Tired of Losing

We recently finalized a cross-country move by packing our remaining belongings into a small U-Haul box that met us at our destination. Those items spent well over a year in limbo, sitting silently, taking up space we had to hire. Self storage always seemed to be a surreal liminal place between transition, but I knew it would eventually end. It turns out, though, that self storage is a way of life for many Americans, to the point where it’s become a booming industry. Julie Poole’s personal story of how her mom’s locker figured into their lives over many decades is an eye opener into what self storage really offers for many people: It’s a repository of memory and a place to hold hope—one that provides a semblance of stability for a swath of American society.

Over the phone, my mom explained that the early ’90s were like a “dark alley” she didn’t want to wander down. Together, we tried assembling a timeline of the places we’d lived: a tent, a hotel room, with family members, and in rentals in several cities in Washington state. Those years were about survival—an effort to escape another D that could be added to the reasons people rent storage units: domestic abuse. (Women are more likely to have units than men.) Despite a restraining order, my stepdad always found out where we were staying and maintained an unyielding presence in our lives until he died in 1997. By that point, we’d returned to Birch Bay, attempting to regain stability after moving seven times.

I struggled to reconcile that the money my mom put toward storage fees could have been enough for another down payment on a house. But I was missing the point. She was trying to maintain a grip on normalcy—waiting for a time when she could set up her antique farm table and favorite dish set and gather her kids and grandkids for a home-cooked meal.