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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

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Spokane has lots of self-storage space - what does that say about us?

Work crews attach sheets of roofing to a corner building section of the new addition at Self Storage on North Foothills Drive in Spokane.  (Dan Pelle / The Spokesman-Review)
Work crews attach sheets of roofing to a corner building section of the new addition at Self Storage on North Foothills Drive in Spokane. (Dan Pelle / The Spokesman-Review)

The 2015 Self-Storage Almanac says the Spokane metro area is one of the nation's leaders in self-storage space per person. What does that say about us? 

To be clear, I have no idea what that says. But it must have some larger meaning: We're materialistic? We have small houses? We're packrats?

The SpareFoot Blog, citing figures from the 2015 Self-Storage Almanac, says Wichita ranks No. 1 with 13.16 square feet of self-storage space per person. Here are the top cities:  

  1. Wichita, KS
  2. Tulsa, OK
  3. Little Rock, AR
  4. Madison, WI
  5. Knoxville, TN
  6. Spokane, WA
  7. Baton Rouge, LA

According to the blog, the Spokane metropolitan area has 125 self-storage facilities with about 6.4 million square feet of space. That gives us 11.93 square feet of self-storage per person. 
 

As for the larger meaning, Jen Bayless, a professional organizer in the Wichita area, takes a stab at that in the SpareFoot blog post. Bayless cites Wichita's big military population (which makes sense in Spokane, too). But she also says Americans have too much stuff: “In my experience, there seems to be an unfortunate growing trend that spans several generations where rather than making the decisions necessary to part with items that are no longer needed, a lot of people would rather pay to store their things for an indefinite amount of time,” she told the blog. 



Addy Hatch
As city editor, Addy Hatch oversees the news-gathering operations of the city desk, the department responsible for reporting on local and regional news.

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