Storage that comes with the movers included.

Storage in Rochester and Medway: how our service works

Traditional self-storage sells you an empty room and leaves the hard part to you: hiring a van, carrying the sofa, working out how to stack a home into a box. Our service works the other way round. You book the storage and the moving together, as one job with one fixed price and one point of contact.

Here is the full journey. Our crew arrives at your home or business, wraps furniture in blankets and covers, packs anything you have asked us to pack, and builds an itemised inventory as the van is loaded. Everything travels to secure, dry, monitored storage near our Rochester base. It stays there for a week, a month or three years, insured and untouched. When you are ready, one phone call books the redelivery, and the same company that put it away brings it back, into the rooms of your new home, with beds rebuilt if that is what you want.

No van hire, no lifting, no trips to an industrial estate with a car full of boxes. That is the difference between storage and storage with the movers included.

When our customers use storage

• Completion gaps: the classic Kent chain problem. You complete on your sale on Friday but cannot complete on your purchase for another fortnight. We move you out, hold everything, and move you in when the keys arrive.
• Renovations and building work: emptying rooms, or a whole house, so trades can work faster and your furniture does not spend three months under dust sheets.
• Downsizing: when the new home is smaller but the decisions are not ready yet. Store the overflow, live in the new space for a while, then decide what comes back, what goes to family and what goes altogether.
• Selling and staging: decluttered homes sell better. Agents across Medway tell their clients this weekly, and we store the clutter until the sold sign goes up.
• Bereavement and probate: clearing a family home on a deadline without being forced into permanent decisions. We handle these jobs gently, at your pace.
• Business storage: offices between leases, seasonal stock, exhibition kit, archives and surplus furniture, all inventoried for retrieval.
• Life in motion: working abroad for a year, moving in with a partner, students over summer, service personnel between postings.

Secure, dry and monitored: what that actually means

Storage marketing leans on the same three adjectives, so here is what they mean in practice for your belongings. Secure means facilities with controlled access, monitored CCTV and alarm systems, where the public does not wander corridors with their own keys. Dry means weatherproof, ventilated buildings where damp is managed, because the enemy of stored furniture is not theft but moisture. Monitored means someone is responsible for the building every day, not a padlock in a field.

Just as important is how goods go in. Furniture stored unwrapped comes back with scuffs and dust ground into the finish. Ours goes in blanket-wrapped and covered, mattresses in proper bags, sofas protected, boxes stacked on their strength. The inventory lists every item, so nothing is forgotten and anything can be found. When customers see their belongings come back after a year looking the way they left, this is why.

What does storage cost in Kent?

Storage is priced on the volume you store and how long you store it, plus the fixed cost of the collection and the eventual redelivery. A few useful anchors: a one-bedroom flat's contents typically need around 250 cubic feet, a three-bedroom house 600 to 900 cubic feet, and we quote the exact figure after hearing your list or seeing the property. Weekly rates are modest compared to the moving legs, which is why storage plus two moves is often barely more than the two moves alone, especially over a short completion gap.

Your quote itemises all three parts: collection, storage per week, redelivery. No minimum term beyond a week, no penalty for staying longer, and no charge for changing your redelivery date as your purchase wobbles, which, in Kent chains, it often does.

Packing for storage, done properly

Packing for storage is a different discipline from packing for a same-day move, because items may be stacked and untouched for months. Boxes need to be uniformly strong; a soft box at the bottom of a stack fails slowly. Wood needs breathable wrapping, not plastic film against the surface. Anything with moisture in it, from a recently watered plant pot to a washing machine with water in the drum, needs drying first. Fridges and freezers go in defrosted, dry and with doors wedged ajar.

Our packing team does all of this by default when they pack for storage, and if you are packing yourself we will happily talk you through it when you book. Either way, we build the inventory at collection so that what went in is documented, item by item, before the van door closes.

Access and getting things back

Because your goods are stored wrapped, stacked and inventoried in a removals facility rather than a walk-in unit, access works by appointment rather than by wandering in with a key. In practice, most customers never need access mid-term; they need everything back at the end. When you do need a single item, the sofa suddenly required for guests, the file box for the accountant, we retrieve it from the inventory and either hand it over or deliver it with our man and van service.

Redelivery works exactly like a removal, because it is one: booked date, trained crew, furniture unwrapped and placed room by room, beds rebuilt on request. If your redelivery is to a different county because life moved on, that is fine too; see our long distance removals service.

Storage for businesses across Medway

Our commercial storage carries everything from a few desks to complete offices between leases. Stock overflow, seasonal equipment, exhibition stands, refurbishment furniture and document archives all live in our facilities, inventoried so that individual items can be called off when needed. For companies relocating, storage often decouples the two halves of the move: out of the old premises when the lease demands, into the new one when the fit-out allows. It runs as one project alongside our office removals service, with one contact and one invoice.

Booking storage with us

Call 01634 971005 or request a quote online. Tell us roughly what needs storing, where it is, and your dates, even if they are provisional. We will quote the collection, the weekly storage and the redelivery as one itemised fixed price, usually within the hour during business hours. From there, one crew, one inventory and one phone number cover everything until the last box is back in your home.

Short-term or long-term: planning the stay well

Short-term storage, anything up to a couple of months, is usually about a date problem: a completion gap, a delayed fit-out, a renovation phase. For these stays, pack for convenience: keep a small "first back" group of items, clearly flagged on the inventory, so the redelivery can prioritise the beds, the kettle and the school uniforms even if the rest follows in a second run. Do not bury the things you will want first behind three sofas.

Long-term storage, from several months to years, changes the calculus. Here it pays to be ruthless before the van arrives rather than after: a year of storing a wardrobe you will never use again costs real money, and our crews will happily route charity donations and tip runs as part of the collection day. Long-stay items also justify better wrapping, which our team does by default: breathable covers on upholstery, nothing plastic-sealed against wood, and boxes packed to survive being stacked untouched for seasons. Twice a year we see customers reunited with belongings after two or three years away, working abroad or between chapters of life, and the unwrapping moment is the test of everything done on collection day.

The inventory: how we keep track of everything

The inventory is the quiet hero of a good storage experience. As the van is loaded at your home, every item and box is listed and numbered: "Box 34, kitchen, glassware" rather than just "box". Furniture is logged with its condition noted, which protects both of us. You get a copy, we keep a copy, and the numbers follow your goods into the store.

Months later, this is what makes the difference between storage and archaeology. When you call and say you need the winter coats and the Christmas decorations but nothing else, we find boxes 12 and 41 rather than opening a wall of anonymous cardboard. When you redeliver to a new house, the room labels written at collection still steer every box to the right doorway. And when you finally close the account, the inventory is checked off item by item, so the last thing that happens in the job is proof that everything that went in has come back out.

Preparing appliances and awkward items for storage

Most storage damage is self-inflicted before the van ever arrives, so here is the preparation that protects the tricky items. Fridges and freezers must be defrosted at least a day ahead, dried thoroughly, and stored with the doors wedged open; a sealed, damp fridge grows things nobody wants to meet again. Washing machines need a final empty spin, the drum left to air, and the transit bolts refitted if you still have them, because a drum swinging free on the motorway shortens the machine's life. Lawnmowers, strimmers and anything petrol-driven must be run dry or drained; fuel cannot go into storage.

Sofas and mattresses need to go in dry, which sounds obvious until a rainy Kent moving day makes it a real consideration; our crews carry covers precisely for the dash from door to van. Wooden furniture is happiest wrapped in blankets or breathable paper rather than plastic film, which traps moisture against the finish over long stays. Televisions travel and store best upright in their original boxes if you kept them, or in our padded TV cartons if you did not. Pianos, safes and gym equipment all store perfectly well but need declaring at quote stage, because they change the crew and kit we send on collection day. Tell us about the awkward things upfront, and none of them will be awkward.

If you are weighing us against a self-storage unit down the road, the honest comparison is total effort and total cost, not the weekly rate alone. Add the van hire, the fuel, the two days of carrying, and the very real risk of an unwrapped sofa arriving scuffed, and the do-it-yourself option is rarely the bargain it first appears, especially for anything beyond a few boxes. Our way, you make one phone call at each end of the stay and lift nothing heavier than the kettle. Call 01634 971005, tell us your dates, even rough ones, and we will put a fixed number on the whole journey: collection, storage and the day everything comes home.

However long the stay turns out to be, a fortnight that becomes a month or a season that becomes a year, the arrangement flexes with you, week by week, with your belongings wrapped, listed and looked after the entire time. That is what storage should feel like: not a unit you worry about on an industrial estate, but a pause button for part of your life, pressed and released with a single phone call to a company five minutes up the road in Rochester.

Storage questions, answered

The questions we hear most about storage across Rochester, Medway and Kent. For anything specific, call 01634 971005.