At the budget end of the market, Super Easy’s Bec Taylor says: “Some of our regular clients are students from elsewhere who put their stuff in storage over the summer to save themselves a few bucks on rent while they go home for the holidays.”

Professionals moving overseas for work and renting out their homes are another obvious group that may put furniture into indefinite storage as their contracts get extended beyond the original period.

The increase in relationship breakups is a bonanza for storage companies. When couples split up and move separately to somewhere smaller, there is no room for the things they accumulated together. After my first marriage ended, I went overseas indefinitely and rented the smallest unit available near the airport. I had my boxes moved there a few days before my departure and remember the deep satisfaction in having calculated the space precisely down to the last centimetre, so that on my day of departure, I could drive my car in to fit snugly as the final piece of the possessions puzzle: there was a sense of freedom that came from slamming down that roller door on a chapter that was closed.