How the UK became a nation of hoarders

By Duncan Walker
BBC News Online Magazine

Self-storage facilities are springing up all over the UK. So what are people putting in them and why can't they just keep it at home?

Britons are becoming hoarders on an industrial scale.

Drive around the ring roads of almost any city and the chances are you will see the tell-tale signs of our obsession with possessions - and hanging on to them.

They are the self-storage units - the vast warehouses where more and more of us are putting the belongings we don't need right now, but can't bear to give up.

For a flat monthly fee you get a lockable area for private use, which you can access 24 hours a day and store almost anything you want - as long as it's not explosive or illegal.

Five years ago there were just 100 such facilities in the UK. Today there are up to 450 and industry leaders expect to keep on building until there are 3,000.

It's an idea imported from the US, which started throwing up the corrugated steel and concrete structures in the 60s, to meet demand for storage from the military.

Britain and much of Europe is following, with smaller houses, divorce and the consumer boom all feeding the need for more storage room away from home.

Property prices

One of the big changes of recent years is the growing number of people known in the industry as "lifers", who rent a storage unit for the long term, as an extra room for their home.

We wanted somewhere safe because these things are valuable to me, but I did not want to clog up the house with them Henry Stevens, storage 'lifer'

These are typically people with more belongings than previous generations, but less room to keep them in because soaring property prices stop them buying bigger places.

"With the consumer spending boom we're spending more money on goods we need to store - it's clothes, it's furniture, it's computers," says Paul Fahey, chairman of industry body the Self-Storage Association.

"People will probably never use an old computer again, but it cost them £2,000 and they don't want to get rid of it."

Robin Greenwood, of US firm Shurgard, says the lifers use their storage facilities as somewhere to keep everything from sports gear and garden equipment.

"We're turning into a nation of squirrels. There's a strong sentimental attachment to the goods we're storing. Quite a lot of it is inheritance from parents, which people don't want to throw away," he says.

Spare room

Among the lifers is 30-year-old accounts manager Henry Stevens, who moved from a house into a two-bedroom flat in Salford with his partner, Benjamin Richards.

Many use storage when moving home (pic from Storage World)

For the past year they have been spending £54 a month to store furniture, and plan to continue doing so until they can afford to rent a bigger place. That could be two years away, by which time they will have spent the best part of £2,000.

"We wanted somewhere safe because these things are valuable to me, but I did not want to clog up the house with them.

"We did not want to use the spare room as a storage cupboard, so we can still have friends round."

'Stronger hand'

In Britain the bulk of business for the self-storage firms still comes from people between homes.

They would previously have stashed their belongings in garages or with removals firms, but see storage as a way of getting at them whenever they want.

"It makes moving less of a traumatic experience because people can sell their house, store their belongings and then buy with a stronger hand," says Mr Fahey, who owns Manchester company Storage World.

Among the movers is 31-year-old Sarah Whitfield, who sold her family house after her husband's sudden death. She moved in with her parents in Altrincham while she looked for a new home for her and daughter, Molly, four.

"You name it, it's in there - furniture, clothes, books, my daughter's toys," says Mrs Whitfield, who spends £220 a month on storage, but has bought a new place which should be ready in April.

"I don't need to be panicking about people saying 'we need to get into your place on such and such a date', because I'm not in a property chain."

Nude models

Another chunk of business comes from the commercial sector, with firms using storage to free up office space, or deliver goods to their sales teams.

We also rented a storage unit to some professional photographers who ended up doing shots with nude models in it Paul Fahey, Storage World

Round the clock access has also appealed to bands, who can play a gig and then return their equipment late at night.

Plane engines, bulls' semen in liquid nitrogen and several thousand fluffy pink elephants have all been stored by the company Lok'n'Store, while Storage World keeps goalposts and spare football kits for Manchester United.

"We also rented a storage unit to some professional photographers who ended up doing shots with nude models in it. We did not know," says Paul Fahey.

Slower progress

The heartland of the British self-storage industry is London and the South East, and it is selling the storage idea to people living elsewhere that is key to its expansion.

While the Self-Storage Association expects growth of up to 30% and about 2,500 more units to be built, Big Yellow, one of the biggest companies, expects much slower progress.

It suggests that only an extra 30 units a year will be built by the industry as a whole and that US levels of storage - where 40,000 units provide four square foot of space for every man, woman and child - will never be approached.

Nevertheless, people all round the country can expect to see more and more of the brightly coloured boxes sprouting up on main roads, as the industry appeals to potential customers by using its buildings as giant advertising hoardings.