When you’re heading home from the holidays – you’ll need a place to safely store your belongings. 

Storage is a strange thing to buy because it’s not something you’ll ever have thought about until you need it. 

We’ve written a simple guide to help make it easier for you: 

 

1. How much do you have to store?

If you’re moving out of halls and only have a few items to store you might want to consider one of the storage by the box solutions. 

Lovespace is the most popular of these services in the UK and operates in Durham. 

They’ll come to your location, take away your boxes and store them in a warehouse. When you return to uni they’ll bring the boxes back. 

Full disclosure – it’s likely to be more expensive than driving to a self storage site yourself. BUT if you’re only storing a few boxes it could well be worth it. That’s because the smallest storage units offered by some storage companies will be too big for what you’ll need – which means you’ll be paying fo space you don’t need. 

This options saves you hassle and it doesn’t get more convenient than having someone do all the transportation for you. 

If however, you’re moving out of a house with mates – then you might want to consider splitting a storage unit.

You’re able to use our size guide to work out what size storage unit you would need. 

The storage unit will be more expensive than a box service, but splitting it between multiple people will mean it works out cheaper per person. 

 

2. Use a storage price comparison site 

Finding the best price can be more time consuming than you think. You’ll could end up calling around 5 or 6 companies and they don’t always answer the phone first time. 

There are a few comparison sites you can use: 

• www.local-storage.co.uk
• www.comparethestorage.com
• www.whatstorage.co.uk

These sites should save you time searching and calling individual storage companies to get their prices and availability.

They have the prices on the site. 

Find the lowest price at a facility you’re happy with – and start your search there.

 

3.  Be mindful of “deals”

Some companies, particularly national storage chains, will try to entice you in with special offers. 

50% off your first 3 months. 

4 weeks free. 

Etc. 

Double check the savings are actually worth it by calculating how much your storage is going to cost over the entire period that you’re storing with the company. 

Sometimes the deal, even with the cheaper up-front costs, works out more expensive in the long run. 

 

4.  Read the online reviews

Online reviews aren’t perfect. Companies can solicit reviews from only their happy customers. 

And the people who leave reviews unsolicited tend to be people who’ve had very negative experiences. 

So often what you’ll see is either really positive reviews or really negative reviews. Which doesn’t accurately reflect the company you’re storing with. 

The key here is seeing if there aren’t too many negative reviews. 1 or 2 negative reviews could be put down to chance or even the reviewers themselves. Every storage company could have had a bad day over 10+ years of operating and it might not even have been their fault. 

But if there are multiple bad reviews and the storage company hasn’t attempted to respond to those customers online – then this would be storage to avoid.

 

Conclusion

That’s all there is to it. 

Getting the best storage deal is about finding space that is clean, dry & secure – that is as close to your location in Durham as possible – at the best possible price. 

Once you’ve found a few facilities that are located close to you and you’re happy with the quality of the storage unit – find & negotiate the cheapest price. And you’re good to go.