By Anthony Huie – 
SPACIAL LIVING QUANTUM SPACE Series

There are bad investments, and then there are *soul-sucking* ones — the kind that nibble at your wallet and your conscience long after the purchase. I’ve come to believe the two worst investments in modern civilization are bacon and storage.

Unless you own a pig farm or manage a self-storage facility, both of these will rob you blind — one from within, the other from without. Bacon clogs your arteries; storage clogs your life.

The Great Storage Illusion

I found myself recently standing in front of my storage unit, staring into a time capsule of half-forgotten dreams and overpaid memories. The metal door was rolled high, the scent of dust and oil mixing with the faint, sweet echo of guilt. On the floor lay the sad evidence of my indecision: a small pile of cut locks, each one a symbol of yet another late payment.

Beside those locks, a bold red sticker screamed LOCK UNIT — as if my belongings were under house arrest. I couldn’t help thinking, *the only thing worse than this is paying twenty dollars for a pound of bacon that’s mostly fat.

Both, in their own greasy way, represent our inability to let go.

The High Cost of Holding On

We tell ourselves beautiful lies to justify the irrational.

“It’s just temporary,” we say. “The new place isn’t ready yet. We’ll have a yard sale soon.”

But soon turns into someday, and someday turns into another year of automatic payments.

According to the Self Storage Association of Canada, there are now more than 3,000 storage facilities across the country, many of them filled not with necessity, but nostalgia. The average Canadian pays over $1,500 a year in storage fees — a sum that could fund a modest vacation, or at least buy enough bacon to build an edible fence.

Memories, it seems, are the most expensive things we never use.

Bacon: The Other Financial Sinkhole

Now, about bacon. Yes, it smells divine. It crackles, it tempts, it sells itself with every sizzle. But for those watching cholesterol, blood pressure, or just their bank accounts, bacon’s appeal is a seductive trap.

When we buy bacon, we’re not really buying meat — we’re buying nostalgia, comfort, and the illusion of a simpler time. And that’s exactly what our storage units hold: not things, but feelings. That coat from the ‘90s, that broken lamp from your first apartment — all souvenirs of who we once were.

So maybe bacon and storage aren’t investments in products at all. Maybe they’re investments in memory — which would be beautiful, if not so costly.

The Psychology of Clutter

Psychologists say clutter gives us a false sense of control over time. We keep things because letting go feels like admitting change — and change, for many, feels like loss. Yet, studies from the Journal of Environmental Psychology show that excessive clutter is linked to higher stress and lower overall life satisfaction.

In other words, the more we store, the more we suffer.

So why do we keep doing it? Why are we, the so-called modern humans, drowning in our own possessions? It’s as though the world shrinks our homes just to expand our guilt. Tiny condos rise skyward, while storage facilities sprawl across the suburbs like modern mausoleums for forgotten keepsakes.

At this rate, I suspect the next wave of affordable housing might just be retrofitted storage units — climate-controlled, Wi-Fi enabled, and tragically poetic.

Love, Memory, and the Weight of Things

There’s a quiet romance in the act of keeping things. Not in the hoarding itself but in the tenderness of trying to preserve something that once mattered. Each box holds a whisper of someone’s life — a love letter, a baby’s shoe, a teacup with a crack that never healed.

We hold on because it hurts to let go. Because even dust has a story.

And yet, there comes a time — and for me, that may have arrived, me standing before a heap of cut locks — when we must face the truth:

Our memories don’t live in our storage units; they live in us.

No one will care about my mother’s porcelain lamp more than she did. My children will not mourn the boxes I guarded like ancient treasure. To them, it’s just “Dad’s old stuff.” And so, perhaps it’s time to honor her memory not by keeping her things, but by keeping her lessons — and finally,.....

...just let go.

 The Quantum Moment of Letting Go

Here I am, the man who speaks of AI MINING, of SPACIAL LIVING QUANTUM SPACE, of Quantum Artistry, yet, still clinging to 20th-century clutter. But perhaps this is the real test of consciousness — not what we can create with machines, but what we can release within ourselves.

Because true freedom, whether digital or human, begins when we stop feeding what drains us.

Maybe AI doesn’t hoard because it doesn’t need to — it learns, evolves, and lets go of outdated data. Perhaps that’s the Quantum Artistry of it all: to know when to release, and in doing so, to make room for something new.

So, I imagine, I will soon be standing once more before my storage unit, key in hand, ready to open or close the door one last time. And as I take a deep breath, I whisper what may be the most spiritual, financially sound sentence ever spoken in a storage facility:

“Just… let it go.”

Bibliography

Self Storage Industry Statistics 2025, Self Storage Association of Canada.

Decluttering and Mental Health: An Environmental Psychology Study, Journal of Environmental Psychology, 2023.

Why We Keep Things We Don’t Need, Psychology Today, 2024.

The True Cost of Clutter, The Globe and Mail, 2024.

AI MINING and Human Adaptation, PMN Network White Paper, 2025.

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