I started at a rented house with an old two stall garage that I had to share with the people in the other 1/2 of the house. My car barely fit in it, I was 19.

6 months later we bought a house with no garage at all (it was what we could afford). About a year later I started renting a 2 car garage several blocks from our home. As expected, it didn't take long to fill it with "stuff". About a year later, I rented a 4 stall garage (it was 20' deep and 36' wide), and farther from home then the last garage was. I ran a dirt track car out of that garage, and filled 3 stalls of it of it with stuff needed to run the race car.

At about 26yo, we bought a house in the country with a 26 x 36 garage. The race car and its tag along stuff occupied the whole garage. The cars my wife and I drove sat outside, but the place had a lot of space I could park parts cars on. At one point I had 13 cars and trucks I was parting out, 4 cars and trucks licensed we were driving, and the race car and its stuff in the garage. We lived there for 16 years. Towards the end of that time, the race car was replaced with parts removed from the parted cars, our personal cars still sat outside, the garage was full.

Then I started my welding shop and rented a 36 x 36 building back in town (still had all the stuff at home in the country). Three years later I rented a larger 40' x 60' building to house my welding shop. That building filled up pretty fast, but a lot of the stuff was not my stuff, it was customer stuff. I finally figured that out when we moved back into town to a house with a 24 x 30 garage, and all the stuff at the house in the country had to be dwindled down to fit into the garage in town, and any spare space at my welding shop. That was not a fun time. At the time, I had to split 10 car trailer loads of parts between the house and my welding shop, and I ended up scrapping 6,600lbs of Mopar motors, transmissions, and a huge assortment of other Mopar parts I didn't have room for.

Two years after that, we sold that house and moved to our current location. This place is zoned for business, and the plan was to move the welding shop here. The issue is, there is one 24 x 24 garage, with another 24 x 24 garage under the 1st garage (a double decker 24' x 24' garage). Here everything except licensed vehicles had to be under cover. The stuff in the 40 x 60 building, and the stuff crammed into the 24' x 30' garage had to fit into those two garages, plus there had to be space to actually work on stuff inside the upper garage. Another major down sizing. This was was much worse, because this was all the "good stuff". I moved the welding shop to the current house 6 months after we bought it.

This current place has a nice flat side yard. The original plan was to put a 40' x 40' building (the size I determined was the correct size for my needs, remember I already had a 40 x 60 that housed a lot of other peoples stuff, and I was not doing that again) on that side yard. It would have to meet current building codes, and it would have to be a turn key set up (I was working long hours in the welding shop, and a building builder I am not). That turn key 40' x 40' building in the year 2,000 was over $50 grand. Money I did not have just after buying the property. When the economy tanked in 2006 (around here), I was pretty happy I was not on the hook for that additional $50 grand. The building was not built, and at this point won't be while I'm alive.

i see lots of guys here telling others that they should build a building 2x what they think is big enough. 30 years ago I would have agreed, but these days I'm not so sure. After having to go through two large building downsizes a few years apart, I can tell you it is a lot harder to sell off or give stuff away then it is to not buy it in the 1st place. If you don't have the space to put it, its a very good reason not to spend your money on it Build the building you think is the size you need, then don't buy what you don't have space for.

Just read what these guys are saying, you will keep buying stuff until you run out of space, then you build a bigger building so you can buy more stuff. Don't get caught up in that mad cycle. When you get to the point your collection has to (or should) go away, its very hard to watch it go, and could be even harder if you have to make it go away and it seems like no one wants it. There is a very big difference between what you need and what you want. Build a building based on what you need, not on what you think you might want. There is nothing wrong with building what you can afford to start with, then adding more if you NEED it.