The Storage business appears to be booming. In my neck of the woods, seems like

everywhere you turn, there are storage facilities to rent.

I can understand people in transition, maybe working abroad for a few months or whatever. Not to mention foreclosures, having to move from your house to a small apartment, etc.

But at some point a person could be spending more to store the stuff than the stuff is worth. In which case, s/he might as well sell it. I had a cousin who ended up spending more to house her furniture than the furniture was worth. :shrug:

So, you pay to keep your furniture in storage, because you're going to be able to get it out in a month or 2. I'm afraid bad situations are going to be long-term in our current economy - at least 'til we can get rid of junior.

that had been stored for three years at $90/month. Some nice new furniture as well as some sweet antiques.

DANG.

The owner of the facility said that he had paid $25k over the last 20 years to house this stuff.
Out of the ENTIRE two rooms...the only things worth saving was a couple of old platform rocking chairs and a bedroom suit.
The rest we threw away.
Old papers...broken picture frames, old TV's, old parts to CT Scanners and MRI machines that were obsolete (he was a service technician for Picker International) amongst the garbage. I actually even threw away the schematics for the machines themselves. I hope nobody wanted them.:)
After seeing this, I will NEVER acquire one of these units. If for some reason I happen to need one...then that will be a very good time to declutter because you are correct. At some point it does become less expensive to let stuff go than it does to save it.

regardless of the fact that most of us DO have too much 'stuff'...and the psychological hoarding that seems to come from depression-era folks, this is still a grim indicator that people are worse off than we think.

I have had to store stuff before, thank goodness it was in my folks garage until I got my housing situation under control..it's weird when just unpacking your chipped dishes is an achievement!

let's pray that this housing crisis wil be over soon, though we may still just barely be seeing the tip of the iceberg.