Or rather, this being Channel 4, it doesn’t just show us what their lives are like, it actively tries to improve them. The format bears many similarities to previous Channel 4 documentary shows like “You Are What you Eat”, in that we are introduced to an ordinary member of the public in a seemingly hopeless position, and then we watch as the messianic expert comes in to attempt to turn their life around through a few weeks of intensive assistance. In this case the expert is Birmingham-based psychotherapist Stelios Kiosses, who has been treating compulsive hoarders for the past 15 years.

Nigel Jennings, 55, from Liverpool

 The first episode introduced viewers to Nigel Jennings, 55, from Birkenhead nearLiverpool, whose two-up, two-down terraced house has become completely overrun with clutter. At the start of the programme most of the rooms in his house have been rendered inaccessible, and he is only able to give the appearance of living a normal life by going to his (extremely patient) best friend’s rather less cluttered house around the corner, where he does most of his washing, cooking and laundry.

Like many compulsive hoarders, Nigel began by collecting things for pleasure, including over 4,000 pieces of willow-pattern china and 36 antique sewing machines (14 of which were eventually disposed of). Unfortunately, his passion for possessions ended up ballooning until it had swallowed almost his entire house, with every room piled high with mountains of junk – old clothes, sewing supplies, kitchen appliances, old records and all kinds of nick-knacks.

Into this den of obsession steps Dr Kiosses, who swiftly manages to relate Nigel’s obsession to a traumatic event that occurred about nine years before, at around the same time the clutter began to get out of hand. It emerges that Nigel is gay, and had a long-term male partner named Sid who died of cancer at this time. Sid was the one who introduced Nigel to the vice of willow-pattern china collecting, and he admits that he holds onto all these things as a way of insulating himself physically and emotionally from the trauma of Sid’s death.

Having diagnosed the root cause behind Nigel’s compulsive hoarding, Dr Kiosses then manages to gently coax him into disposing of many of his surplus possessions. This is done partly through getting Nigel to transform into his transvestite alter-ego, Miranda, a mode in which he finds he can deal much more decisively with the clutter that afflicts his life. He is also aided by a team of specialist declutterers, who tactically get him to go through all the rooms of his house at great speed, forcing him to make snap decisions about whether he wants to hang onto items or not. In all, he gets rid of 5 extra-large skips full of junk, leaving Nigel with the prospect of a future which is far less cluttered in both a physical and emotional sense.

Hordes of viewers

“The Hoarder Next Door” apparently managed to attract hordes of viewers; the DigitalSpy website reported that it got a total of audience of 3.3 million. The show definitely does what it sets out to do very effectively; Nigel Jennings was depicted candidly yet sympathetically, while Stelios Kiosses came across as a kind and thoughtful man.

If the series can maintain the same level of quality, “The Hoarder Next Door” should be packing them in for weeks to come.

You can view the first episode of “The Hoarder Next Door” using the 4OD service, available here (until June 24):

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-hoarder-next-door/4od

It’s probably something to do with the recession. Most of us could do with some more money in these straitened times, and the idea that there could be piles of gold waiting to be found behind every padlocked self storage shutter no doubt stimulates a few peoples’ inner entrepreneur.

As well as being informative about a fascinating sub-culture, these programmes attempt to turn their protagonists’ adventures into something of a soap-opera, emphasising the scrapes and rivalries with other self storage scavengers they run into along the way.

Here in the UK, a similar television trend has recently emerged with new series of programmes about compulsive hoarding suddenly appearing on both the BBC and Channel 4. These are more in the mould of traditional documentaries, without being glamorised by frothier storylines, but they should provide an interesting glimpse into a serious problem none the less.

The Hoarder Next Door (Channel 4, Thursdays 9pm)

This week saw the first episode of The Hoarder Next Door, in which psychotherapist Stelios Kiosses visits the homes of people who have a serious problem with hoarding in order to try and help them get rid of some of their surplus possessions, and regain control of their lives.

The first episode featured 55-year-old Nigel Jennings from Liverpool, who was billed in the publicity material as having a house where “the only place he can sit at home is his mattress, and even that isn’t completely safe”, because the rest of his home is so piled-high with clutter.

The format requires Stelios Kiossess to spend six weeks alongside his patient in each episode, accompanied by a team of expert declutterers. Compulsive hoarding is often linked to wider psychological trauma, and the programme-makers have hinted that Mr Jennings needs help with getting over his “painful” past.

Britain‘s Biggest Hoarders (BBC 1, Tuesdays 9pm)

Meanwhile, the BBC’s contribution to this issue is Britain’s Biggest Hoarders, in which TV presenter Jasmine Harman attempts to help some people with serious hoarding issues.

This seems fairly similar to Channel 4′s offering in many ways, although the choice of presenter means it should have a more personal feel. Jasmine Harman approaches these issues with personal experience, as she also presented the previous BBC documentary My Hoarder Mum and Me, about her Cypriot-born mother Vasoulla, who herself has a serious hoarding problem. In this new programme she will revisit her mother, as well as looking at other members of the general public who have the condition.

Together, these two programmes demonstrate TV’s new fascination with the issue of compulsive hoarding. Storage.co.uk will review them both in the near future.

There’s a curious irony about babies – they are tiny, but the space they need is huge!

Becoming a parent soon becomes a mission to find more space: space for the toys, clothes, nappies, kitchen extras, gifts (wanted or not).

Then there’s the grandparents who seem to be around a lot more, and usually demand their own living quarters within your now makeshift bed and breakfast.

And then there is the baby itself and all the household space they seem to need! Yesterday’s yoga space, study or guest room soon becomes today’s nursery, baby overspill or Buggy Park!

Storemates to the rescue!

With space at a premium and self storage costing more than most new families can afford, Storemates decided to stand up for space-starved parents everywhere.

Storemates was co-founded by parent and flat-dweller Shaff Prabatani, who ran out of living space himself when he and his partner Louise decided to start a family.

Because expensive commercial self storage was not an option they could squeeze out of their new household budget, Shaff dropped home-made flyers through the letterboxes of all his neighbours asking if they had any room to store his extra items in return for a small monthly fee. Shaff explains:

“I was amazed; within a few days, fifteen neighbours who I didn’t even know contacted me offering to store my belongings in their lofts, garages, spare rooms, even under their bed. Eventually I stored my belongings in a neighbour’s garage for less than half the monthly price of the cheapest local self storage centre in my area, and the idea of a website that could provide that service was born.”

Inspired by his own positive experience of communities getting together to sort out their own storage arrangements, he co-founded Storemates.co.uk which has now grown into a UK-wide service providing affordable storage solutions.

The Storemates formula

Like all good ideas, the concept is a simple one. If you are fortunate enough to have some spare space in your home/garage/shed/loft, you can ‘rent’ it out to people nearby who don’t.

Depending on the size and details of your space, you could earn anywhere from £5 to £25 per week, a welcome addition to household income in these current times.

Storemates only takes the first two weeks ‘rent’ as an admin fee – the rest is all yours!

And if you are more community minded, you don’t even have to charge at all and instead can suggest swapping a local service like gardening, DIY or Spanish lessons.

If you are in need of storage – maybe it’s the gap between babies and you don’t want to part with all the clothes, toys or other baby stuff until the next one arrives, but lack space in your own home – Storemates is a great solution compared to costly commercial options. Plus you are likely to get to meet someone new in your neighbourhood, which is always interesting and potentially invaluable.

The small print

When you find a ‘Storemate’, both parties sign a Storage Agreement (a template is provided by Storemates on the website). All the belongings are checked, and an itemised list is created by both parties to make sure everything is above board.

There are even downloadable labels on the site to make it easier to remember what you put in those boxes later on when you come out of the other side of sleepless nights.

The Storemates website walks you through the process and all the legal jargon.

So parents everywhere can now learn to love their space again (as well as their neighbours for looking after their belongings!)

We (at Twofour) are looking for people who have been using self storage for some time and may potentially have hidden treasures which could generate them some cash at auction.

We may meet long-standing collectors who have no room left in their home, families with items put aside whilst moving house (items long since forgotten) or individuals whose partners put their foot down on keeping clutter out of the house.

The show will follow these individuals as some key items amongst their belongings are found and make the journey from storage unit to auction room. We will see if any money can be made from items hoarded over the years – and you could be surprised what your hidden treasures are worth!

At this stage we are looking for customers with self-storage units who would be interested in taking part in a 10-minute “taster film”.

We are asking people to nominate their wives, husbands and friends who are hoarding items away, to see if any money can be made from their hidden treasures… money that could go towards a wedding or another special event, a holiday, general household bills, or even help those with young families.

For more information, please contact storageshow@twofour.co.uk

Unlikely double-act

“Auction Hunters”, which is very much in the same vein as other recent American reality-TV success stories such as “Storage Wars” and “Storage Hunters”, is centred on the unlikely double-act of Allen Haff, a clean-cut antiques expert, and his business partner Tom Jones, a heavily-tattooed sage on all things collectible.

Much like the protagonists of “Storage Wars” and “Storage Hunters”, the duo earn their money by moving around between different self storage lien auctions to buy the contents of defaulted self storage units. Then they go through their purchases and try to resell them for as much as possible.

Self storage scavengers are only allowed very brief access to the defaulted units before they have to make their bids, so each one represents a significant gamble. They have to outbid the other self storage scavengers who come to the auctions, and then often find that the unit they’ve staked their money on contains nothing but worthless junk.

According to an online article, the duo admit that experience has taught them which signs to look out for during their brief tour of the self storage units before bidding. Any unit which contains a locked safe is always likely to have something valuable in it, while they’ve learnt to favour well-organized, neatly packed piles of boxes that have been properly secured over units where everything seems badly organized.

Warning: don’t try this at home

Understandably, “Auction Hunters” concentrates on the lien auctions where the duo manage to uncover particularly interesting or valuable items, although these are in the minority. They admit that most of the units they buy make them little or no money, and their business model is based on the 80/20 rule – they make 80% of their money from just 20% of the units they get their hands on.

In order to make this point clear, each episode starts with a text disclaimer explaining that they don’t normally make as much money as the show suggests, to prevent any members of the audience from thinking that self storage scavenging would make an easy living.

In terms of what the “Auction Hunters” are actually looking for inside their units, rare collectibles are a relatively small part of the total. The duo gravitate towards expensive everyday items such as power tools, musical instruments and household appliances, which have a high resale value, although the show mostly concentrates on the rare occasions when they discover antiques.

Just in the first episode, for example, they chance upon a 19^th-century British pepper-box handgun and a pre-WW2 train set. Apparently the best ever find made by someone in their line of work was a set of handwritten Beatles lyrics penned by John Lennon, which eventually sold for over $2 million each, although the pair haven’t quite come across anything in that league during the episodes which have been broadcast so far.

For British viewers who want to check-out “Auction Hunters”, the Discovery Channel is broadcast on channel 520 for Sky customers and channel 212 on Virgin Media.

It focuses on Brandon and Lori Bernier, a husband and wife team who visit self storage facilities where tenants have defaulted on their rent. They participate in lien auctions, competing with other professional self storage scavengers to bid for permission to clear some of these units out.

Having only had a very limited opportunity to see what might be inside the self storage units, they have to take a risk in bidding for something that could have lots of valuable items inside, or might just be full of junk.

If they are successful at an auction, they pay for the rights to whatever is inside the units, taking on the associated risk. If the unit contains something valuable then they can make a profit, but they also have to dispose of all the other items, whether they have any value or not.

High-stakes poker game

The suspense of wondering what could be inside each unit creates plenty of drama, with the ever-present possibility that it could contain riches, or that it might be just rags.

Storage Hunters has been heavily marketed around this theme, with the show’s press release saying:

“You won’t believe what they find: from hidden bundles of cash to thousand-dollar chairs, from the dangerous to the downright weird. With killer instinct, the Berniers target the best storage units in the country and go to extreme lengths to get their hands on what’s stashed inside. Follow them to the country’s most competitive auctions as they risk a fortune to go head-to-head with hostile locals.”

As you would imagine, the actual contents of the self storage units they get their hands on are frequently rather mundane. This Youtube clip, entitled Storage Hunting Gone Bad, shows a typical day in the life of a self storage scavenger: five abandoned units all filled with rubbish, and almost nothing of any value in sight:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjAvm-v8GdY

Contrived situations

Storage Hunters is one of several shows focussing on scavenging which have appeared on US TV in the last few years, along with Auction Hunters and Storage Wars.

The producers of Storage Hunters in the US, TruTV, refer to its narrative style as “actuality”; while it purports to be a straight fly-on-the-wall rendering of what happens in real life, the show has been accused of staging some elements to create additional drama. These include those involving Jess McClure, another self storage scavenger, who appears as the Berniers’ main rival in several episodes.

If you want to form your own opinion of this show, Storage Hunters is available in the UK on Dave (Sky 111, Virgin 128, Freeview 19) – and if you don’t have access to any of those, you may be able to see clips on YouTube.

To find out peoples’ clutter habits, you can click here. If you would like to know about the unusual items of clutter some people admitted they’ve hung onto, these can be found here.

Everyone who completed the survey was automatically entered into our National Declutter Week 2012 prize draw, which offered cash prizes to four lucky respondents.

Storage.co.uk is pleased to announce that the following people were the lucky winners:

1st Prize: £100

Mrs Katrina Dare, Bedford

She said:

“My best tip for decluttering is to focus on one room at a time and then break it down into half hour sessions so you don’t feel too overwhelmed by a huge task!”

Runners-up: £50 each

Ms Caroline Cummins, Manchester

She said:

“To celebrate National Declutter Week I am going to be ruthless with my clutter. I will be donating all the clothes I never wear to charity shops, selling a load of unused or unwanted items on Ebay and trying to recycle or fix whatever can be salvaged!! Perhaps I will need a National Declutter Fortnight for all that though!”

Ms Elisabet Fogerty, Hertfordshire

She said:

“During National Declutter Week I will go through my wardrobe and dispose of any items that I have not worn for the past two years. These will be bagged up for charity. I will also have a sort-out of books, DVDs and CDs which will join my old clothes in the charity bag.”

Mrs Jayne Wilson, Tyne and Wear

She said:

“My decluttering tip is:  if you haven’t worn an item for six months, throw it out or donate it to a charity shop”.

Self storage facilities always seem to be depicted as illicit dens where shady things happen, patronised exclusively by a cast of criminals, weirdos and others who have something to hide.

Track record

Regardless of where the film comes from, the treatment stays remarkably similar. Australia has already given us Michael Craft’s gory Storage (see our blog/review), about a series of murders which occur within a grimy, rat-infested self storage facility – hardly a model of the industry.

Hollywood has played the same trick too, on more than one occasion: the 2003 biographical drama Monster, about the life of serial killer Aileen Wuornos, showed her living inside a self storage unit, while an episode from one of the early seasons of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation featured a case in which the team pull back the shutters of a storage unit to find a makeshift operating theatre being used for illegal sex-change procedures, complete with a decomposing corpse upon the table.

Storage 24

Now British cinema is getting in on the act, with the release of the upcoming Storage 24 on  June 29. The production company Independent Films provides the following synopsis:

London is in chaos. A military cargo plane has crashed leaving its highly classified contents strewn across the city. Completely unaware London is in lockdown, Charlie (Noel Clarke) and Shelley (Antonia Campbell-Hughes), accompanied by best friends Mark (Colin O’Donoghue) and Nikki (Laura Haddock) are at Storage 24 dividing up their possessions after a recent break-up.

Suddenly, the power goes off. Trapped in a dark maze of endless corridors, a mystery predator is hunting them one by one. In a place designed to keep things in, how do you get out?

Written by, and starring, successful young British writer/director/actor Noel Clarke (best known for his two-series stint in Doctor Who, and his lead role in the film Kidulthood), this film would appear – predictably enough – to continue the trend of films that show self storage in a negative light.

This is not necessarily a bad thing – if you take the view that there’s no such thing as bad publicity. At least it demonstrates that the filmmakers think those who pay to see it will be familiar enough with self storage to understand what’s going on.

Yet the one-dimensional view of self storage offered by the film industry is rather disappointing. Self storage says a lot about the way we consume things in the modern age, so why isn’t it treated more seriously? Self storage facilities could make the perfect backdrop for thoughtful dramas which analyse the way we now tend to equate our possessions with success in life, or perhaps comedies about how shared ownership has become central to so many modern relationships.

Even Alfred Hitchcock, were he alive today, could probably have done something much more dramatic and exciting with the concept of self storage, without resorting to bucket-loads of gore.

Although from the synopsis it looks as though Storage 24 will conform to type, it would be wrong to prejudge it. We look forward to seeing it, and to discussing it in these pages. Meanwhile we would also welcome a more thoughtful kind of film about self storage that breaks the mould.

Why hasn’t VAT been charged on self storage in the past?                    

VAT, which is currently charged at the standard rate of 20%, hasn’t previously been levied on self storage rentals because self storage was treated in the same way as commercial property lending by the tax authorities. Under the previous tax arrangements, the lending of any kind of land, including rental property, was exempt from VAT.

However, not all kinds of storage have previously been treated in the same way. In particular, the kind of warehouse storage provided by removal companies is currently subject to VAT. The reasoning behind this distinction was that self storage companies are being paid in return for letting a discrete area of land to their tenants (in the form of private, individual self storage units), which means they are in effect operating in the same way as property letting companies.

By contrast, warehouse storage firms do not charge their customers in return for a discrete area of space (as their warehouses usually aren’t divided into individual units), but are instead being paid for providing the service of storing peoples’ goods. This was the crucial difference which meant one was VAT-liable and the other was not.

The government has recently been researching what it calls “borderline anomalies” in the tax system; cases like this where two parts of the same industry are treated in different ways under the tax system. Their conclusion was that self storage and removal company warehouse storage should be treated in the same way, in order to “level the playing field between different types of storage”. Their report is available here:

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/budget2012/vat-con-4801.pdf

HMRC estimates that charging VAT on self storage will generate an additional £15 million for the treasury during the 2012-13 tax year, which they forecast will have risen to £30 million by 2013-14.

When will this plan come into effect?

Under the proposals outlined in the document which is linked to above, self storage customers would have to start charging their customers VAT from October 1 this year.

What impacts will charging VAT on self storage have?

The impacts of charging VAT on self storage will vary for different self storage firms. The basic upshot of it is that virtually all self storage companies will have to pay 20% of their self storage rental income to the government in tax.

However, it is not quite that simple. Obviously, the net result of this is likely to be that self storage becomes more expensive for customers, as firms pass on the cost of this extra tax, but it will be up to each individual firm to decide how much they pass on and how much they attempt to absorb from their existing turnover. All self storage firms will be aware that increasing their prices too much is likely to deter potential customers, which is the last thing they want to do.

It also needs to be pointed out that this change will not affect all customers equally. Most businesses which use self storage (businesses are thought to account for roughly 1/3 of all self storage customers) will be able to reclaim any VAT they are charged, so for them the cost increase will be neutral. Similarly, HMRC anticipates that most self storage providers will start reclaiming VAT themselves once they are charging it on their core businesses, offsetting some of the extra expense.

Where this plan will definitely cause self storage providers extra difficulties is in the administration department. VAT-registered businesses have to send HMRC a quarterly VAT return, creating extra paperwork for the industry. They will also have to communicate that this change has taken place to all their existing customers, which will involve working out how much notice they are legally required to give before altering monthly rental fees.

Where this change will create particular administrative hurdles is in dealing with companies who want to claim VAT-relief, as they are likely to need a statement added to their monthly invoices which makes it clear how much VAT they have been charged each month.

Shortage of self storage in the north

Unfortunately for people who need self storage space in the UK, coverage still remains fairly sparse outside of London and the South-East of England. Even the larger chains who have ventured north, such as Big Yellow, have mostly stuck to the large cities like Manchester and Leeds.

However, this has created an opportunity for energetic businesspeople who have the drive and inspiration to establish their own self storage firms in the places where their larger rivals haven’t yet arrived.

Darlington Self Storage is one such ambitious company. Customers who are looking for a straightforward service know what they’re getting as soon as they arrive on the Darlington Self Storage website, which lays out everything they could possibly need to know without adding any pointless gimmicks or unnecessary extras.

What Darlington Self Storage offers is storage space, pure and simple, in the form of robust steel shipping containers located on their premises in Whessoe Road. Like an increasing number of self storage firms nowadays, 24 hour access to the units comes as standard for paying customers, while round-the-clock CCTV cameras maintain a constant level of security.

Pay for self storage by the week

Darlington Self Storage also makes the terms of what it offers clear and simple to understand. Conveniently (and unlike at many other self storage firms), customers can pay for their self storage rental by the week, meaning they aren’t tied to any long-term contracts. That doesn’t mean they want to discourage people from staying, of course: discounts are also advertised for people who say they want to hold onto their self storage unit long-term. Each unit also comes with its own padlock, meaning customers don’t need to go to the trouble of providing their own.

Something else that makes them stand out amongst their larger rivals is that Darlington Self Storage actually encourages people to book online rather than over the phone, saving everyone involved time and effort. Customers also have completely free access to their self storage unit, meaning they can come and go whenever they like if they suddenly need to get something.

All in all, Darlington Self Storage is an excellent container self storage firm that offers its customers a refreshingly simple, straightforward way of getting their hands on some extra space. While they may not have the marketing budget of one of the larger self storage companies, the personal touch they can provide means their service is likely to be every bit as good.