Storing up Treasures
"Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.” – Matthew 6:19 Actually, most people do store up their treasures on Earth, so much so in fact, that quite a few people are filling up their own treasure chests by renting out storage space. Self-Storage is an industry in which storage space is rented out to tenants, usually on a monthly basis. The storage space is usually in the form of a room, container or locker. Access to the space is usually secured by the tenant’s own lock and key. Clients include individuals, who usually store household goods, as well as businesses, which use the facilities for storing inventory or archives. As of 2009, there was approximately 2.3 billion square feet of rentable storage space in the US. The first modern self-storage facilities appeared in the US in the 1960s. The self-storage business was meant to provide individuals with space to deal with “life events”: moving, marriage, divorce etc. American workers have always been quite mobile, and the end of the 20th century, with its increasing divorce rates, and rush of transitions to 2nd or 3rd homes, saw a significant increase in the number of life events. However, by the end of the 1990s, demand was growing at a faster rate than explained by these factors. From 2000 to 2005, the number of self-storage facilities almost doubled, with 3000 new facilities built each year. Since the 1990s, demand was increasingly driven by the accumulation of goods, fuelled in part by increasing real disposable income. Individuals accumulated durables that did not rot or rust, and contrary to the mainstream economic assumption of “free disposal”, they preferred to pay to store the things they did not need, rather than throwing them away. Storing things “temporarily” was considered thrifty. Once stored, a sort of