To the Journal editor:

I took an extended road trip this past summer. I couldn’t help but notice the vast proliferation of storage units everywhere in both the U.S. and Canada.

Acres of forest cut just to store stuff that we are not using. I guess that’s better than dumping it in the woods. In the bigger cities, high rise buildings, not for offices or hotels, but just built to store possessions that we are not using. Perhaps things we don’t even actually need.

I guess everyone’s garage, basement, shed and attic are already overflowing. We’ve become a storage nation. Many have incurred debt in order to achieve this. In addition, they get to pay a monthly storage fee.

Some communities are becoming alarmed by this trend. They are now establishing moratoriums on further approval of new storage facilities (Wall Street Journal, October 2019).

As a culture what does this hoarding behavior mean? It is well documented that in America, the land of abundance, most of us are either overweight or obese.

Obesity is the expanding of our fat cells to store excess that we have consumed but don’t use or need. Might the root of the proliferation and ballooning of these storage facilities be an unhealthy sign of our individual delusion of scarcity and resulting overconsumption of calories. On a much larger scale, this now seems to be collectively spreading out over our landscape.

It is common to use “retail therapy” to try to address unhappiness in our lives. It does give us a temporary “sugar high.” It does not address the deeper issues that have nothing to do with acquiring more stuff.

I ask everyone to consider this the next time they go online to buy some shiny new thing or drive past a bunch of storage units on the way to some big box store for some “retail therapy.”

JUDE CATALLO

Chocolay Township