A self-storage facility rents lockable space to people with too much stuff. A 2022 survey found over a third of garages too full to park cars. The industry took off in the seventies with mom-and-pop operations, later becoming institutional. The U.S. has about ninety per cent of global capacity. Texas has the most facilities, Hawaii the fewest. New York ranks third among cities, after Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston. Reno, Nevada, serves Burning Man attendees; Wichita, Kansas, was once Self-Storage Capital. Units range from closet-size to house-sized. Chains include Public Storage, Extra Space Storage, and Cube Smart.

According to the co-founder and C.E.O. of Neighbor, there are more self-storage facilities in the U.S. than Starbucks, McDonald’s, Walmart, Home Depot, Domino’s, Dunkin’, and Costco combined. Annual revenues exceed forty billion dollars. The market is driven by “the four D’s”: death, displacement, divorce, and downsizing.

Paul Roossin, an A.I. technologist, rented a twenty-by-forty-foot space in Queens for a synthesizer, piano, and Hammond organ, later donating them. There’s a fifth D: the delusion your children want your “brown” furniture. My wife and I rented a Pods unit for about a hundred and fifty dollars a month, planning to send redundant items to our daughter. She wanted only an Eames chair and a mid-century Danish desk.