Shuttering The Storage Unit

While thousands of families are foreclosing on homes and shoving their contents into storage, occupancies in the nation’s 2.3 billion square feet of self storage facilities are down. Not by much, but enough to put the brakes on an industry that’s been developing at full tilt for the past 20 years. The proliferation of self storage parallels a rise in disposable income.

Consider that American families in the early 1990s had, on average, twice as many possessions as they did 25 years earlier. The down economy means that people are buying and storing less stuff. Some are cutting costs by rolling up the doors of their storage units and clearing out the forgotten ikea chairs, toaster ovens, and holiday decorations. Many can’t afford the fees and abandon their stuff to be auctioned off.

Jon Mooallem wrote about the growth of the self-storage industry and the consequences of extreme consumption for the New York Times Magazine. Jon is contributing writer for the magazine, and he joins us now to talk about The Self Storage Self.

New York Times Magazine: The Self-Storage Self

(Photo by K2D2vaca via Flickr/Creative Commons)