What to do with all our stuff?

There are approximately 58,000 self-storage facilities worldwide. The United States has 52,000 of them, which equals 2.35 billion square feet of personal self-storage.

Contrast this with 22 million rentable square feet in 1,000 Australian facilities and 20 million rentable square feet in the 600 facilities in the United Kingdom.

The Self Storage Association reports that it took the self-storage industry more than 25 years to build its first billion square feet of space, and it added the second billion square feet in just eight years (1998-2005).

“It is physically possible that every American could stand — all at the same time — under the total canopy of self-storage roofing. During the peak development years (2004-2005) 8,694 new self-storage facilities — approximately 480 million square feet of space — were added,� the association reports.

This translates into a lot of old exercise equipment, furniture and other junk locked in metal containers. The self-storage industry now exceeds the revenues of Hollywood. One in eight American households has self-storage space — an increase of 75 percent since 1995. There was a 24 percent spike in the number of self-storage units on the market in 2004.

One obvious factor that explains the increase in this “save-our-stuff� phenomenon is American consumerism. No country in the world spends as much on consumer goods. As a Morgan Stanley report states: “Between 1996 to 2004, annual growth in U.S. personal consumption expenditures averaged 3.9 percent — nearly double the 2.2 percent pace recorded elsewhere in the so-called advanced world.�

As consumption has increased, so has the average size of the American house. The National Association of Homebuilders reports that the average American house went from 1,660 square feet in 1973 to 2,400 square feet in 2004.

Let’s review: Houses are bigger, family size is smaller, but we still need a billion-plus square feet to store our stuff.

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The first self-storage facilities originated in Texas in the late 1960s. Then, as now, they were prefab metal garages, usually situated on the industrial periphery of cities and suburbs and built among drive-in theaters and other occupiers of low-cost real estate. (Here in Winsted, Selectman Berlinski recently got planning and zoning approval to put a self-storage facility in one of the so-called industrial districts that is actually a residential neighborhood on the road to Highland Lake!)

Self-storage facilities have an image problem. Compared to their size and infrastructural requirements, self-storage facilities bring few jobs or sales-tax benefits to towns. They tend to be unattractive structures, and the transitory nature of their “product� seems to attract people doing something they don’t want to be caught doing at home.

Found in self-storage units: a corpse (more than once); lye, ammonia and the other ingredients of a meth lab; two girls, age 4 and 5, playing inside a unit in which they, along with their mother, had made their residence; the cameras and photographs of a child pornographer; and the “office� of a self-proclaimed gynecologist who had no medical degree. Both Timothy McVeigh and Ramsi Yousef stored chemicals in self-storage units.

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Even when the stored stuff is normal stuff, a certain sadness surrounds it: stuff we can’t live with, or without. This stuff exemplifies the dark side of acquisition, the moment when you realize there are more bread machines, plastic lawn chairs and old clothes than anyone could use in a lifetime. The Onion labeled one fictional self-storage facility a “Museum of Personal Failure.�

In Topeka, Kan., the “coolest new building� in town, according to one critic, is Flex Storage Systems, a well-lit, wood-accented structure made to attract upscale consumers. Its location demonstrates the gamut of American consumerism: near a “glorified junkyard called Joyland�; across from an “abandoned K-Mart�; and near “Fresh Start Auto Credit: Second Chance Finance.�

Charlene LaVoie is the community lawyer in Winsted. Her office is funded by the Shafeek Nader Trust for the Community Interest.