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Has the time finally come to take that round-the-world trip you’ve been planning for years? Or maybe your employer is sending you to another location for a few months? Or perhaps you’re simply moving to a smaller apartment and won’t have room for all your belongings? There are a variety of reasons why you might need to store your furniture for a certain period of time. Accordingly, different types of storage are available. It’s important to work out how long you will need to store your belongings ahead of time, as well as how much space you require and whether or not you will occasionally need access to your possessions. This will help you decide which option makes the most sense for you.

Free storage with friends and acquaintances

Before you consider paid options, it makes sense to ask around among your friends and acquaintances. Believe it or not, those people you read about with big houses, attics and storerooms do actually exist! Perhaps someone would be willing to help you out — especially if you only need temporary storage for a short time. To play it safe, you could even agree the terms/duration of the storage in writing to ensure there’s no bad feeling later on.

The container solution

Storage containers are ideal if you need to store your entire household — they are incredibly spacious and can accommodate complete sets of furnishings. Once fully loaded, the containers are then sheltered from the weather in large warehouses, or even stored on your property. In particular, this makes sense if you only need to store your belongings for a short time, for example due to renovation work at home.

Always available: Self-storage

These days, self-storage facilities can be found in virtually every town and city. Their major benefit is that they can be booked in a wide range of different sizes. From just a few pieces of furniture and boxes to an entire household, these heated and dry rooms can store all of your home’s contents. A major advantage: You get your own key to your windowless storage room and can access your belongings whenever you want. In most cases, even the storage period can be flexibly extended — so if you need to spend an extra month exploring a far-flung continent, that’s no problem. Similar to an apartment, you pay a monthly rental fee for self-storage. Naturally, the amount depends on the volume of your selected storage room.

The traditional option: The storeroom

Warehouses or storerooms are ideal if you’re certain that you won’t need your furniture and boxes for a long time. Usually, storerooms are operated by conventional removals companies. With this option, you don’t store your belongings yourself as with self-storage. Instead, the removals company stores them for you and provides you with an inventory list. You should choose this type of storage if you already know exactly when you want to pick up your belongings — and only for items you can definitely live without in the meantime.