BBC blog examines the self storage phenomenon

A recent blog on the BBC website by Tom de Castella and Kate Dailey drew attention to the growth of self storage, part of the increasing tide of coverage the industry has received recently in the mainstream media.

Longer than ever before

The article particularly drew attention to new statistics from the Self Storage Association (SSA) which suggest that the average amount of time people keep their belongings in self storage has increased to 38 weeks, up from 22 weeks in 2007.

This has obvious cost implications for the customer, as renting just 100 sq ft at one of the big London self storage facilities could easily be costing them £50 per week. Much of this increase may be down to peoples’ well-documented ambivalence about how long they spend in self storage, with many customers adopting an “out of sight, out of mind” mentality towards their belongings.

Indeed, as professional organizer Gary Cooke says in the article, “More and more stuff comes in and it’s not going out. I want to say it’s a throwout society, but it’s not the case because people are keeping their things around.”

Continuing in this vein, the article argues that the acquisitive attitudes prevalent in modern society are the root cause of our growing need for self storage, while the popularity of minimalist interior decoration makes people want to store things outside the home.

However, the authors think the growth of self storage is a trend we need to be wary of. “It’s a worry for society. People are using valuable land in prime areas of overcrowded cities like New York and London to build these warehouses, spending money on renting the units and in the process accumulating more and more stuff.”

This overlooks the fact that most self storage centres in Britain are found on the edge of towns, often in converted warehouses on industrial estates; areas which are specifically intended for this kind of land-use. In addition, the availability of self storage space hardly encourages people to hold on to more and more stuff on its own – most family homes contain at least one designated “junk room” as it is, often the cellar or attic, a habit which long predated the arrival of self storage in this country.

The psychology of self storage

The article also attempts to explain the psychological reasons why someone might want to keep things in self storage even when it doesn’t make financial sense.

They quote Brian Knutson, an associate professor of Psychology at Stanford University, who argues that people are motivated to hold onto their useless possessions by the “endowment effect” – the idea that owning something makes us think it’s worth more than its real market value. Many people hold onto things in self storage because they have a sentimental value that cannot be quantified in pounds and pence, lending some weight to this theory.

On the other hand, there is also the idea advanced by Oliver James, author of a book called Affluenza, that consumer capitalism has made us associate our self-worth with the value and quality of what we can buy. “We’ve confused who we are with what we have,” as he puts in the article.

Maybe. Then again, it might not be that complicated. As the authors of the article conclude, people may just keep things in self storage because they can’t be bothered to sort through them and throw stuff out.

One Response to “BBC blog examines the self storage phenomenon”

1. Self Storage Milton Keynes says:

   October 20, 2011 at 10:47 am

   I guess we live in a culture where we don’t want to throw anything out. If it can be stored elsewhere then why throw it out. There are practical uses of self storage too though. As a temporary measure while people are moving , perhaps into bigger premises, they can store their possessions and also many businesses are using them for archiving purposes.