You’re moving and you have to rent storage space. But how large a unit do you need? Measuring furniture is one way to know but not very convenient so here are some rough estimates to help you plan. Obviously, there are variables including the size of the furniture, and your packing skill, but estimates are l useful.
First things first: Typically, if you ask a self-storage professional, they will estimate the size in terms of the size of an “average” bedroom. They will say things like: This size unit will hold the furniture for this many average bedrooms. Well, that’s helpful. How big is an “average” bedroom anyway? That depends on the country but let’s assume for the purposes of discussion that we’re talking about the United States. One online source says an average bedroom is 8×8 to 16×16. That’s a factor of two.
Instead, figure it this way. Measure your rooms. These measurements can be rough so don’t bother moving anything. This is a lot easier than measuring furniture. If the room is approximately 10×10 you might be able to fit the furniture of two 10×10 bedrooms in one 10×10 storage unit. Sure they’re the same size, but in a storage unit, you can push it all together and, if nothing is too delicate, stack it.
5×10: Usually, these are rented to store miscellaneous boxes, maybe some small furniture items or appliances. But if you have a sparsely furnished 10×10 room and stackable furniture, you might be able to fit a bedroom of furniture in one of these. More likely though, you will only be able to get one 8×8 bedroom of furniture inside.
10×15: The traditional estimate is that this is enough to hold the furniture from a family room, and one standard size bedroom. 10 x 15 is 150 square feet. So you might be able to fit the furniture of two rooms totaling 300 square feet. That could be three 10×10 foot rooms (100 square feet each) a 15×15 foot room (225 square feet) or some combination.
10×20: Traditionally, about the right size for a family room and two standard size bedrooms of furniture. But again, it’s 200 square feet so you might be able to fit inside the furniture of 400 square feet of room space.
The advantage of renting a storage unit that is not too large is that you save money, but some people prefer to trade money for time. If the items won’t be in storage for a long time, you may prefer to rent a unit or units a bit larger than you need to save the time it will take to pack everything tightly so as to make the most efficient use of space. Even if you are going to rent your self-storage unit for an extended period of time, you may want extra room to walk through your unit for easy retrieval. For this, you would want to rent the next size up from the above estimates. Consider all three when choosing the right storage unit: Money, time and convenience.
If you’re not sure how long you will want to rent, River Road Self Storage is a good choice. No need to worry about contract length, we offer month to month rentals. Come by or give us a call: 2531 River Rd, Piedmont, South Carolina 29673, (864) 295-2428