How much space do I need?
This depends on what you want to store. The best way to make a calculation is to pack up everything you intend to store and then measure how much space it takes up. However, if this is impractical then the following provides a helpful rough guide:
- Locker
- Sports equipment (be careful on height with skis)
- 3 or 4 medium-sized boxes
- 25 sq ft
- 30 medium-sized boxes (packed closely)
- 50 sq ft
- 1x the contents of a Luton Box Van
- A studio flat’s contents
- 75 sq ft
- 2x the contents of a Luton Box Van
- A 2-bedroom home’s contents
- 100 sq ft
- Average size of a one-car garage
- A 3-bedroom home’s contents
- 200 sq ft
- Average size of a two-car garage
- A 4/5-bedroom home’s contents
These figures are obviously approximate, as one person’s idea of what a home or a garage can contain may be quite different from another’s. For some more specific advice on how much space individual objects take up, use the Storage Ready Reckoner.
How big is a square foot?
If you’re not accustomed to working things out in square feet than it may be hard to picture these sizes in your head. This diagram should help you visualise them:
The easiest way to imagine them is as either:
The diameter of a 12inch Vinyl record or The distance across a standard laptop screen
This means that if you’re viewing this on a laptop whilst listening to some old favourites then it couldn’t really be simpler! It’s worth noting that these are square, rather than cubic, measurements; the self storage industry doesn’t include the height people fill with goods in calculating how much space they use, only the amount of floor their belongings cover.
How big is 100 square feet?
These lengths are a little less common in everyday life, but a few familiar examples may help give you a visual sense of them:
- 3 metres is quite a common length for HDMI cables, so if you’ve got one plugged into the back of your television stretching it out might be an easy way to make comparisons
- 11 feet would be close to the length of an average sized man and an average sized woman lying head-to-toe, so doing that and then removing twelve inches provides a fairly accurate view of how large the space is. Alternatively, an adult and a child whose combined height is around 10 feet doing the same thing would be even better (and fun for the whole family).
- 100 sq ft is also the average size of a one-car garage’s total floor area.
- 100 sq ft is also about the size of a small parking space (average sized ones are about 124 sq ft), so again, imagining one that has a roof 7ft above it would let you experiment with how much stuff this can accommodate.