Okay so I had this guy come in yesterday. Nice guy. Retired teacher. Wants to store his fishing boat and some furniture from his mom’s house. He’s looking at our units and he goes “why do you guys measure everything in square feet anyway? why not just tell me if my boat fits?”
And honestly? Fair question.
Because here’s the thing. Square feet doesn’t actually tell you if your boat fits. It tells you how much floor space you got. But a boat is long and weird shaped. A boat could be 18 feet long but only 6 feet wide. That’s 108 square feet. But if you put it in a 10×10 unit which is 100 square feet, it doesn’t fit. Even though the square footage is close.
So why do we do it this way?
I think part of it is just tradition. Like, this is how storage places have always done it. You go back fifty years, storage was just big warehouses. You rented space by the square foot because that’s how warehouses work. They charge by the floor. Nobody was thinking about your fishing boat back then. They were thinking about pallets and boxes.
And it stuck. Because it’s easy for us to calculate. We know exactly how many square feet of land we bought. We know how many square feet of building we put up. So we divide it up into chunks and charge you for those chunks. It’s lazy math but it’s consistent.
But here is what I think is really going on.
Storage places use square feet because it sounds bigger
Think about it. A 10×10 unit is 100 square feet. That sounds like a lot. That sounds like a room. But if they told you it was 800 cubic feet? That sounds smaller somehow. I don’t know why. It just does. 800 sounds like less than 100 to regular people who don’t think about math.
So they use square feet because it makes the unit sound more spacious than it actually is.
I’m not saying it’s a scam. It’s not. The measurement is real. It’s accurate. But there is a little bit of marketing psychology going on there for sure.
Another thing. Nobody wants to do cubic math
I’ve been doing this for years and I still don’t want to multiply length times width times height if I don’t have to. Square feet is one multiplication problem. Length times width. Done. Cubic feet is two multiplications. Length times width times height. That’s too much thinking for a Tuesday morning.
And customers? Forget it. You guys don’t want to do math either. You want to know if your couch fits. You don’t want to calculate volume. So we meet in the middle. We give you square feet and we tell you the ceiling height. You do the rest.
But the real reason? The one nobody tells you?
It’s because square footage is the only measurement that lets you compare units easily.
If I say I have a 100 square foot unit and the place down the street has a 100 square foot unit, you know they’re the same size. Kind of. Assuming the height is the same. But if we used cubic feet, and I said I have 800 cubic feet and the other place has 1000 cubic feet, you’d think theirs is bigger. But maybe theirs is just taller. Maybe the floor space is the same. You wouldn’t know.
Square feet is the common denominator. It’s the baseline. It’s like how we all use inches for TV screens even though it doesn’t really tell you how big the TV is because of the bezels and the stand and all that stuff. But we all know what a 55 inch TV means. It’s just the language we agreed on.
Now let me tell you why this drives me crazy sometimes
People come in and they’re like “I need 100 square feet” and I show them the 10×10 and they go “that’s it?” Like they’re disappointed. Like they expected more.
And I get it. Because 100 square feet sounds like a lot until you see it. It’s basically a parking space. That’s it. A standard parking space at the grocery store is about 9×18. That’s 162 square feet. So a 10×10 is actually smaller than a parking spot. Think about that next time you park your car.
But people think it’s huge because the number 100 sounds big. So there is this disconnect between what the number means and what it looks like.
The height thing again. I keep coming back to height
I had this lady last month. She rented a 10×10 from us. She measured her stuff. She did the math. She was confident.
She shows up with a moving truck and I’m helping her unload and she’s got this massive armoire. It’s like seven feet tall and four feet wide and three feet deep. That’s 12 square feet of floor space. No problem. Fits in a 10×10 easy.
But here’s the thing. That armoire is seven feet tall. Our units have eight foot ceilings. So she’s got one foot of clearance above it. She can’t stack anything on top. She can’t put boxes up there. That 12 square feet of floor space is now wasted vertical space too because she can’t use the air above the armoire.
So even though her square footage math was perfect, she lost usable space because of the height of her furniture.
That’s the stuff square footage doesn’t tell you. It just tells you the floor. It doesn’t tell you about your furniture’s height. It doesn’t tell you about your stacking ability. It doesn’t tell you if you can put a shelf in there. It’s just the floor.
I wish more places explained this
When you call a storage place, they should say “look, square footage is just the beginning. Let’s talk about your actual stuff. What are you storing? How tall is it? How wide? Do you need access?”
But most places just give you the number and move on to the next call. They don’t care if you make a mistake. They just want the rental.
At our place, we actually try to slow you down. We ask questions. We want to know if you have a sectional couch because those are the worst. They’re heavy and awkward and they eat up square footage like crazy. We want to know if you have a piano because pianos are basically furniture from hell.
We do this because we want you to get the right size. Not the biggest size. Not the smallest. The right one.
Here is something I learned from a customer
This guy was an engineer. He came in with a spreadsheet. He had listed every single item. He had the dimensions. He had the square footage. He had the cubic footage. He had it all.
He calculated he needed 112 square feet. But we only have 10×10 and 10×15. 10×10 is 100 square feet. 10×15 is 150 square feet. So he had a choice. Rent smaller and hope everything fits. Or rent bigger and pay more.
He chose the 10×15. He rented 150 square feet even though he only needed 112.
And he told me something that stuck with me. He said “I’m paying for peace of mind. I don’t want to play Tetris with my furniture. I want to walk in, put stuff down, and walk out.”
That guy got it.
Square footage is the measurement. But comfort is the goal. Sometimes you need to go bigger than the math says just so you don’t hate yourself later.
The weird thing about square footage is that it’s subtractive
Like, if you have a 10×10 unit, that’s 100 square feet. But if you put a couch in there that takes up 30 square feet, you now have 70 square feet left. But it’s not really 70 because the couch is against the wall and the space in front of the couch is walkway. So really you have like 40 usable square feet for your boxes.
Nobody explains that. They just give you the total and let you figure it out.
So when you’re calculating, don’t use the total square footage. Use like 70% of it. Assume you’re going to lose 30% to walkways and weird gaps and stuff that doesn’t stack neatly.
Also, I hate to say this but some places measure wrong
I’m not naming names. But I know facilities that measure from the outside of the unit. So they include the wall thickness in the square footage. You’re paying for concrete you can’t use.
We measure from the inside. We measure the actual usable floor. When we say 10×10, that’s the interior. That’s the space from wall to wall. Not from outside wall to outside wall. Not from center of the door to center of the back wall. It’s the actual space you can put stuff on.
You’d be surprised how many places don’t do that.
So why square feet?
Because it’s simple. Because it’s standard. Because it’s what people expect.
But also because it’s the only measurement that makes sense for the facility itself. We buy land by the square foot. We build by the square foot. We rent by the square foot. It’s the whole chain. If we used something else, it would break the chain.
That’s really the answer. It’s not because it’s the best measurement for your stuff. It’s because it’s the best measurement for the business. And the industry has just accepted that.
I don’t love it. But I live with it
And that’s what I tell customers. I say “square footage is what we got. It’s what everyone uses. But let me show you the unit. Let me show you the height. Let me walk you through it. Because the number is just a number. The actual space is what matters.”
At Nearby Storage Rentals, we don’t hide behind the numbers. We show you exactly what you’re getting. No tricks. No games.
If you want to come by, I’ll walk you through every size we have. I’ll tell you the height. I’ll tell you the door width. I’ll tell you if there’s a column in the way (there’s not, we designed it that way on purpose).
And I’ll ask you about your stuff. Because that’s the part that actually matters.
One last thought
If you’re reading this and you’re stressing about measurements and sizes and whether your stuff will fit… don’t. It’s just stuff. And it’s just a metal box. It’s not rocket science.
Come in. Look around. Ask questions. And if you’re still not sure, rent bigger than you think you need. Because the worst that happens is you have extra space. The worst that happens if you rent too small is you have to move everything twice.
And trust me, moving everything twice is the worst.
Okay I think I’ve rambled enough. This is probably all over the place but that’s how real conversations go. I started with a guy and his boat and I ended up talking about engineers and armoires and concrete walls. That’s how talking works. It goes places.
If you got questions, hit me up. We’re at Nearby Storage Rentals. I actually like talking about this stuff. Most people just want to get in and out. But I think the more you know, the better decision you make. And I want you to make a good decision. Even if it’s not with us. Just make a good one.
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