[nytesky]

In general isn’t the consensus that storage units are a very bad deal for “storage”. It can be useful for temporary storage for bulky items like furniture when renovating your house or in between houses, but the fees would quickly accumulate and pay for almost any reasonable contents.

If the fees wouldn’t cover replacement of the contents within 6 months, they are too valuable to store in a storage unit.

[crazygringo]

If you don't have space in your apartment or home for items you want to keep, then where else are you supposed to store things?

Obviously it's up to you to figure out if it makes financial sense. But for people in urban areas with small apartments, it can be a heckuva lot cheaper than upgrading to an apartment with another bedroom.

[toast0]

> If you don't have space in your apartment or home for items you want to keep, then where else are you supposed to store things?

On ebay? Sell the stuff now, buy it again if you need it. Doesn't work for everything, of course, and I don't practice it, I've got tons of space and tons of clutter.

[mdaniel]

I believe other people are using any such storage as a cache, trading space for time, since even if you instantly found the exact replacements, you'd still pay not only monetarily for shipping but wall-clock for both shipping and the drudgery of searching for said items

Interestingly, I read a blog post where someone was using "fulfilled by amazon" as off-site storage, but I think it was a pseudo thought experiment more than an actual storage solution, similar to those folks who use data-as-video on YouTube as infinite backup storage

[crazygringo]

So you're going to sell your surfboard and buy new ski equipment every winter, and sell your skis and buy a new surfboard every summer? As well as the rest of your bulky seasonal gear?

Sounds expensive.

[nytesky]

Surfboards mounted on the wall are a common decoration, so there is off season storage.

You can rent skis for a season for $400, I suspect most rental places are than $100/month.

But skis especially can usually fit in the back of a closet or under a bed.

Kayak? Get a season pass for the rental place.

[crazygringo]

I think you're ignoring the point that if you want high-quality gear, it's cheaper to buy it outright and store it off-season.

And the kinds of people who live in places where they don't have room to store a surfboard year-round, are the kinds of people who don't have a bunch of wall space for one either.

I think you might not be totally understanding the concept of small urban apartments. Putting skis in the closet or under the bed year-round doesn't work, because your closet and underneath the bed are already full. (And it's not just skis, obviously -- it's boots and poles and helmet and bulky jacket and snowpants and gloves and everything.)

[dpifke]

Not to mention the time value of haggling on Ebay, dealing with scammers, etc.

[crazygringo]

And wasting all that money on shipping and sales tax with each transaction.

Because yes, you have to pay sales tax on eBay, even for used items that already had sales tax paid on their original retail purchase.

[toast0]

You're not using ebay for storage if you buy new replacements every season. It's ebay as storage if you're buying used replacements.

[smeeger]

its almost as if people really shouldnt live inside glorified cubicles… as if they should in something larger. and maybe have a space with grass and also a little accessory structure with a door large enough to fit a vehicle. such a thing doesnt exist unfortunately

[crazygringo]

My nearby park has tons of space with grass.

And why would I want space for a vehicle when I have public transportation that is much faster?

[zimpenfish]

Please let me introduce you to the insanity of UK house prices...

[dpifke]

When I lived in a condo in San Francisco, I had a storage unit for my camping and outdoor gear. The alternatives would have been: a) buy a new tent/cooler/propane stove/etc. every 2-3 months, or b) not go camping regularly. I absolutely did not have room to store a kayak at home, and my neighbors would have been annoyed with me dragging muddy/dusty gear through the communal hallway to my unit.

When I left SF, I spent about 18 months traveling before permanently moving in anywhere. I did the math on "cost per cubic foot to store vs. cost to replace" then, and interestingly, furniture and most housewares didn't make the cut—except for a few sentimental items. An unexpected bonus of instead donating that stuff to Goodwill was that when I moved into my new place, I got to outfit my kitchen with much nicer stuff than what I had previously accumulated.

(Now I live in the Midwest and have a garage for the outdoor gear, which in addition to vehicle storage, also doubles as machine/metalworking/woodworking shops.)

[bluedino]

True, but it's just another one of those illogical things people do.

[wakawaka28]

You could apply the same logic to the stuff inside your house, which is just a glorified storage unit. Why are you paying premium to store that stuff, when you could downgrade to a studio apartment or a tent?

The bottom line is, if you want to own stuff, then you must store it. You know what is more expensive than storage? Buying stuff you need or want and reselling it, again and again. Or leasing it in general. Some stuff has poor resale value, takes a lot of energy to choose and accumulate, and is not easy to replace.

[nytesky]

Well, when you are writing an apartment, people do generally go for the cheapest smallest place they can afford.

But when you’re buying a place, you’re looking to have isolation from shared walls, and generally a larger property will appreciate more in value than a smaller property With some limits in both directions up and down in size.

[immibis]

It would be illegal to live in a tent.

[wakawaka28]

Even if it was legal, most people wouldn't like that.