KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The closets are packed. The two- and three-car garages, jammed. The attics, brimming.
Now what to do with the rest of the stuff that just won’t fit? One hyphenated word: self-storage.
Self-storage facilities are popping up everywhere, and they aren’t stuck in industrial areas or down by the railroad tracks. They’re close to where people live. They have nice paint jobs; some have fancy facades.
This supply of storage units is in response to demand. People are experiencing object overload. Even people who are downsizing — trading in a big house for a smaller one — can’t seem to let go of things. Better to rent a storage unit, just in case.
“At the end of the day, Americans just love their stuff,” said Cris Burnam, president of Storage Mart, which is based in Columbia, Mo., and has eight locations in the Kansas City area.
They not only love their stuff, but also want it cared for and close by. That means the tin storage sheds with the orange doors of yesteryear are giving way to neighborhood facilities that are climate-controlled and guarded by video cameras and managers who live on the premises.
Jim and Patricia Wight moved from a large ranch house to a small Brookside Tudor a couple of years ago. They found after 24 years they had accomplished a lot of accumulating.
“Expenses rise to meet income,” Jim Wight said, “and stuff rises to meet space.”
Their smaller home couldn’t absorb the impact, so the Wights rented a unit at the Storage Mart in Waldo, Mo. There they keep extra furniture, out-of-season clothes, Christmas decorations and other stuff that’s “too good to throw away or has sentimental value.”
People still need storage for all the usual reasons, of course, many of which coincide with life’s transitions, including changing houses, a death in the family and divorce.
Nationally, the number of self-storage facilities grew from 22,000 a decade ago to 35,000.
“We’re a need-driven business,” Burnam said. “I can’t instill in someone a burning desire to get a storage facility.”
Apparently plenty of people are feeling the need, enough to pay about $50 a month for a 5-by-5 unit or $175 a month for a unit about as big as two-car garage.
“We’re all good consumers,” Burnam said.
