the DC area is a different story tho -- tons of rotation through the area due to military and fed gov. they come, they go, sometimes they come back, etc.

you're rounding out a 26 year military career and looking at retirement but are going to do one more 2-year stint in Norfolk/Missouri/Georgia/whatever and don't feel like selling your house -- storage unit

you work for a junior house rep who may not make it through the next election cycle, and since youre a staffer you can't afford anything larger than a shoebox, but still need to bring your stuff, some of which you can't fit -- storage unit

etc. etc.

I'm also in the Maryland suburbs and I'm trying to dispose of several generations worth of stuff while avoiding having to use a storage unit. Thankfully, we have a lot of deserving organizations that take charitable donations. However, my old tech collection just seems to grow and fill any space I gain from getting rid of what I consider junk.

I’m closer to Annapolis annd Ft. Meade and we have two huge self-storage facilities that just opened up within a month less than a mile from each other.

There’s lots of military folks around here so maybe people are more likely around here to store stuff for a few years if they get deployed somewhere else and plan to move the family back after? I dunno.

I’ve used self-storage twice in my life: once in college over the summer before moving into a new apartment the next school year and once when we had our first child about a year before moving to a new city and larger house, which let us make room for baby stuff while keeping things we’d use when we had more space.

If it's good antique furniture, your executor will auction it. I used to frequent an auction house in DC (it has now moved to Rockville) that auctioned this sort of thing all the time once a week. Clearly there were regulars who scooped stuff up, I suppose to sell in their antique shops.