Has anyone ever put their belongings into storage?

I did a few years ago. It was only the contents of a one bed flat so it was one of the smaller units but it was about £115 a month IIRC. I went to an independent place, the likes of Big Yellow were a bit more expensive.

All of my possessions, with the exception of my clothes and my laptop, are in storage right now! We've paid £600 for a 100sqft room for 6 months. It's got the contents of a fully furnished large 2 bedroom flat in it.

My advice is to ring around and get initial quotes, then call them all back and ask them to beat your cheapest quote. When I first enquired my cheapest quote was £817. I did three lots of ringing round and when they got to the point where they couldn't beat the quote, they started chucking in extras. So we have full insurance for free as well.

Do you need access to anything whilst it's in storage, or do you just need to pack everything up for a while? The latter is much, much cheaper, and like Mel says, best to ring round for quotes. I 'think' it's based on the number of containers you'll need (those huge things that look like the backs of lorries).

Thanks guys that's really helpful, I actually did an online quote just now with Big Yellow Storage and it was between £40 and £70 a week, no idea how big it'd have to be.

It's really just a 'what if' at the moment. Just incase we sell our house and don't find anything we like we're considering moving in with my parents and would need the contents of our 3 bed semi stored for a while so no, I don't suppose we'd need to get at it.

It will depend quite a bit on where in the country you are. About half of our stuff from a 1-bed flat is in a storage countainer which costs 80 quid a month, about a tenner on top of that for insurance. You'd definitely need a bigger size for a house. This is East Anglia, home counties would be more expensive.

Big Yellow's best price for us was £916, so they're by no means the cheapest out there.

You're considering doing what H and I have just done. We've moved to Yorkshire from London, where we were renting. We've bought a house, but it's a new build and won't be ready until early December. Meanwhile, we're living with my mother. We can have access to our storage room between the hours of 9-5pm Mon-Sat and can arrange access outside these times if we need it. We went in a couple of times in the first week as we realised we needed things we'd stored, but we seem to be okay now.

Make sure you find out what will happen if you need to extend your stay (we have to pay £120 a month if we need longer than 6 months) or if you leave early (we are refunded the money for any time we don't use out of the £600 we've already paid for the first 6 months).

I have a storage unit at Stroud Space Centre, also in Gloucester and Quedgely.

I think you'd need the 3rd size up, hang on

Http://www.spacecentreselfstorage.co.uk/size-estimator.php

We did it when we sold up in London (3 bed terrace) and spent 7 months homeless (well, not quite - a month at my parents, and 6 months rented in furnished accom). We went with the company that did our packing for us, so they packed, stored, then brought to us when we finally moved into our house (and unpacked). Worth every penny for them to do the hard work (I had 1 colicky newborn at the time of packing - there was no way we would have got it done).

But can't remember how much it all cost...(was 4 years ago).

Tilly Floss, that's brilliant, thanks for that ?

When we did it it was £50 a month but that was quite a small space. We used it to "House Dr" our apartment so all personal bits went into storage. We never had any problems and I'd do it again. Shop around and I'm sure you'll find some good deals.