There are signs that the industry is cooling down, but we still all have so much stuff.
Self-storage is relatively new to Britain, but since it was introduced in 1977 it has grown dramatically. Daniel Cohen writes about it in the Financial Times: “We deal with the three most stressful things: moving, death and divorce,” says Susie Fabre, who runs A&A; Storage, an independent firm in north London. Cohen describes how people have less space than they used to:
I noted earlier this year that I had finally emptied and got rid of my storage locker in Toronto with the help of the Furniture Bank. I wrote at the time that the industry is huge, but the explosive growth of the industry may well be coming to an end. As one operator notes in the Times, “If we look at a site, it could well be one that a discount food retailer is looking at, car showrooms, budget hotels, student housing.”
The industry is having similar issues in the USA, where it was invented; it is finally slowing down. I would have thought that it would be booming, thanks to the older baby boomers downsizing and the younger ones storing their parents’ stuff, but no, the millennials are screwing things up again. According to Peter Grant in the Wall Street Journal,
Patrick Sissons writes in Curbed that storage facilities are also meeting opposition from cities. Storage buildings are great when there is a lot of empty buildings and land sitting around, but in hot economies, there might be better uses like commercial or industrial that create jobs instead of just storing boxes.
So have we reached Peak Storage?
The late George Carlin once defined a house as “just a place to keep your stuff while you go out and get more stuff.” And once the house is full, we fill the storage locker with stuff. We loved Marie Kondo’s question about stuff: “Does it spark joy?” If the answer is no, get rid of it. And now even she is selling boxes to store stuff in.
Storage may get more expensive and less convenient, but until we reach peak stuff, I find it hard to believe that we will hit peak storage.
And here’s George Carlin on Stuff:
