Between 2002 and 2023, the number of self-storage facilities in the United States grew 90.6 percent.
The number of American households grew about 24 percent.
So the country built warehouses for its own belongings roughly four times faster than it built households to put belongings in. Both of those figures come from the Census Bureau.
That gap is the market The Container Store was built to serve. Its trademarked vision statement was to transform lives through the power of organization.
In December 2024 it filed for bankruptcy, was delisted, and had every share of its stock cancelled for nothing.
Which raises the question the whole story turns on. If the clutter kept growing, what went wrong?