Right now I’m paying for a storage unit because I was priced out of my apartment and moved in with family in the interim. I’m not sure that selling/trashing everything and then rebuying when I move again would have saved money over the cost of a storage unit. I guess it all depends on how long I’m bleeding money for the unit.

Storage units are definitely getting filled up at a wild rate or developers would stop building them. They do a lot of research on the market and look at average household income and determine if there's a market for it. Americans buy a lot of stuff, gotta put it somewhere. The way I see it, small houses can't hold a lot of stuff, where are you going to keep your Christmas decorations? Where does your lawnmower go in the winter if you don't have a garage? Snowblower in the warmer months? We buy big things that we don't need for portions of the year, gotta put them somewhere.

On the mattress front, mattresses are super expensive. A store needs to sell between 5-10 a month to pay rent. That's some pretty low pressure sales considering when someone needs a mattress they really need a mattress. Landlords also love mattress stores (chain ones like mattress warehouse and mattress firm, local ones are typically for shittier centers, think something like Cromwell Field out in Glen Burnie) since they have great credit and require very little parking meaning the shopping center can focus it's parking on grocery store parking etc. It's a great business model so long as you don't get greedy like mattress firm did a few years back. Interesting story if you want to read about it look up mattress firm corruption or something like that.