Do you remember the last time you saw an urban micro-apartment for sale online and wondered, “Where would I put anything?” 迷你倉 self storage makes it easy to find the answer, which is often close by or even in the same building. In cities like Tokyo and New York, where the average apartment size is getting smaller, people are getting creative. Living in 200 square feet used to entail giving up everything you cared about. Not anymore. Ministorage is a great way for people who live in apartments to store their skis, family photo albums, or even extra luggage.
It’s incredible, but the average American home has grown three times in size over the past 50 years. However, apartments in cities have gone smaller. A typical micro-apartment in San Francisco is around 250 square feet, which isn’t enough room to swing a cat, much less store a bunch of winter jackets. But you’ll see these kinds of buildings going up all over the place, and they’re usually full. Ministorage bridges the gap by giving people a location to store stuff that won’t fit in their houses.
People that build houses know what’s going on. Some now collaborate directly with mini-storage companies to offer special rates to renters or even “storage pods” that are placed into the basement of a building. According to Yardi Matrix, the quantity of self-storage space in the U.S. has grown to over 1.6 billion square feet. That is more than double the size of all the Starbucks, Walmart, and McDonald’s in the US. People obviously want space, even if they can’t get it.
Cities aren’t becoming bigger, and apartments probably won’t get bigger all of a sudden. But tiny storage is developing swiftly, quietly helping individuals in cities all around the world live active, creative lives. When you see one of those cute small flats with nice decorations, realize that the whole story is probably in storage down the street.