“He who dies with the most toys wins.”
An energetic salesman spoke those words to my wife and I as we wandered around a boat show in The Altamonte Mall in Orlando back in 1986. Within a week we were towing our own boat home from the dealership.
One of two problems with that scenario was that we didn’t own a vehicle suitable for towing a 19-foot boat. Granted, the engine on the boat was a 125-hp outboard, so the total weight of the boat and trailer was not as heavy as if it had been an I/O or an inboard, but a Volkswagen Scirocco was not a long-term solution to towing the boat. We eventually bought a four-wheel-drive Mitsubishi Montero which functioned much better as a towing vehicle.
The other problem was that we lived in an apartment complex that did not have storage space for boats. An odd situation given the number of boats in Orlando and the amount of excess parking at the apartment complex. So we had to rent space from a nearby storage facility that had outdoor parking for boats and RVs.
These storage facilities were a new and interesting concept to my wife and me. We had spent our young lives in central Pennsylvania where, for most people, your basement, garage or backyard was your extra storage. For some folks even the front and side yards got corralled into being storage space. The point is, we had never seen a business whose reason for existence was renting storage space.
Fast forward 40 years later and we now live in Ferguson Township in an area that is fast becoming the storage space capital of Happy Valley. What had been our single nearby storage facility – at Bristol Avenue and Enterprise Drive – has now been joined by one at the southern end of Science Park Road. And another will soon be opening just a bit south on West College Ave. And these three will apparently be followed by another off Gateway Drive that hasn’t started construction yet.
When that last one is finished we will have four storage facilities within a 1-mile drive of our house. Which doesn’t even count the unfenced RV/trailer/boat storage lot on West College where we used to park and store our RV.
All because we – the collective we, all of us – have stuff. Well, and also because stricter zoning laws and code enforcement don’t allow for our yards to become our extra storage as it might have in years past.
But yes, stuff. We’re awash in stuff. So much so that we can’t fit it in the space where we live and will pay rent to someone else to keep it for us.
Remember those early days of adulthood when you could move from one apartment to another and your stuff only filled one, or maybe two, vehicles? Or perhaps you rented, or borrowed, a van because you didn’t want to tie your mattress and box springs to the roof of your car.
Then over time you collected more and more stuff so that moves required a U-Haul truck, then a larger Ryder truck, and finally an 18-wheel trailer along with a crew of moving guys. And you move into a house and every spare inch of space in the basement, garage and even the attic is taken up with boxes, containers and bags full of stuff.
Stuff that we have convinced ourselves we either need or want, and that it will prove useful – or gosh, even valuable – at some point. Right now about three-quarters of our house’s basement is taken up with stuff. We don’t have an attic, and I’ve been pretty good at minimizing the stuff in our garage, but the basement is stocked with furniture, old clothes, files, toys, glassware and even the unnecessarily orphaned garbage can we have thanks to the Centre Region Council of Governments. It’s not as if we can’t create enough excess stuff on our own – now our local elected officials create it for us.
And that excess stuff needs a place, because not everyone has a basement, attic or garage. According to statistics available online, there are over 52,300 storage facilities in the United States with over 2.1 billion square feet of storage space. That’s enough storage space so that every man, woman and child in this country has 6.32 square feet of self-storage space available to them. Meaning a family of four has over 25 square feet of storage space available for their use – a 5’ x 5’ space. Conveniently the smallest size space many storage facilities have available.
Not surprisingly, given our love of stuff, that storage space is being used. As of July 2024, over 85% of the storage space in this country is rented. A percentage that is significantly higher than hotel occupancy rates. According to data from the American Hotel & Lodging Association’s 2025 State of the Industry Report, U.S. hotel occupancy is projected to reach only 63.38% this year.
Which, depending on how you want to parse the numbers, might mean that we actually have fewer storage spaces than we should if storage space occupancy is that high and could be profitable at something closer to hotel occupancy rates. In other words, more storage spaces could be built.
Plus, as the population in this country grows, our love affair with stuff is not likely to decline, so we’ll need more storage places for the additional people to keep their excess stuff. But is this a good thing?
The psychology industry will tell you that getting rid of stuff – physically, mentally and emotionally – is good for you. That “decluttering” has benefits for you.
But, as far as the physical stuff is concerned, you have to physically do the work to get rid of the stuff. And many people will rationalize not doing the work – I don’t know what to do with the stuff, someone may need it, I’m afraid to let it go, I don’t want to add to the landfill, I don’t know where to begin. Add those to the beautiful rationalizing function of storage spaces – out of sight, out of mind – and it means getting rid of your stuff is going to be hard. While simultaneously keeping storage spaces in business.
Anecdotally, we had a “getting rid of stuff” experience many years ago when our daughter was young. We moved 1,000 miles away and ended up living in a condo for six months while finding a new house. During those six months we lived on a very small portion of all our stuff since most of it was packed into a storage space to await its new home – figuratively and literally.
But we found that those six months in the condo were great. We didn’t need all that stuff. In fact, we found we could probably get by with even less stuff than the minimal amount we thought we needed. And I thought this might be a turning point in our family relationship with stuff and we could begin to “live lighter.”
Except I was wrong. 25 years later we have even more stuff. Granted, the reason for that is because we have two kids and we’re keeping all the childhood stuff they want to save until they get places with enough storage space to take it themselves. Or, because our neighborhood is unofficially the storage space capital of Happy Valley, the kids could just store their stuff at one of those places.
Which is why, although I’m not thrilled to be living in “storage central,” I can appreciate the possible benefits it could provide in helping us live lighter with less stuff!
