob 11 minutes ago | parent

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 9 minutes ago | parent

He could probably find someone to move the stuff for him for a small fee.

mike_bob 3 minutes ago | parent

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.

niwtsol 11 minutes ago | parent

Shipping container costs went up after covid, but still, at their peak you could buy one for ~$5k, $500/month is insane rental price especially if he never moves it.

I looked up prices for 40ft container: pre-covid: Under $2,000, Peak Pandemic (2020-2021): >$8,000; 2022-2024: prices falling, Current: $2,300

toasty228 9 minutes ago | parent

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.