Why Would a Celebrity Need Self Storage?
Sara Heins | January 31, 2013 @ 2:10 PM
Recently, paparazzi photographers have captured several celebrities at storage facilities. Katie Holmes was recently spotted at Manhattan Mini Storage in New York City. Lindsay Lohan has recently been under fire for racking up $16,000 in unpaid rent on her storage unit, and may even soon be the victim of a Storage Wars episode. Even before the days of reality TV shows about storage auctions, Paris Hilton's storage unit went up for sale, then was purchased by someone who charged $39.97 online for people to view its contents.
You may think, "If celebrities are so rich, why don't they just build a house to keep their things in, or use one of the 30+ spare bedrooms in their mansions for extra storage? It seems more logical than going to a place where such common folk populate."
Maybe it's because self storage is…
Safe:
Celebrities often get their homes broken into; it's no secret where they live, and they keep all their expensive crap out in the open. However, many storage facilities take several precautions to ensure their renters' belongings stay safe. Electronic gate access, managers who live onsite and sometimes even guard dogs are used to ensure unwanted robbers stay far away. Many self storage locations often have 24 hours security cameras, too, so maybe these actors just want the attention.
Confidential:
Unless your name is on the rental contract, you won't have access to what's being stored or any of the renter's information. Unless, of course, the tenants forget to pay their bills for a few months and everything inside can go up for auction. If the renter stays on top of his or her payments, their belongings will be sealed off to the world like TomKat's divorce records.
Affordable:
Sure celebrities are millionaires, so why do they care about saving a little extra dough? Well, enough of them seem to be jailed for tax evasion, so it's not too much of a stretch. Self storage is much cheaper than building a pool house to store your things in. Maybe they can use the money they save to start some charity about saving polar bears; those rights to Sarah McLachlan songs can't be cheap.
Whatever the reason truly is, the A-List can't seem to get enough of self storage, while the rest of Americans can't wait for them to leave their bills unpaid so we can see what's inside.
