Each day, 70,000 puppies and kittens are born. Each year, eight million dogs and cats enter animal shelters in the United States. Approximately 64% of them end up being euthanized because the shelters are over crowded and lack funding to cover their food and vaccinations. They are also put down because the animals cannot be placed in permanent homes. [More]

An apprentice is a beginning ‘student’ in a trade or a craft. The apprentice learns all that he can. When he completes his apprenticeship level, he becomes a journeyman and is fully educated and qualified to work in that trade or craft.

Kevin Rollings has 25 years experience in the self storage industry. He is well beyond the apprentice and the journeyman level. In fact, he has earned his Certified Self Storage Manager with the Self Storage Association of which he is a member. He now holds Master Classes where he shares his wisdom and experience with investors, owners, and managers who want to learn how to invest and turn a profit in the self storage market. [More]

bSome days in the news, the self storage industry is quiet. Not much happens. Other days, it’s a flurry of activities. Today, it’s a flurry.

Changes are coming to the small town of Busti, New York. Busti is on the south end of Chautauqua Lake. It has a population of 7,000. Their town board held a public hearing on the Joe Casel’s proposal to add self storage units to his business. He owns Casel Auto Wrecking and seeks a special-use permit. He wants to transform his salvage yard into a self storage facility. He already has one facility that has 25 units. He seeks to build two more buildings. [More]

An Indiana businessman who purchased a storage unit seven years ago has decided to gather together all of the significant belongings of the first female U.S. Marine to die in the line of duty during the Afghanistan war and return them to her family. [More]

The personal effects of the first U.S. servicewoman killed in Afghanistan are in the hands of someone who only means to make money off of them after finding them in a storage unit he purchased. [More]

Like homebuyers, many renters are having to downsize, putting more things in storage to make it possible to live in a smaller space, as housing prices become less affordable. Putting some things in storage makes downsizing a little bit easier by increasing the amount of space in a home available for use and decreasing the percentage of home space that is used for storage. While some renters use storage permanently as a way of decreasing the amount of living space that they need to pay for every month, others use it temporarily, while they transition to another home or to hold items that they are selling on eBay or Craig’s List. [More]

The self storage industry is continuing to expand this spring with a wave of new facilities opening up across the country, particularly in the South.

In Georgia, a private investor has purchased the four-year-old East Ellijay facility of American Storage. The facility has about 35,000 square feet of rentable space, divided into 248 units, some of which are climate-controlled. The property also features a truck rental service and has several security features, including digital entry, perimeter fencing, and security cameras. The sale was brokered by Dale Eisenman, the president of Midcoast Properties Inc. [More]

For several years now, county commissioners from Tippecanoe County, Indiana, have been trying to find indoor storage for the Tippecanoe County Emergency Management Agency (TEMA) vehicles. Currently, TEMA has more than $5 million worth of emergency equipment stored in five different locations, several of which are outdoors. Now two members of the Tippecanoe County Council have proposed using a 4-H Fairgrounds barn as a storage location. But County Commissioner David Byers told the Lafayette Journal & Courier that commissioners are considering several possibilities. [More]

The Valparaiso, Indiana String-a-Long Quilters have been working with the Porter County Museum to clean and archive the museum’s collection of historic quilts for storage. This weekend, they put the collection on display, featuring, as well, 18 quilts made by String-a-Longer Pat Atwell.

The String-a-Long Quilters have about 75 members, ranging in age from 12 years old to 90, according to guild president Joan Crookston, who spoke at the beginning of the quilt show at the Porter County Expo Center (Bartholomew, Charles. “Quilting show continues today at Expo Center.” Post-Tribune. March 28, 2010). The guild was formed for the purpose of promoting the art of quilting and the preservation of antique quilts. Hundreds of quilt lovers turned out to see the more than 250 quilts displayed in the Expo Center on Saturday and Sunday. Some of the quilts were just finished last week, while others were more than 100 years old, including a quilt that had a souvenir ribbon from William Jennings Bryan’s 1909 Valparaiso speech stitched into it. (Bryan was nominated and ran for president three times.) [More]

The County Commissioners for Tippecanoe County, Indiana, have grown concerned about the county's Emergency Management vehicles. Tippecanoe County Commissioner David Byers says that the county's emergency equipment is currently stored in five different locations, some of which do not even have covered garages. Some of the emergency equipment is currently in a warehouse next to the county jail, while other items have been left in uncovered outdoor trailers. Tippecanoe County has more than $5 million in equipment scattered in different locations. The County Commissioners would like to find one central location at which to store the vehicles.

"Let's take the Sheriff's Department, for example," explained Byers. "Probably a half to a third of their garage is full of TEMA equipment. By us moving the equipment out that allows them more space to get their cars inside. You take the building out there at the Wildcat Creek facility that's full of TEMA equipment, you move that out, that gives Community Corrections a chance to move their equipment in there, so that opens up space," he said. [More]