*** Central air conditioning and heat. Electronic security gates. Well lit areas. 24-hour video recordings. ***
The typical ad for self-storage promises better living conditions than those enjoyed by most of the world’s human population.
Suburbs of stuff are everywhere. You can hardly drive a mile in most cities without seeing their brightly colored rooftops.
Even though the average square footage of American homes has more than doubled since the 1950s, we, the people who own more than we can use, still have to rent apartments for our shit.
We’re simply out of room. Out of room for grandma’s dresser, junior’s nightstand, Uncle Johnny’s faux wood paneled floor speakers. And especially, out of room for reason.
The savings fallacy
Most people (that I know) who cosign their material possessions’ rent check are people who think that it’s cheaper to keep their shhhhtuff in storage than “waste it.” Put objectively, they’d rather waste their money than their stuff.
Landlords of stuff are happy to oblige the misguided judgement of the chronically possessive. $20 billion dollars a year happy.
A flat for your furniture can easily run $100 per month or more. That’s $1,200+ a year to you and me. Is the crap that no longer belongs in your home but will look great in Billy’s college apartment in five years worth $6,000? I sure as hell hope so. Because that’s what you’re paying for the privilege of pack-ratting it.
Nutty idea: Donate that dust-coated assemblage of particle board and staples. Take the tax deduction. Buy something that actually fits Billy’s apartment in five years. And put that $6,000 toward his tuition. You’ll need it.
Evict
Before you tacitly enter a long-term contract to subsidize the sedentary lifestyle of your inanimate dependents, question whether they’re really worth the cost. I think you know the answer.
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
Have you got what Freudians once called an unresolved anal complex? Terms like “our shit” and “the crap” really have no place in any adult discussion about what we pay to store and whether it makes good economic sense to do so. It makes your writing sound like the talk in a junior high boy’s restroom.
You can write well when you choose to do so. Why not make your entire article sound more like the last paragraph.
I’ll give myself the benefit of the doubt and just say it’s symbolic of the material possession constipation problem I was trying to address. Writing about it makes me feel (strangely) better. Sorry if you stepped in the excrement left by my process. :)
Have to disagree at least for the short term, by which I mean less than one year.
We have three daughters, all of whom have moved in and out of the house not once but several times. We have recycled furniture from several times in our collective lives, and each sibling has benefitted from it.
When my mother-in-law died this past November, my middle daughter, one who by the tender age of twenty three has already stood on the Great Wall and is even now trekking to see one of three volcanoes in Costa Rica, decided that she wanted Grandma’s furniture to live on. She stored it (the digs we pay for now cost only $60 per month, thank you very much) temporarily, then brought select pieces home and refinished them herself. She will take them with her when she moves out, again, at the end of this month. The pieces are beautiful, and without that extra storage for a month or two, we might have been tempted to call the Salvation Army and say to heck with it all.
I think that by the end of the summer I will electronically debit my last sixty bucks to the storage guy, at least until my two year old granddaughter needs to store something until she can move in to her first apartment while going to college. Then, I’ll gladly pay whatever I need to so that we can recycle more stuff, some of it loaded with memories and stories that are, in a word-priceless.
Greg
I nodded all the way through this gem. The only thing you forgot to mention is “Hoarders”, the astonishing reality program on A&E.
I nodded all the way through this post. The only thing missing is a mention of “Hoarders”, the astonishing reality program on A&E.
While I understand where Greg is coming from, for the vast majority of folks the way Eddie sees it is more apt. I’ve seen into my neighbors garages, have you? I shudder just thinking about one in particular…
After moving abroad and back again I’ve learned the appeal to a more minimalist approach to STUFF (yeah, I tend to capitalize it). Keeps me feeling much lighter, both physically and mentally.
This is an interesting perspective.
However, I think some of the facts you present may not really mean anything. Simply saying that house sizes have increased over the last 60 years doesn’t mean that those are the same people who use storage units. Maybe it’s just because I live in a college town, but I don’t know anyone to whom your criticism would actually apply.
Especially at time when millions of people are being foreclosed on, I suspect there is a large wave of people who have move their things into a storage unit. This make economic sense as long as they keep them there no long than the sum of the rent they pay does not exceed the value of their things being stored. At that point they would simply sell their things and quit renting storage.
Storage also has very obvious positive effects such as reducing energy waste that would otherwise be involved in moving them about several times. I can’t say anything about those who use air conditioned units. That would probably go the opposite direction.