The high price of too much stuff

By MP Dunleavey

Storage scares me.

On the one hand, it's a normal part of life: You move, you get divorced, your fortunes change; you need a place to park your stuff.

But the mammoth expansion of the self-storage industry in recent years reflects something disturbing about the way Americans acquire stuff and then cling to it: how much we buy, what we save, what we think we need.

Consider this: The self-storage industry grew from about 289 million square feet in 1984 to nearly 2.2 billion square feet by the end of 2007, according to the Self Storage Association.

And it probably wouldn't surprise you that the spike in storage happened to coincide with one of the most profligate, credit-crazy times in America.

It's not that people shouldn't pay for storage if they need it. But these uneasy economic times demand a long, hard look behind those corrugated doors: Can we afford the storage lifestyle?

Why we store

Guy Denos disagrees with my take on storage. "It's not about overindulgence," he says.

• Talk back: Do you struggle with too much stuff?

Denos is the president Denos Communications, which owns and runs I Need Storage, a Web site that lists and tracks most storage facilities in California and in some of the major cities elsewhere in America.

"It's not like people buy a new living room set and put the old one in storage, or they use storage to put their spare china." Denos laughs at the idea.

What do people put in storage? "People store stuff that means a lot to them," he says. "It wouldn't mean a whole lot to you or me."

Such as:

• Old tax returns.

• Newspapers.

• Collectibles.

• Their children's old toys.

• Their parents' old belongings.

Numbers don't lie

Denos would know. He has been in the storage business for 20 years, and he has seen the junk. The other company he owns is California Storage Auctions, which auctions off the contents of abandoned storage units.

But even though I see Denos' point and respect his expertise, there is no hiding from the numbers:

• It took 25 years for the industry to build its first billion square feet of storage space. The second billion square feet was added in just seven years, from 1998 to 2005, according to the Self Storage Association.

• The average American home has grown from 1,400 square feet in 1970 to 2,300 square feet today, but the average size of the household has shrunk from 3.1 to 2.5.

• In 1995, one in 17 American households rented storage space. By 2007, that ratio had increased to one in 10, according to the Self Storage Association.

I'm sorry, that's not just tax returns and Sally's Cabbage Patch Kids collection. It's a symptom of a society that went on a credit-fueled shopping spree and didn't know how to stop.

Five years ago, the total amount of revolving debt -- mainly credit card debt -- that Americans owed was $800 billion. Today, according to the June credit report released by the Federal Reserve, it's nearly $1 trillion, even as millions of us regularly plundered home equity to pay off plastic.

Though home-equity borrowing has slowed (no kidding), the party raged for a long time: In 1995, Americans borrowed about $11 billion in home-equity loans; by 2005, we'd borrowed $243 billion worth of equity.

Facing financial reality

Now the piper is playing a very different tune. Many of us are facing up to the excesses of the past decade and wondering how to cope.

You might think that the escalating rate of foreclosures would cause another spike in the demand for storage, but it's not clear that it has.

Denos says he has not seen an increased demand, even in California, which has been particularly hard hit by foreclosures. Nor does he expect one. "If people can't pay their bills, they aren't going to be able to pay for storage," he says.

Todd Whear, who manages a Stor-All facility in Nevada -- another state with high foreclosure levels -- says he has been surprised to see a slight dip in storage occupancy. "People are pinching pennies," he says.

The lust for stuff

I am not assailing the storage industry, which provides a useful function (I have relied upon it myself in the past).

Nor am I criticizing people who may have over-shopped or overspent, or who simply don't know what to do with a lifetime of belongings. Or stuff from another person's lifetime.

Continued: Nationwide consumption disorder

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