Smoves or traditional self-storage: which one actually suits a student?

The short answer

Smoves vs traditional self storage: if you need a few square meters, have no car and don't need anything while your things are in storage, door-to-door pickup wins. If you need a lot of space, have a vehicle and want to come and go as you please, a traditional unit costs less. Neither is better in the abstract.

I'm writing this while selling one of the two, and I know how that sounds. But I've spent enough Junes loading things into somebody else's car to know that storage is also paid for in Saturday afternoons.

Below is the line-by-line comparison, with the table. If you're after the overview of warehouses in the city, that's on the self storage in Milan page.

How traditional self-storage works

You rent a closed unit, in the size you choose, inside a warehouse you can enter during opening hours. You sign, pay a monthly fee, get a key or a code, and that slice of warehouse is yours, containing exactly what you brought.

The rest is on you. You take your things there, unload them, arrange them, and make the trip again every time you need the winter coat, which is obviously at the back. Most warehouses sit where floor space is cheap, far from the center: fine for a shed, awkward for someone who gets around by metro.

Then there's the size. Units come in fixed sizes and you pay for the one just above what you need: eight boxes in a 2 m² unit means paying for the air above the boxes. A warehouse can't cut concrete to measure, and the model has held for decades: in the US the trade association counts around 49,000 facilities against 15,000 in the entire rest of the world. It works beautifully for the audience it was built for, people with a business, a vehicle and frequent visits.

How door-to-door pickup works

You book online: pick the size in square meters, with the space calculator if you're not sure which, and the pickup date. The quote shows the monthly rate and the pickup before you pay. On the chosen day we come to you and we need you or someone you've delegated to be there. We label each item, log it, and your things stay in the warehouse until you book redelivery, which is paid separately at that point and can go to a different address from the one we collected from. The full path is on how it works.

You don't get a unit of your own: you get your items, tracked one by one. In exchange you pay for the size you need instead of the smallest available unit, and with eight boxes the difference shows.

The downside is that you can't drop by on a Wednesday to grab one thing. If you need to get in every couple of weeks, the comparison ends here and the unit wins.

There is a middle ground: redelivery can be partial. If you only need some things, you write to us and we bring those, on the timing of a request rather than a key. And if by then you've moved further away, we ship within Italy and abroad on a quote.

The comparison, line by line

Eight lines, the ones that weigh on the decision. Our own figures live on pricing and in the online quote; what's here is the mechanism, which is what changes the final total.

The cost that never appears on an invoice

The sticker price of a unit is only the first number. Then come the van rental or the favor asked of whoever owns one, the fuel, the parking, and the time: finding the warehouse, signing, loading, driving, unloading, and at the end doing it all in reverse. None of those arrive by email marked «invoice», which is why you don't see them while you pay them.

I did the math in the currency students actually hold, Saturday afternoons. Loading and driving take four to six hours. In June they weigh a lot, because it's the same month as exams, a room to clear and the flatmate who vanishes on precisely the day of the move.

How much those hours are worth is up to you. They still belong in the comparison, because the sticker price never shows them.

When traditional self-storage wins

With a lot of material the unit wins: furniture, appliances, a whole apartment. There the large size works in its favor, because the cost per square meter falls as you go up in size.

It also wins if you go in every week, as an archive or a working stockroom. A service that brings everything back to your door is almost the opposite of what you need.

With a car and a free afternoon the transport line disappears and only the fee remains. And on storage beyond a year, the initial effort spreads over many months and counts for less and less.

When door-to-door pickup wins

On the other side is the profile the model was built for, which was also mine when I stopped looking for a solution and started building one.

Some boxes, a suitcase, a bike, a disassembled desk: with that little, the small size makes all the difference. The car you don't have counts too, and in Milan not having one is the norm.

Then there are the dates. The university, the lease or the flight set them, and your only job is to make them line up with a pickup. And if you won't need that stuff until September, paying for free access is like paying for a gym in July.

That's the band where we were born: student storage explains how the service is built for people who study.

How to decide in two minutes

Start from one question: do you need to get in while your things are in storage? If yes, take the traditional unit.

If not, get two quotes, our online one and one from the warehouse nearest your apartment, and compare them with transport counted in both. For the square meters there's the size guide. If the unit wins, take the unit. If you're unsure about your own case, write to us from contacts and I'll tell you whether we're the answer.