We built 52,301 boxes for our stuff.
There are now more self-storage facilities in America than Starbucks, McDonald's, Dunkin', Pizza Hut and Wendy's locations combined. This wing asks a plain question: how did we end up paying rent on rooms full of things we rarely touch — instead of lending them to the people next door? Commentary with citations — not financial advice, and not a claim that any company broke a law.
The numbers (look them up)
The U.S. has an estimated 52,301 self-storage facilities — described as as many as all the U.S. Starbucks, McDonald's, Dunkin', Pizza Hut and Wendy's put together. That's over 2.1 billion square feet of rentable space, an industry valued around $44 billion (2024 Self-Storage Almanac).
Sources: Neighbor — Self-Storage Industry Statistics · SpareFoot · Statista (overview).
Estimates vary by survey, but they all point one way: a lot of us. Over 11% of U.S. households rent a unit by one count; broader surveys put current use near 1 in 5, and "have used" as high as ~1 in 3. The #1 stated reason is simply "not enough space."
Sources: SpareFoot · StorageCafe (1 in 3).
The U-Haul question — said fairly
U-Haul (parent: U-Haul Holding Company, formerly AMERCO) is best known for trucks, but the engine is one-way moving rentals — time-and-mileage pricing, one-way premiums, insurance add-ons — over 2.5 million one-way transactions a year. The moving-equipment segment is the biggest driver (roughly $3.8B trailing-year revenue); the self-storage side adds roughly $938M. Its storage footprint roughly doubled in five years — from ~697,000 units (2020) toward ~1.1 million units (2026).
Sources: U-Haul (Wikipedia) · U-Haul real-estate overview. (Figures move — verify current filings.)
None of this means U-Haul did anything wrong. It's a legal, well-run business meeting real demand: people move, downsize, deploy, get flooded out, run small shops out of a unit. The critique here isn't the company — it's the culture that made the box the default. A company filling a need we created is not the villain of the story; it's the mirror.
Why the curator thinks it's a little stupid
Here's the argument, plainly (it's an opinion — disagree freely): we pay rent, every month, often for years, to warehouse things we touch maybe twice a year. A drill used 12 minutes in its life. A ladder. Holiday bins. And right next door is a neighbor who'd lend theirs — if we knew their name. We built 52,301 buildings to avoid asking. The storage unit is what loneliness looks like in square feet.
The Dignity Wing lays out the sourced harm of isolation (the U.S. Surgeon General called loneliness an epidemic). A storage economy is the same disease from another angle: privatize everything, share nothing, and pay a monthly fee for the privilege. The machine can own infinite cloud storage and never lonely. You're not built that way — and that's the point.
The human alternative (it's cheaper, and it's free)
Before you rent a box, try the oldest technology there is — a neighbor. Buy Nothing groups give and lend within a few blocks: buynothingproject.org. Tool libraries / "Libraries of Things" let a whole town share one drill: localtools.org. And the original sharing economy — the public library — already lends far more than books.
Real organizations, linked for you to verify — not endorsements or affiliations, just doors. Check what exists in your own town.
You don't have to torch your storage unit. Just notice the trade: a box you pay to be alone with, or a neighbor you'd have to meet. Lend the ladder. Borrow the truck. Knock on the door like they're a neighbor — because they are. That's a score the machine can't post, and it's the cheapest one there is.