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The American Religion of Self-Storage Facilities

282 points · 456 comments · pseudolus

  1. rootbear · · focus · HN ↗
    I'm in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC, and self storage facilities are popping up around here like weeds. I have a storage unit and I'm trying to clear it out. I'm tired of the monthly fees that keep going up. I got it when I had to clear out my late sister's house and I wanted time to go through things and decide what to keep. When I moved last year, I got a larger unit, thinking I would need to declutter my townhouse prior to showing it. It turned out my agent wasn't that concerned about my clutter, but I did move some idle tech stuff into the unit. I was hoping to get a house with a big basement for my future tech hoarding needs, and I wanted to keep this stuff. As it turned out, I ended up in a rancher with no basement, so now I'm getting rid of old tech I'll never have space for. I'd have saved a lot of money if I'd just done that a year ago. I now have a much smaller unit that I hope to be rid of next year. Self storage units are definitely a mixed blessing.

    I also have all of the family antique furniture, some of which goes back three or more generations. I have no heirs and no idea what I'll do with it all, but I don't want to leave it for my executor to deal with. At least it's in the house and not in an expensive storage unit.

    1. nkrisc · · focus · HN ↗
      I’m closer to Annapolis annd Ft. Meade and we have two huge self-storage facilities that just opened up within a month less than a mile from each other.

      There’s lots of military folks around here so maybe people are more likely around here to store stuff for a few years if they get deployed somewhere else and plan to move the family back after? I dunno.

      I’ve used self-storage twice in my life: once in college over the summer before moving into a new apartment the next school year and once when we had our first child about a year before moving to a new city and larger house, which let us make room for baby stuff while keeping things we’d use when we had more space.

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