Self Storage Gets Bigger and Bigger

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The town I live in has seen an amazing amount of urban sprawl in the last decade. Although we are decidedly not “urban” here in Columbia, Missouri, our Midwestern college town has been bursting at its seams and its city limits with growth in many industries including housing and retail. On the east side there are huge housing developments in the form of townhouses, condos and super sized subdivisions. Our south side is now home to a new 5 mile stretch of our first “parkway” that includes rows and rows of new retail and office development, including what I will venture to say is the largest Wal-Mart I have ever seen. Do they just keep getting bigger?

My kids and I drive by these construction sites regularly. My five year old son likes us to drive by slow so he can watch the dump trucks and the excavating. I’ve noticed that many of these sites have something in common – rows of portable self storage. I see these lined up at the construction sites and I think to myself “man, what a great idea was that!” Knowing that this is a relatively new aspect of the industry that only really took off in the 1990’s makes me also stop to think, “Wow, what took them so long to come up with that? It’s brilliant!”

My point is we’ve all had an idea that made such total and complete sense to us that, for one moment, we see ourselves bringing the idea to life and implementing it to financial success. In our minds eye we take the idea from nothing to SOMETHING, and that something turns out to be the genius idea that really makes it into our lives, our consumer culture. Sometimes we go six months without doing anything with our idea, and then we see that someone else has beat us to the punch with our idea, and is now on 6 times a day on QVC.

What’s your idea, and how are you going to get it out there?? Have faith in yourself and your ideas. If you don’t someone else will.

I just can’t imagine being a celebrity. Not only do they have to deal with endless scrutiny by the rest of the world, including when they go on dates or to the grocery store, but they, literally, have so much stuff they don’t know what to do with it or where it is! That boggles my mind. I’ll give you to examples of some recent tabloid fodder that involves insanely rich celebrities, their stuff, and their storage.

Last month poor Whitney Houston, one time America’s gospel pop sweetheart, had to sell off items from a storage facility she was in debt to for $175,000! The New York facility was housing belongings that included costumes and stage props from her 1999 tour. Up for bid were pianos, designer gowns and, most interestingly, some awards won by her soon to be ex husband Bobby Brown. Now you’d never think Whitney would be auctioning off the contents of her storage unit, would ya? Didn’t we almost have it all, indeed?

Just a couple weeks ago, a similar thing happened to another tabloid celebrity. Paris Hilton must really have enough money to hire someone to do everything. However, it seems like she’s not doing a very good job keeping up. Maybe celebrities are taken advantage of a little more than the rest of us. I’ll give Hilton the benefit of the doubt instead of thinking that she has more stuff than she can keep track of. Her things were auctioned from a storage unit she had paid a “third party” to manage. Incidentally, not the first time this has happened, since a few years ago her things were auctioned from a different storage unit because she fell behind on the bill. The storage unit contents were purchased by someone who promptly made a gazillion dollars selling it to someone else who sleazily put it on the internet for all to see. Sad sad. So much stuff causing so much trouble! I guess celebrities aren’t that different from the rest of us. They need storage, and sometimes they can’t keep track of everything!

Thanks for reading PhoneSmart’s property management blog; we know the self storage and property management industry.

PhoneSmart is your offsite sales force and call center in Columbia, Missouri.

Find self storage at 800 Ritchie Rd, Capitol Heights, MD 20743

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Disclamer: This entry is intended to promote our partner StorageMart and some or all participants received compensation.