Selling a house -renting a storage unit to clear it out?

Anyone do this? If you are selling, rent a storage unit so your basement, attic & other out of season or currently unused stuff is cleared out? We have a lot of stuff in our basement & attic. The attic is basically all Rubbermaid bins. The basement is a lot of RM bins but it's a lot of other things too. While it's pretty orderly, it's not like I have years of clutter nor am I a hoarder, it still cuts down on potential buyers seeing how much space there is. DH doesn't think it's necessary and a waste of money but I beg to differ.

Thoughts?

Re: Selling a house -renting a storage unit to clear it out?

I thought about doing this. In the end I left all of my stuff where it was and I don't think it was a negative to anyone.

Re: Selling a house -renting a storage unit to clear it out?

We had some fantastic friends who let us put stuff in their basement while we sold -- but if not I definitely would have rented a storage unit.

Re: Selling a house -renting a storage unit to clear it out?

no need to rent, it's expensive to rent one of those units, cost me $75 to rent a 5x7 closet size unit which didn't even hold much. Crazy $$.... We put most of our stuff there, plus 1/3 of it in my in-laws attic.

Definitely try asking a friend or family member first.

i would put half the stuff away in storage just so buyer's see the purpose of the space.

Re: Selling a house -renting a storage unit to clear it out?

We have a storage unit at Westy's that we opened last year in prep for our move - next week we're getting a POD unit delivered so we can store our packed boxes until we move next month.

Are you listing your house?

Re: Selling a house -renting a storage unit to clear it out?

I would definitely get a storage unit and de-clutter massively.

I did this and it worked out great. Many storage companies will give the first month free anyways.

Re: Selling a house -renting a storage unit to clear it out?

We're not thinking of moving yet, but I would totally have to get a storage unit to clear out... I never realized how much crap we had until we cleared out our lower level for the contractors to do the work and the amount of stuff was so overwhelming!

Re: Selling a house -renting a storage unit to clear it out?

If it was cluttering up your living space then maybe, but if it's in what is technically only useful for storage anyway, I would not spend the money on storage. That is what that space is for.

Re: Selling a house -renting a storage unit to clear it out?

I wouldn't worry about the attic space, but if you need to clean out the garage so that you can show potential buyers that you can fit a car/cars in there then yes!

We don't keep much in our basement, but if it is potential living space, I would say yes.


We got a storage unit to declutter all the books on the books shelves, holiday decorations, off season clothes, while we were listed - we still have it

Re: Selling a house -renting a storage unit to clear it out?

I would probably get a small (5 yard or 10 yard) dumpster first, clean out the house first and then see if you even need a storage unit.
If your garbage men take anything, maybe just bag stuff up every garbage day and get of stuff that way if you didn't want to get a dumpster. This is what we did when we were selling.

Re: Selling a house -renting a storage unit to clear it out?

As others said, this is the perfect time to get rid of stuff!

When we moved, we had a pretty large storage unit - like 10X10 or something (which actually holds a lot when you stack stuff). It was only like $50 and the first month free or something like that - shop around as there might be deals going.

You might also consider using it to store some of your furniture pieces, not sure what your home looks like but on TV they are always taking out an accent table here, armchair, etc. to make living room/foyer, etc look much larger.

I think staging is very important, especially the garage - the attic I think is fine as everyone will use it for storage too, it may actually highlight how much crap you can fit up there.

If you can pair down the stuff and get it all in your attic, that would probably be great - storing at inlaws is always a good idea if they will allow it.

Re: Selling a house -renting a storage unit to clear it out?

my parents did this and i think it helped tremendously. we just had the stuff they put in the storage unit delivered to our new house 2 days ago (it was mostly extra furniture and boxes of my "stuff" from growing up).