Pocket Move
Decide less. Carry less.
Before you rent storage, see what it really costs.
A few questions. No sign-up, no list of your furniture, nothing to install. We don’t recommend storage companies and we don’t get paid by any of them.
What are they quoting you a month?
The real figure on the contract, not the move-in special.
$a month
How long do you think you’ll need it?
Most people underestimate this. Pick the number you’d be embarrassed by, not the one you’re hoping for.
Roughly how much are you storing?
A guess is fine — this only sets a starting value for the contents.
Roughly what’s it all worth?
We’ve filled these in from the size you picked — that’s our guess, not your things. You have a far better idea than we do, so change them.
Buy it all again$Sell it all now$
If it all vanished tomorrow, how much would you buy again?
Be honest. This is the question that decides the answer, and most people’s real number is lower than their first instinct.
Still need the monthly price.
Put the figure from the contract in above and the answer appears. We won’t assume a price — units run from under $50 to several hundred, and guessing would put a thumb on the scale.
Questions people ask before they sign
What size storage unit do you need for a 3-bedroom house?
Most 3-bedroom houses need a 10×20, which is 200 square feet and about 1,600 cubic feet — a single garage. A 10×15 works if you’re storing furniture but not appliances, or if the house is lightly furnished. The honest answer is that it depends far more on how much you own than on how many bedrooms you have, which is why the calculator asks what you’re storing rather than the size of your house.
How big of a storage unit do you need for a 1-bedroom apartment?
A 5×10 holds a studio’s worth — 400 cubic feet, roughly the back of a small van. A one-bedroom with a sofa, a bed and appliances usually needs a 10×10, which is 800 cubic feet. If you’re only storing part of the flat, work in cubic feet rather than unit sizes: a medium moving box is about 3 cubic feet, so a 10×10 takes somewhere around 200 boxes once you account for furniture and the space you need to walk in.
How many cubic feet is a 10×10 storage unit?
800 cubic feet. A 10×10 is 100 square feet of floor, and units are typically 8 feet to the ceiling. The same arithmetic gives you the rest: a 5×5 is 200 cubic feet, a 5×10 is 400, a 10×15 is 1,200 and a 10×20 is 1,600. Worth knowing you can’t use all of it — stacking to the ceiling is rarely practical and you need a path to the back.
How much does a storage unit cost per month?
It varies more than any published average suggests — by city, by unit size, by season, and by whether you’re on a move-in rate that goes up later. We don’t publish other companies’ prices, because they change and because we don’t recommend storage companies. What matters is the figure on your own contract, not a national average. Put that number into the calculator above and it will show you what it totals over the time you actually expect to need it.
What is the real cost of a storage unit over a year?
Twelve times the monthly rate, plus whatever the rate rises to partway through. That is the number almost nobody works out before signing, because storage is sold as a monthly figure and monthly figures feel small. A unit at $150 a month is $1,800 over a year and $3,600 over two — and the second year usually costs more than the first, because move-in rates are introductory.
Is renting a storage unit worth it?
It depends on one thing: whether you’d buy the contents again. Storage is worth it for things you genuinely can’t replace, and for short gaps where you know the end date. It stops being worth it at the month your rent passes what replacing the contents would cost — and for most household goods that month arrives sooner than people expect, because furniture loses value while rent does not. The calculator above works out that month from your own numbers.
Should you sell your furniture or put it in storage?
Work out what you’d actually buy again, not what the whole lot is worth. Most people would replace far less than they store. If selling now brings in more than replacing that shorter list would cost later, storing it is the more expensive option from the first month — and that happens more often than you’d think, because used furniture sells for a fraction of what it costs new, but so does the furniture you’d buy to replace it.