[hf]

Coincidentally, this is something I have researched just last week for my area. I would love to store boxes upon boxes of things that I will need in another two years (eg. baby clothes), will sell eventually, or plain don't want around[0].

Unfortunately, I have come to the conclusion that the concept of self-storage presented here, quite similar in spirit to my local self-storage providers (henceforth: SSPs), is not reconcilable with my use-cases and fundamental needs.

To wit: All SSPs that I found were located on the outskirts of town. "Industrial estate" would describe it well. This calls for car ownership (or rental, at least) and huge transfer volumes.

But I want to spirit away a smallish box every month or so. I would like to carry it (perhaps in a bicycle trailer) around the corner. In short: I want those SSPs to be as ubiquitous as libraries.

Now, are there cities were a system not unlike to the one outlined above exists? If so, are hacker/maker spaces similarly well-distributed?

[0] Books, chiefly by virtue of their tactility, belong solidly into the latter category, as non-intuitive as it may sound: these cellulose blighters are everywhere and frankly cumbersome to circumnavigate by now.

[JaakkoP]

Hope you don't mind me asking if you live in Texas? I'd love to ask feedback about my storage on demand startup remotegarage.com, as it sounds like it would serve your needs better than traditional self-storage?

[hf]

I don't want to sound overly enthusiastic, but I do think that this fits the bill 90% of the way. Great presentation[0]; pricing explicit and almost exactly what I would have imagined; and, of course, sane pick-up and delivery. I even hunted around for a spelling mistake to have something on the opposite side of the ledger. No such luck.

Alas, I'm a few thousand miles short of becoming a valued customer.

Now, hopefully, you're wondering about that last 10%: It's point 2 in your "How it works":

> Pack your things carefully and take pictures of the contents.

I'm sure legal would have a word or two to say about that, but: how much would it set me back if you did that, together with providing a rough description of the box' contents? This, then, would appear on my account page's List of Boxes.

The details are devilish, of course, and supreme caution is indicated: you don't want a prominent "take-a-peek" option to adversely affect the trust of your more privacy-conscious clients.

[0] Which, incidentally, doesn't appeal to me, as I am solidly in the tarsnap aesthetics camp, but we both know what to make of that.

[JaakkoP]

Happy to hear you like the 90% so much - thank you for the feedback!

As for the 10%, we have indeed found that quite a few customers end up not taking pictures, even though it's a requirement to qualify for the protection plan.

We would be happy to take those pictures, but I wonder if there's a way to do it so that it doesn't interfere with the customer's privacy. Drivers taking the pictures upon pickup comes to mind.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

I believe the typical understanding here in the US is that there is no insurance, so you don't even need the pictures. A number of farmers around here rent out space in their barns or put up cheap buildings for public storage to get a bit more easy income.

AirBnB for storage would be awesome. Wonder if I could make enough to cover the cost of an an outbuilding?

[roel_v]

Well how much would you pay for it? 10x what it costs to store it at the outskirts of town? Why don't you take a taxi every month to go there?