What Size Storage Unit Do You Need? Sizes and Costs Explained

The standard storage sizing works like this: a 1.5 x 1.5 metre unit holds boxes and a few small items, a 3 x 1.5 holds the contents of a one-bedroom flat, the classic 3 x 3 holds a two-bedroom home, a 3 x 4.5 holds three bedrooms, and a 3 x 6 swallows a full four-bedroom household including the garage. In Brisbane and on the Gold Coast, that 3 x 3 workhorse typically rents for $250 to $450 a month depending on location and access, with the smaller units from around $150 and the big ones pushing past $500.

Sizing is the whole game, because storage is priced per square metre and paid per month: too big and you rent air for a year, too small and moving day ends with a truck full of homeless furniture. Here is how to get it right.

Sizes by household, with what actually fits

What fits in a 3 x 3? Stacked properly, floor to a safe height: a lounge suite on end, a queen mattress and base on edge, fridge, washing machine, a dining table with legs off, and 40 to 60 boxes filling the gaps. The phrase doing the work there is “stacked properly”: a unit packed by someone who loads trucks for a living holds noticeably more than the same unit filled by throwing things in until the door resists. Mattresses and couches store vertically, tables come apart, and boxes of one size stack into walls.

How storage works during a move

The common reason people need storage is not hoarding; it is the settlement gap, the renovation, or the interstate move where the new home is not ready when the old one empties. Move-and-store handles it as one operation: the crew loads once, holds your goods in storage, and delivers when the new place is ready, which beats renting a unit, moving everything into it, and moving it all out again three weeks later, twice the handling for no benefit.

A few habits make stored goods come out the way they went in. Everything fabric gets a clean before storage, because stains set with time. Fridges and washing machines travel dry and store with doors ajar. An aisle down the middle of a longer stay saves excavating for the one box you need in month two. And the inventory list taped inside the door answers every “is the fan in storage or the shed?” argument for the duration.

One more variable worth asking about: access. Ground-floor drive-up units load in half the time of corridor-and-lift units, which matters twice, once on the way in and once on the way out, and 24-hour access matters exactly as much as your schedule says it does. A slightly dearer unit that a truck can back up to is often the cheaper unit once loading time is counted.

Sizing for real life, not the brochure

Two honest adjustments to the table above. If you are storing because you are between houses, size to the table. If you are storing long-term while life reorganises, go one size down and cull instead, because every month is a bill and the third-best spare mattress is not worth $300 a year in rent. And if the storage need starts with a move anyway, get the mover to size it: we can see the load, and the load is the answer. That conversation runs through our services team, with Brisbane and Gold Coast crews handling the move-and-store end to end.

Frequently asked questions

Facing a gap between homes? Get a quote for the move and the storage together, sized off the actual load.