Storage unit math: what size you need, and whether you need one
The standard sizes, what fits in each, and the question the unit cannot answer for you.
To size a storage unit, add up the floor space your things take when stacked to head height with a walkway down the middle, then round up one size. A single room usually fits a 5x10, a one-bedroom apartment a 10x10, and a two- or three-bedroom home a 10x15 or 10x20. Anything you would not pay to keep for a year should not go in.
The sizes, and what people actually put in them
Units come in a handful of standard footprints, quoted in feet. The names are the floor dimensions; the height is usually around eight feet and nobody uses it, which is the first thing to fix.
- 5x5: a closet. Boxes, a bicycle, seasonal things, the contents of a dorm room over the summer.
- 5x10: a small bedroom or a studio apartment. A mattress on its side, a dresser, a chair and twenty boxes.
- 10x10: a one-bedroom apartment, or the furniture from two rooms of a house. This is the size most people rent and the size most people overfill.
- 10x15: a two-bedroom home, including appliances if you stand them along the back wall.
- 10x20: a three-bedroom home, or a smaller house plus the garage. Also the size of a parking space, which is roughly what it is.
How to do the math
Boxes stack. Furniture mostly does not. So the method is to measure the floor space of the pieces that will sit on the floor, the sofa, the dresser, the table on its side, the fridge, add a strip about three feet wide down the middle so you can reach the back without unloading the front, and then see what is left for box stacks. A box stack five high on a two-foot square holds a lot.
Two pieces break the arithmetic every time: mattresses and sofas. A mattress goes on its long edge against a wall and takes almost no floor, but it needs the full height and it needs to be covered. A sofa either stands on its end, which works for some and ruins others, or it takes its full footprint. Measure those two before you choose, and if it is close, go one size up. The cost of a size too small is a second unit.
Climate control matters more here than the brochure suggests
Most units in the region are drive-up: a roll door, a concrete floor, outside air. In July that is a hot box and in January it is a freezer, and the swing between them is what does the damage. Wood furniture moves, veneers peel, upholstery takes on the smell of the unit, photographs stick together, and anything electronic collects condensation every time the temperature crosses back over.
If the load is boxes of tools and a lawnmower, a drive-up unit is fine. If it holds a dining table you care about, a piano, instruments, photographs or anything with a battery, pay for an interior climate-controlled unit or do not store those things at all. Either way, everything goes on pallets or boards rather than the floor, and everything soft gets a cover.
The question the unit cannot answer
A storage unit is one of two things. It is a place to keep your belongings during a gap between homes, or it is a way of not deciding about them. The first is useful and short. The second runs for years, and we know because clearing out those units is a service we sell.
The test is a year. If you would not pay a year of rent to keep what is in the unit, it does not belong in one. Sell it, give it away, or let us take it, and rent a smaller unit for the things that pass. Most people who do this honestly drop one size, and a few find they do not need the unit at all.
The short gap between two homes
The other common reason to store is timing: the sale closes before the purchase does, the new lease starts a week after the old one ends, the renovation runs long. For that, renting a unit and moving everything twice is usually the hard way. We hold loads for exactly that gap and deliver them to the new address when it is ready, which turns the move into one job with a pause in it rather than two jobs and a unit.
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Common questions
Storage unit math: what size you need, and whether you need one: the short answers
Roughly the contents of a one-bedroom apartment: a mattress and bed frame, a sofa, a dresser, a table and chairs, and thirty or forty boxes, provided the boxes stack and the mattress stands on its edge.
In the Capital Region, yes for wood furniture, upholstery, instruments, photographs and electronics. The winter-to-summer swing in a drive-up unit is what damages them. Tools, plastic bins and garage contents are fine without it.
Measure the floor space of the furniture that cannot stack, leave a walkway, and fill the rest with box stacks. If it is close between two sizes, take the larger one.
Yes. We hold loads through the gap between a closing and a move-in and deliver them when the new place is ready, which is simpler than renting a unit and moving everything twice.
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