[scottkduncan]

Do you see the overall demand profile for self-storage changing accordingly, i.e. it could be headed for a secular decline because younger demographics don't accumulate as many physical items?

When I was brainstorming startup ideas once I mentally kicked around "AirBNB for self-storage," but liability issues and what I saw as a trend towards minimalism among those who would have been a target demographic as reasons to discard it.

[davidw]

> younger demographics don't accumulate as many physical items?

We'll see how that plays out as they age, which tends to include things like getting married, having kids, buying a house, and that kind of thing. For instance, our garage now contains 2 strollers, 2 kiddy scooters, 3 kiddy biycles of varying sizes, and one sort of push-tricycle thing. I didn't have all that crap when I was younger, either!

I heartily agree with the advice elsewhere to look at "boring" and "unsexy" stuff. It also helps if it's "far from the tree" in the sense of not picking something that's immediately related to the world you know as a programmer.

[tekalon]

My husband and I considered getting storage for our couch. We don't use it, we don't host people over and it's taking up valuable space in our 500sqft apartment. We realized that it would cost more to put it in storage than just to buy a new one when we get a house. We're giving it away to my sister as a wedding gift (it's a nice couch and she would will it more than we would).

[chockablock]

Your examples are all actively-used items, which is a different kind of storage problem.

When items like those are no longer needed the trend among my peers is to donate (to friends with younger kids) or liquidate (on Craigslist).

[sliverstorm]

Liquidating is definitely much easier than before. If I really want something gone, I can usually sell it within 24hr.

[newman314]

What I would love is a site(s) that lets me get all that stuff used, in decent condition and quickly.

It kills me how much money is dropped on kids stuff that is not used for a significant period of time.

[chockablock]

I'm torn--your comment history doesn't suggest that you are trolling, but then how could one have both kids and 1500 karma without knowing about *.craigslist/baa?

[newman314]

Not trolling.

craigslist is fine if you have time to sift through things. I'm looking for a site that does it better with filtering to cut out the cruft. Maybe FOBO but a specific subset?

Also, no kids yet. =)

[chockablock]

Sorry for the snark. For the items mentioned in the GP (strollers, etc) where there are a few well-known brand names/models, CL is going to be very hard to beat:

-pricing is rational and stable. In such markets, people just know 'what stuff goes for'. -where the savings of buying used is >$100, then the transactional costs of an email, a couple texts, a trip to the ATM, and a short drive are worth it to a lot of people. -no taxes, fees, waiting for your money, account signup, email subscriptions, app downloads, etc. etc.