Storage Fees

Gary North

I am in the process of moving decades of accumulated stuff out of three barns and into rented storage. It is a grim business.

It costs a lot of money to store stuff: 45 cents per square foot per month. No wonder the mini-warehouse industry is huge and growing. It is profitable. We are a nation of pack rats.

The idea of paying good money to store stuff that we know we will probably never use again does not make much sense. We store piles of stuff because individually, each item had meaning in a different, long gone setting. We think we are storing memories, yet all we want to do is get it out of our sight. We bury our memories in stacked-up piles!

Now that I am facing reality, I have come to a principle of mini-storage: "If my children will toss it out after I die, I should toss it out before I die."

Now, can my wife and I bring ourselves to put this principle into practice? We'll see. Meanwhile, we'll pay.