Adrienne Robillard

After years of renting in San Francisco and Oakland, we bought a home in Walnut Creek (a small city in the Bay Area) for $545,000 in 2010—when the market was relatively slow. The house was the smallest model in a 1960s neighborhood at 1,445 square feet with three bedrooms and two bathrooms. But it sat on a spacious 9,375-square-foot lot. It was a dream cosmetic fixer. Over seven years, we made it our own.

If you live in a majorly cramped city, you know that space is definitely at a premium. Dreams of moving into a bigger, more airy space might pop into your head when all the crap you’ve shoved into your only closet falls out for the millionth time. But if more space is what you’re looking for, there is actually a stupidly simple way to solve this problem on the cheap: Rent a storage unit.

Americans love stuff. We store it in our homes, garages, basements—and when that’s all filled, we pile it in to storage spaces across the country. But sometimes when space is hot commodity, all that stuff creates a huge problem and the idea of renting additional storage space can seem like a good answer. If you’re toying with the idea of storage space, you’re not alone: In a 2017 study, the non-profit Self Storage Association found that approximately 12.