Have you ever heard the old saying that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure? The concept may seem a little silly or overblown; if something had any real value people wouldn’t throw it away, right? When it comes to the people in the self storage industry, other people’s proverbial trash can become ‘treasure.’
If there is one thing that eventually becomes an issue for people around the world it is clutter. It doesn’t matter who you are or where you live; at some point in time everyone feels like their living space is getting cluttered. It may be because you simply have too much stuff or maybe you’ve had to move into a smaller home. Either way, clutter is clutter and it has to go.
“Clutterers are driven by fear. They are afraid of throwing anything away because they fear they will make a mistake,” Mike Nelson, a clutter expert and author of Stop Clutter From Stealing Your Life, said. “They think losing something would be the end of the world. But it is not.”
That is where the self storage industry is more than happy to step in. Clutter is essentially created because people run out of space for any number of reasons. According to a study by the Self Storage Association in 2007, 50 percent of respondents said that a lack of space was why they were renting a self storage unit.
“Self storage places are filling a need,” Nelson says.
The self storage industry is more prevalent in the United States than any other country in the world. With 46,500 primary self storage facilities in the country there is enough storage space for every person to have their own 7.7 square foot area. While that may not work for the self storage industry in any other country, people elsewhere need more space just as much as Americans do.
With Chinese New Year fast approaching self storage companies in Singapore are seeing an increase in rentals as well as people looking for packing supplies as they finish up their spring cleaning. One self storage company says that the need to clean up small living spaces accounts for 10-15 percent of the new tenants they get leading up to Chinese New Year.
"People need to store away more things during their annual spring cleaning to create more space," said Ms Helen Ng, chief executive of Lock + Store.
Sources used:
“Organization Experts Weigh in on Self Storage, Clutter.” SSA Globe; January 2012.
“More get expert help with spring cleaning.” AsiaOne; 11 January 2012.