The Garbage Gospel

Too much stuff can interfere with the life we want to live. What’s in your storage unit?

What is one of the strongest, most resilient sectors of the commercial real estate market in the United States? You might be thinking of high-tech data centers, sprawling Amazon distribution warehouses or gleaming office towers, but there is one more that’s a little more down to earth: self-storage units.

Drive through any town or city and you’ll see them — long rows of metal doors, each one hiding boxes of stuff people think they still need but no longer have room for. Furniture that doesn’t fit the new house. Clothing that no longer fits the old body. Paperwork no one wants to throw away. Keepsakes no one knows what to do with. Entire buildings are devoted to holding what no longer fits in our lives, but we still hang on to anyway.

We are told that the average American home contains about 300,000 items. That number is almost impossible to imagine and could be an urban myth, but it resonates because so many of us self-identify as embryonic hoarders. We feel...