Decide what goes into storage before you rent anything

Most people rent storage at the wrong moment: after the house is already full, while the move is happening, under time pressure, and end up paying every month for a unit of things they will never open. Deciding what goes in, before you rent anything, is what stops that.

This is the order that works.

Sort by decision, not by room

Going room by room means handling everything twice and finishing nothing. Instead make four piles, anywhere, and put every object in one of them.

• Keep at home. You use it, this season, in this house.
• Store. You will genuinely use it again, but not now.
• Go. Sell, donate, give away.
• Throw out. Broken, expired, or you have been meaning to for two years.

The only hard pile is the second one, so here is the test for it.

The test for the store pile

Say out loud when you will use it again. If you can name a season, an event, a house or a child who will want it, it stores. If the answer is a vague someday, it belongs in the go pile, and everybody knows it at the time.

The exception is anything that cannot be replaced: photographs, letters, the things that came from people who are gone. Those store regardless of use, and they are exactly what should not sit in a damp basement or an unheated garage.

Work out what it costs to keep

Look up what a replacement costs and compare it against a year of storage. A sofa that cost $1,000 new and is worth $200 second-hand is not worth $1,200 a year to keep in a box. A table you would pay $2,000 to replace is a different calculation.

Sentiment is a legitimate reason to store something. It just should be the reason you say, rather than a reason dressed up as practicality.

Do it once, properly

Pack in same-size boxes, because same-size boxes stack and odd ones do not. Books in small boxes, linens in large ones. Label every box on two sides, never the top, because you will be looking at the sides in a stacked unit.

Leave a walkway down the middle. Everybody swears they will not need to get to the back, and everybody needs to get to the back.

Things people get wrong

Trash bags split and look like rubbish, which is how things get thrown away by mistake. Mattresses want a cover and want to stand on edge. Anything with a fuel tank should be emptied. Appliances go in clean and dry with the doors propped, or they smell.

Do not store anything perishable, anything flammable, or anything alive, and do not store the thing you use weekly, whatever the pile said.

Then, and only then, pick a size

Once the store pile is real and packed, you can see it, and sizing becomes obvious rather than a guess, and every size and its price is on one page. That is the point of doing it in this order: you are buying space for a known quantity of boxes rather than for a vague feeling about a spare room.