[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.)