by Austin Petersen
Jefferson City has at least 15 places to rent a storage unit — drive it yourself and count: St. Marys Boulevard, Industrial Drive, Metro Drive, Ellis Boulevard, Hoover Road, Rock Ridge, Norman Drive, Old Lohman, Monticello, Creek Trail, out toward Wardsville and the Lake.
A town of 43,000 people supports a small industry whose entire product is a locked room where nobody lives, filled to the brim with stuff no one wants.
That is not a quirk of Jefferson City. Nationally, there are more than 60,000 self-storage facilities, which is more locations than McDonald’s, Starbucks and Subway operate in this country combined.
The storage business pulls in better than $44 billion a year. Roughly one in 10 American households is paying rent this month on a room they do not live in. The industry has a name for what drives most of that demand: the four Ds — death, divorce, dislocation, downsizing. Storage is what happens when a family runs out of the ability to make decisions.
I bring this up because the internet spent last week laughing at its parents. Millennials have been, perhaps understandably, venting their frustration at their “inheritance” being the “gift” of spending three weeks post-mortem sorting through boxes of Precious Moments figurines, or making regular trips to the Yellow Moon Antique Mall hoping someone will buy just one more box of Betty Boop memorabilia.
Start the discussion at community.4libertynetwork.com