By Travis Morrow and Brad Hadfield

By Travis Morrow and Brad Hadfield

ast month, we pulled the curtain back on why people use self-storage, revealing that for many tenants, it isn’t just about space but rather preservation of possessions, memory, and identity. It’s the basis for disposition—the natural human instinct to hold onto what is ours—and it’s the D that comes before those we’ve always known: death, divorce, downsizing, and displacement. While those four may create the need for storage, disposition helps explain why our belongings find a home behind a roll-up door instead of earning a spot on Facebook Marketplace, at Goodwill, or in a dumpster. It’s also why tenants may spend thousands of dollars storing things worth a fraction of the rent.

Now, with another assist from Dr. Russell Belk, research professor and author of Possessions and the Extended Self, we’ll look at how disposition applies across each of the four Ds, and how very different circumstances can lead tenants to make the same decision: Put it in storage.

Disposition may be the common thread across the four Ds, but the attachment behind it isn’t always the same. Death can attach possessions to memory and loyalty. Divorce leaves belongings tied to a shared life that has ended. Downsizing pits attachment against available space. And displacement separates people from their homes while leaving their possessions in limbo. Each involves different circumstances and emotions, but ultimately the question is the same: “What can I let go of and what must I hold on to?”

Death is perhaps the clearest and most emotionally charged of the four Ds. When a loved one passes, grieving survivors inherit more than just financial assets and/or debt. They inherit identity-laden objects that hold memories, like a grandparent’s photo albums, a father’s tools, a mother’s china collection. Some of these collections were built over a lifetime, and so the items become extensions of the deceased person’s identity and, by extension, the recipients.

Because of this, parting with those belongings can often feel like a betrayal. “I had to go through my mother’s stuff when she passed, and while some items were meaningful, most had no significance to me other than that they had belonged to her,” Belk told MSM. “Still, since I knew they were important to her, the thought of throwing them out felt disloyal. I definitely had a twinge of guilt when I tossed that stuff in the dumpster.”

You don’t need to look further than Reddit to see other people describing the same attachment. “I rented a storage unit and put most of my mum’s belongings in it,” writes one Redditor. “Otherwise, it felt like I was throwing away part of her.” Another adds, “Most of my father’s possessions went directly into a storage unit. These are things that made him, him.”

When a couple splits, one household becomes two, often creating storage needs as each party fights to preserve “their” version of a shared history. Wedding gifts, children’s toys, vacation souvenirs, and even the couch from the first apartment become battlegrounds of psychological ownership because the items typically remind them of happier times.

Novelist Stephanie Danler (Sweetbitter, Stray) told TIME magazine that when she and her husband separated, they packed up their home and put the boxes into storage. She didn’t think it’d be permanent, but temporary turned into years, and it became clear it was over. “I felt like I had been much younger when I packed them,” she said when finally opening the boxes. “The first box I opened had sweaters in it. His and mine. I remember taping up that box and thinking that we were separating, but we would be unpacking this box before the next snow came … It hurt afresh to see it all again. I still loved him. He still loved me. We wept constantly.”

Unlike death and divorce, there are dozens of reasons for downsizing. People move to smaller homes or senior living facilities, empty nesters no longer need five bedrooms, a change in finances necessitates it, or perhaps someone just wants to simplify their life. Whatever the reason, reducing living space doesn’t necessarily reduce attachment to the possessions that once filled it.

Amanda Titchenal, the founder of professional organizing company Well Organized, doesn’t necessarily encourage storage but does recommend it when clients refuse to part with certain belongings. However, she has some rules and tells clients their home should only hold things they use regularly. “If you need to get storage, make sure it is for specific purposes and not just a place to dump things,” she says, adding that for the ultra-sentimental it’s OK to relocate special keepsakes to storage if they’re creating too much clutter in the home.

Amber Campbell would likely agree. In a recent Business Insider story, she writes about going from a furnished townhouse to traveling with two suitcases after losing her job. She describes having associated her possessions with security and identity, which made downsizing emotionally difficult. “[It] forced me to question who I was without my stuff,” recalls Campbell. “I was so anxious about letting go that I packed my storage unit like a Tetris puzzle … That’s when it hit me how much of my life I’d spent defining myself by my stuff. They were all evidence that I’d become the person I always wanted to be.”

Displacement is arguably the most disruptive of the Ds because of the instability it brings into someone’s life. “It’s difficult to be displaced and not know where to store belongings,” Chris Watson, U-Haul Company of Northwest California president, said following the 2024 Park Fire in Northern California that displaced countless residents and led to U-Haul offering free storage.

But disaster isn’t the only reason people lose their home permanently or temporarily. Moves often occur due to eviction, foreclosure, military deployment, or job and lifestyle changes, and they almost always create temporary chaos that can strongly activate disposition. During a disruptive move, deciding what to discard may take a back seat to simply getting belongings somewhere safe. What begins as a temporary storage solution can then outlast the displacement that created it.

In a first-person account published by Invisible People, a woman describes realizing she was about to become homeless after the end of a 10-year relationship. Before moving into her vehicle, she packed the possessions she wanted to keep into a storage unit. While living in her vehicle, the unit became the closest thing she had to a home for her belongings. She could retrieve clothes and necessities as she needed them and even use it to rotate seasonal items.

The examples herein highlight that these are not psychologically interchangeable customers. Death and divorce are backward-looking, with belongings connecting tenants to a person or a life that no longer exists. Downsizing is different; while the attachment remains, the physical situation has changed, thus creating a conflict between what the person wants to keep and what their new space can accommodate. Displacement is also unique. Oftentimes, there hasn’t even been a decision to reduce possessions. Instead, the home is left behind or taken away, and storage becomes a temporary substitute for the space that was lost.

So, while the circumstances may differ, the decision is the same: keep, sell, donate, discard, or store. What makes storage so appealing is that it sells something beyond space: time before a permanent decision must be made. That’s good news for self-storage operators. What’s even better news is that although the world has been slowly digitizing what we used to hold in our hands, many people will still want to keep physical possessions.

“Today, music, movies, photos—they’re all stored digitally. People no longer write letters, but emails,” says Belk. “All of that saves space in the home, but it doesn’t diminish disposition. Those old records and tapes, those faded photos and letters—they’re too good to throw out. And so, storage remains as a place to keep our past in the present.”