Category Archives: Apartment Living

Dorms: Not Just For College Students

Private Bedroom with Kitchenette in Communal Living Home

Private Bedroom in a Starcity Communal Living Home

College. It wasn’t just about going to school and getting that degree to end up at your dream job. It was about making new friends, creating memories and for many of us dorm style living. Most of us either lived in a dorm on campus or we rented an apartment/condo/home with our friends off campus. Regardless of the location we can remember needing to share a bathroom, living room, kitchen and possibly a bedroom with other people. Sure there were some not so great things – like having to go to the bathroom and your roommate was taking the world’s longest shower, but aside from that, the feeling of sharing a space, dividing housework up, paying less in rent and constantly having people around to interact with was lots of fun. Continue reading →

Rent a Storage Unit, Help a Friend

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Here’s an interesting thought: did you ever consider that renting a storage unit could save someone’s life? Well, OK, that might be a little exaggerated, but consider this scenario: you have a friend who has lost their job. You commiserate, give them helpful advice, and encourage them to keep looking because something good will turn up. But a couple of months go by, and they still haven’t found a job. Now their savings account is running low, and they probably can’t make next month’s rent. You could loan them some money (always a dicey proposition between friends) or … you could rent a storage unit for them.

What good is a storage unit going to do them, you ask. Well, they can give notice on that apartment before they get kicked out, move all their stuff into the storage unit, then move in with a relative or friend (maybe you, maybe not) while they regroup. Once they find that new job, they can save up for a new apartment, joyfully get their stuff out of storage, and make a fresh start. All because you rented a storage unit.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, a day to reflect on the many blessings in your life. But today could be a day when you could make a real difference in the life of a friend.

Happy Thanksgiving from the Dollar Self Storage family.

Moving Back to the City

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For baby boomers, moving to the suburbs when they got married and had children was part and parcel of the American Dream. It seemed to be the natural order of things that you would leave behind the strife and stress of the city for a greener, safer place where you could raise your children.

Recently, though, I stood at the kitchen window watching an industrious gopher unearth a truly gopher amazing amount of dirt into the middle of my back yard. As the excavation of his ever-expanding underground empire began to pile up, I began to think. That back yard is little used now, (except by the gopher), and the swing set is long abandoned by children who have gone off to make lives and families of their own.

I began to remember the care-free days of apartment living. No weeds to pull, no lawns to mow, no roof tiles to replace. Is it time to move back to the city?

The fact of the matter is, according to U.S. census data, large city centers are growing faster than their suburban counterparts for the first time in more than 90 years. As we discussed in a previous post, both baby boomers and the adult children they raised are looking for “urban villages”, where they are not tied to their automobiles as tightly and can walk and bike to the places they need to go. Continue reading →

Helping the Environment One Storage Unit at a Time

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There are a number of emerging studies that suggest that urbanization is actually good for the environment. The theory goes that by condensing a large population into a smaller geographic area, you save more natural open space from being destroyed. Also at play are economies of size: with smaller spaces to heat, cool, and light, electricity use per capita in urban areas is actually lower than in suburban or rural areas. Those who study this also say there are fewer carbon emissions per person in an urban area where many people are using public transportation, rather than suburban areas where there is often one person per automobile. Continue reading →

Micro-Apartment Living

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Tiny House!

Here’s an interesting update on the micro apartments we talked about in a previous post: leasing has begun at New York City’s first micro-unit development, a nine-story building on East 27^th street with 55 studio apartments ranging from 260 to 360 square feet. Fourteen of the units are designated as “affordable”, meaning they will rent for about $950 a month – 60,000 people have applied for those 14 apartments. (Check out this article in The New York Times.)

The idea behind these micro apartments is to provide an option for the many single people Continue reading →

Adult Children Who Use Their Parents’ House as a Storage Unit

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toys I made a shocking discovery recently: when your kids grow up and move out, they don’t take their stuff with them. Oh sure, they take the Xbox and all your good wine glasses, but the lifetime supply of Legos and their soccer trophies? Not so much.

To be fair, it is tough when you are first starting out in life. When you are living in a one bedroom apartment, you simply don’t have the room to take possession of all your childhood memories. Not to mention the fact that it is difficult for young people to know what keepsakes they will find most meaningful years from now. But I did see one really valuable piece of advice on this website about simplifying: the fewer things you keep, the more special they are. When your grandmother gives you a small keepsake box filled with precious memories she wants to share with you, it is a very moving moment. If, on the other hand, she has to have a forklift drop a packing crate on your front lawn filled with her precious memories … hmm, not the same thing at all.

Continue reading →

Apartment Living

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file000328260278 There are many advantages to apartment living, but lots of storage space is usually not one of them.

In expensive urban environments, apartments are the standard for housing. Certainly, the younger segment of our population, who often are more transient as they establish their careers, enjoy the flexibility of renting. And, in fact, attitudes toward home ownership are shifting – we may be approaching a time when it is no longer a requisite part of the American Dream.

Apartment Therapy is an interesting website whose stated mission is “Helping people make their homes more beautiful, organized and healthy by connecting them to a wealth of resources, ideas and community online.” They recently featured an article on using storage units to make apartment living more workable that we wanted to share with you.