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Comment by AlexMuir | Hacker News Reader

"Danny Dorling, professor of geography at Oxford University, says we have six times more "stuff" than the generation before us."

I run a storage business and I can say that this is no longer the case with the younger generation. We used to store boxes of CDs, Videos, 14" Colour TVs, Desktop Computers, Hifis. Now all this is in a laptop and mobile phone, which people just take with them. We now insist on up-front payment as the items people store are worthless to sell.

90% of what we store is now boxes/suitcases of clothes and books.

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I'll confirm this. I'm much older than the "younger" generation and I have virtually nothing compared to my parents and theirs. I can get everything I own in a 45l bag and a large box. They can't get all their crap in a 4 bedroom house with a double garage.

Also as a side issue, yes you're right; absolutely nothing out there is worth much any more. The Internet and particularly eBay has laid waste to the value of things by making everthing ubiquitous.

Another effect of the internet is that it is now trivial to find out the second-hand value of something.

I suspect that, say, garage sale prices are much more likely to approach eBay prices than was the case in the '90s. Though the local-ness of yard sales probably means there are still arbitrage opportunities.

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.

> 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.

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).

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).

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

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.

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?

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. =)

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.

I had a 10x20' storage unit for years -- it was full of all the stuff you mentioned - CDs, stereo, furniture, an astoundingly heavy 34" tube TV... All the media went digital (with multiple backups!) and everything else was either sold on Craigslist, donated, or hauled away to the landfill. Now I can move by just renting a small trailer.

Why didn't you just sell the non-essential things and make room for the rest? I only ask because I have lived in 7 different properties since starting University and now (almost three years into career) and I literally take what I need and chuck the rest; one could probably describe me as the 'anti-hoarder'.

They'd been in storage for over 3 years and I hadn't needed to use them, therefore I didn't need them at all.

I kept some things that were keepsakes, but the rest ... out with it all. Which also saved me $135 a month in rental costs.

"We now insist on up-front payment as the items people store are worthless to sell."

Was this ever different? Boxes of CD's, videos and tube TV's don't sound that valuable. But reading into your comment, it seems it wasn't always like this...

It might now seem that way, but when you can put those things into a second hand shop for $1-$5 a piece someone's DVD, or CD collection can become quite valuable when its abandoned. Some people did/do store hundreds of cd's, dvds, and the like. A unit could have a thousand dollars(in real secondhand market value) of merch very easily.

Do CD's/DVD's not have this value anymore? I could CD's being phased out, but DVD's are still entrenched. Maybe with online streaming (Netflix) DVD's too are going away? I would think this would be a lagging indicator though as I can see many storing their DVD's now that streaming is an option.

CD's don't and never really did. If you bring in an early CD (like from the 80s) you can get a nominal amount because CDs were rare then. If you bring in a CD from the last 10-15 years they are nearly worthless. Most shops ended up shredding the extra.

DVDs have a bit of crazy market. Some distributors (Disney and Criterion especially) do a short limited run. The 2nd hand stores rely on these gems in a big box of junk to make profit.

I've attempted to sell DVD's and CD's. Once you factor in postage, time, etc., it's cheaper to just throw them away. Or give them to the thrift store.

Yup, there's a reality TV show [0] based on the premise that these units can hold real value.

[0]storage wars

Buddy of mine does lots of odd lot things. He buys storage units once in awhile and gets big hits sometimes. He's gotten gun collections and snowmobiles, among other things.

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