Storage Unit Calculator

Every item is assigned an approximate packed volume in cubic feet. The calculator adds up the volume of everything you selected, then compares it against the usable capacity of each standard self-storage unit to find the smallest one that fits.

Usable capacity

Storage units have roughly 8 ft ceilings, so the raw volume of a unit is its floor area × 8. In practice you cannot fill every cubic foot — boxes leave gaps, furniture is awkwardly shaped, and you need room to reach items. We apply a 75% packing factor to estimate realistic usable capacity:

Standard unit sizes

• 5×5 (25 ft²) — a large closet; a few boxes and small furniture.
• 5×10 (50 ft²) — a small one-bedroom apartment's worth.
• 10×10 (100 ft²) — one to two bedrooms of furniture.
• 10×15 (150 ft²) — two to three bedrooms.
• 10×20 (200 ft²) — three to four bedrooms, or a small house.
• 10×30 (300 ft²) — a four to five bedroom house, or a vehicle plus contents.

The packing diagram

The top-down floor plan shades the fraction of the unit your belongings are estimated to occupy (assuming you stack toward the ceiling). The size comparison shows all six unit footprints drawn to the same scale, with your recommended size highlighted.

You can embed this util on your own site as a widget. Adding ?embed=1 to the URL loads a compact version with just the tool itself; no header, menu, or documentation. Paste this snippet into your HTML:

Copy snippet Adjust the height to taste.