How You Can Save Money by Using Self Storage

Business storage warehouse

The self storage industry was traditionally used by people who needed to store their belongings for a couple of weeks to a few months. House movers who had to vacate their old property before being able to move into their new home were a common early customer in the industry.

Today, however, the self storage market is booming with consumers and businesses, who are finding ever increasingly creative ways to make use of the abundance of cheap storage units in an otherwise expensive property market.

Space in your home is expensive

Many of us are using that spare room in our houses to store all the stuff that we no longer use, but just can’t seem to part with. From a financial point of view this doesn’t make a lot of sense. Your own home is far more expensive per square foot than a container in a warehouse.

According to home.co.uk the average prices of two and three bedroom homes in Edinburgh are £173k and £262k respectively. That’s on average an extra £89k being shelled out for that 3rd room. The price for a self storage container big enough to fill an entire small to medium sized bedroom’s worth of stuff will be around £30 to £50 per week.

When you think of it in these terms it’s actually a rather scary waste of money to be using your spare room as storage. We’ve not even factored in the interest you’ll be paying on your mortgage either.

See our previous blog post for some useful decluttering tips.

Even if you’ve paid off part of your mortgage you may be thinking this doesn’t apply to you, but when you were first choosing your new home, did you really make the decision to spend an extra £89k for storage? Of course not, but by using your spare room for storage that’s what you’ve inadvertently done.

How you can actually save money

The obvious option is to clear out your spare room, put your stuff in storage and rent out your spare room. This is a great option if you’re looking to get some extra cash in. There are a lot of professionals out there who aren’t ready to get on the property ladder themselves, but are in need of a quiet place to live in a good area. Not only will you have some extra money to help with the bills, but you’ll have someone else to share the housework with.

A less common, but uniquely interesting option is to get a live-in housekeeper. Perhaps you’re extremely busy and struggling to stay on top of the cooking and cleaning? You can find people out there, who, in exchange for a room, will do the housework and even help you look after your pets.

What if I don’t want anyone else living in my home with me?

Many people, especially families, will eventually feel it’s time to upsize their home from a 2 bedroom to a 3, or even from a 3 to a 4 bedroom. But is this really necessary? What if you could turn that loft into an extra bedroom after you clear everything out and put it in storage? The costs of the loft conversion and self storage will be less than the cost and hassle of moving.

Maybe you’re self-employed and you rent a small office in the city. You could turn your spare room into a convenient, professional office. Many people don’t like working at home, but the truth is they often just do it sat on the sofa or at a desk over in a corner of their lounge.

If you could actually turn an entire room into a proper office you could save a lot of money and still have that work environment you need to be productive. Travel costs would disappear too and with the high prices of fuel, that could really add up to some massive yearly savings. You would also be closer to your family, allowing you to spend more time with them.

Even if you don’t directly make money from your extra room, you can reclaim its value by using it for something more useful than just storage. The rooms in your home are valuable and you can use them to enhance the quality of your life. That, after all, is why you spent the extra money on a bigger home in the first place.

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