The American Religion of Self-Storage Facilities

By David Owen

During the summer of 2019, shortly before the global pandemic halted normal life, I embarked on a journey from my home in Connecticut to my childhood home in Kansas City, and then back again. I deliberately avoided the efficiency of the interstate, opting instead for a slow, winding path.

🚗 The Scenic Route

My travels were a mosaic of American eccentricities. I encountered:

• A restaurant in upstate New York serving a full Thanksgiving feast $\text{365 days a year}$.
• A grassy park featuring a century-old, walk-over relief map of the Holy Land, complete with a puddle for the Dead Sea.
• A surreal juxtaposition of billboards preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ situated near massive sex-toy emporiums.
• The birthplace of Zane Grey—a man who was not only a Western novelist but also a dentist and a minor-league ballplayer, whose given name was Zane Pearl.

Spending those solitary hours in my car led me to a realization about the cultural fabric of the United States. I concluded that the two primary pillars supporting American society are the church and the self-storage unit.

The Industry of Excess

At its core, a self-storage facility is a commercial venture that leases lockable rooms to individuals who possess more belongings than their living spaces can accommodate. The scale of this problem is immense; for instance, a 2022 study by Stanley Black Decker's Craftsman division revealed that $\approx 33\%$ of residential garages are so packed with overflow that they can no longer function as parking spaces.

Growth and Scale

According to Patrick Lemp, an industry broker, the sector began in the 1970s as a collection of "mom-and-pop" shops before evolving into a sophisticated institutional-quality asset class.

Global Dominance: The U.S. is the undisputed leader in this field, controlling roughly $90\%$ of the world's total storage capacity.

The sheer ubiquity of these facilities is staggering. Based on data from Neighbor (a marketplace akin to Airbnb for storage), there are more self-storage sites in America than the combined total of:

• Starbucks
• McDonald’s
• Walmart
• Home Depot
• Domino’s
• Dunkin’
• Costco

The Psychology of the "D's"

Industry professionals categorize the demand for storage through the "Four D's"—life crises where the volume of one's possessions suddenly clashes with the reality of one's space:

• Death
• Displacement
• Divorce
• Downsizing

Case Study: The Neuroscientist

I know a former neuroscientist and technologist who moved from the suburbs to a Manhattan apartment. Fearing he might one day return to suburban life, he rented a $20 \times 40$ foot unit in Queens. He stored several instruments there: [Synthesizer, Piano, Hammond Organ]

Eventually, he donated the instruments. Once the physical clutter was gone, he discovered other forgotten items, leading to a second round of downsizing.

The Fifth "D": Delusion

I would argue there is a fifth driver: Delusion. This is the belief that your children actually want the heirlooms you intend to leave them—specifically the heavy, dated furniture that younger generations dismissively call "brown."

"My wife and I experienced this firsthand during our own move to a smaller home."

We utilized a Pods portable unit, costing roughly \150$ per month plus logistics fees. Our intent was to fill it with redundant furniture and ship it to our daughter. However, she was so uninterested in our belongings that we struggled to fill the container. She only wanted two pieces:

1. An Eames chair (from my father).
2. A mid-century Danish desk (from my wife's parents).

I would have kept both, but I was so relieved she wanted anything that I let them go gladly.

The Modern Monument

If we look at the global history of architecture—from the Pyramids of Giza to the Byzantine churches—America's most distinct contribution to the built environment is the corporate fulfillment center. These massive structures are unmistakable from the air due to their sheer scale.