Very simple explanation, living space for people has shrunk. Hard to store your holiday items or old equipment in the basement of your house, if you can't afford a house in the first place.
In 1950 the average home was 1,000 square feet and housed 3-4 people. Today the average home is 2,500 square feet and houses 2-3 people. Meanwhile, average apartment size is on the decline.
>Meanwhile, average apartment size is on the decline.
The number of new builds in NYC with 10x15 living/dining/kitchen (kitchens are always just walls in new builds here) is really disheartening when they're still all charging $2500+/mo.
That's exactly where I'm at. I downsized to a much smaller house, and I keep a lot of my uncommonly used and seasonal equipment in there. I'll be swapping out my snowblower for my lawnmower and grill pretty soon. I pay an extra monthly fee for the storage unit, of course, and it's not very convenient to have to drive a few miles to reach it... but my overall living expenses have been so dramatically reduced by living in a much smaller house, that it's an obvious win.
This article's headline is weirdly condescending; the "personal junk" I own are things I value, and the self storage industry has provided an efficient way for me to store it without having to own a gigantic house or a shed.
I don't really understand this though. You say you're in a house so I would assume you have a yard? Why wouldn't you just build (or buy) a small shed in the back. Storage units aren't usually much bigger than a normal sized shed and would fit things like grills, bikes, and snow blowers perfectly fine.
There's definitely an element of this. My grandmother's basement was full of junk (in a very real sense - growing up in the War she could never throw away a jam jar or bottle). Now I don't know anyone with a basement, even a spare bedroom is luxury in London.
Storage units are also quite nice if you are renting and want to be able to move every 1-3 years for the variety of reasons people do so. Keeping the bulk of your low frequency of use items in storage both reduces what you need from an apartment, and keeps you from needing to move all that crap with the rest of your stuff. You pack your clothes, throw your sofa, bed and TV in the back of a friend's truck, and you're done before lunch.
Is it just Americans who got large houses while land is/was cheap-ish? I remember having to go on a work trip and staying overnight with a coworker in Reading, UK to make a morning train and was amazed at how small their house was for a family of four (and they said it was typical for Europeans) compared to how large the house I had back in Austin where I just bought something in a nice neighborhood and would have had to been an early adopter in the not so nice part of town to get a house as small as the UK one.
