According to the Self Storage Industry Fact Sheet, nearly 10% of US households rented a storage space in 2007. Between 1984 and 2007 alone, "rentable self-storage square footage" increased by 740%, or 1.9 billion square feet.
I can believe this. Growing up, I didn't know anyone who kept a storage unit. People (sometimes) got storage units when they moved; that's it. Whatever didn't fit in the basement, attic, garage, shed, cellar, or carport got thrown out or people had a garage sale.
As I grew older, the percentage of people I knew who had storage units grew, let's see, probably by 740%. I myself jumped on the storage unit bandwagon. The first time we kept the storage unit for a year; the second time, when we moved to our condo, we kept the unit two years. The entire time we had it, I worried: what if our stuff got damp? What if it got ruined? Was it even covered by our homeowner's insurance? And even if it was, what about all the stuff that had little or no material value, but meant something to me anyway--meant enough to pay $50 a month to store. And what was that stuff, anyway? Did I even know? Or was I, in essence, paying money to store junk?
I thought it might take a year to go through the storage unit; it took two. In a double-whammy of miscalculation, I'd over-estimated the space we had in the condo and under-estimated the sheer amount of stuff that we had.
When we finally did get rid of the storage unit, it was a huge relief. Not only did we save money--to the tune of $600 a year--but having all of our stuff in one space saved time and perhaps most importantly, peace of mind. Unlike with the storage unit, the stuff in the condo was readily accessible, at least in theory. And I didn't have to worry about anything being damp or otherwise getting ruined from being inadequately sheltered.
Over the next several years, as I continued to de-clutter, I just kept telling myself: it can only get better. No matter how tempting it might have been at various points to get a small storage unit to absorb some of the great Burden 'O Clutter, I'm glad we didn't. I think it would have slowed us down in terms of dealing with our stuff, in essence putting off the necessary and the inevitable. Because in one way or another, each of us has to deal with our stuff. I just wish I'd started before I spent over a thousand dollars to avoid doing so.