Keep your room over the summer, or give it up? The real numbers

Should you keep your room over the summer or give it up?

Giving up your room for the summer pays off when you're away for a long time and can find a similar room again in September. What counts is how many months you're gone and what it would cost to replace the room. With three months away and a market that has rooms going, storage almost always costs less than full rent paid to keep air safe. With six weeks, or a room that's a real deal, keep it.

Summer storage in general is covered in other articles on the blog. Here there's a single question, what to do with the room, and the answer comes from your rent, not mine.

What an empty room actually costs you

The sum takes ten seconds: monthly rent plus bills, multiplied by the months you're away. The result is what you pay to keep boxes sheltered. It's your figure, the one they charge you, with no industry averages.

It sounds obvious, yet nobody runs that sum in June. There's an exam to sit and a suitcase to close, and the empty room slips by unnoticed like a gym membership you never use. Except the gym you can cancel from your phone.

Then there's time, which the sum never shows. Hauling everything home by train, borrowing a van, convincing your mother that three boxes of lecture notes have sentimental value: those are hours, and in June hours cost more than in any other month.

When keeping the room wins anyway

There are cases where you don't let the room go. If you're away six weeks the sum doesn't move: you pay roughly six weeks of rent whichever way you go, and at least you avoid two moves. With a multi-year contract and no early exit, the contract has already decided, and it gets read before any sums. And if you have one of those rare rooms, light on two sides, your own bathroom and a rent below the market, keep it: in September the Milan market is not famous for its mercy.

In university residences there's often no choice. The Bocconi residence rules, to take a public example, say that from the end of June to the end of August the room is not assigned and no material of any kind may be left in it, not even in shared spaces. The room gets cleared, and the only thing left to decide is where your things go.

Then there's the summer sublet. It works if you agree it in writing with the landlord before posting the ad: if it isn't authorized, the legal problem is yours, and your subtenant stays out of it.

When giving it up and storing your things wins

The typical case comes in June: contract ending on the 30th, a flight on 2 July, suitcases with the capacity of a wallet, and parents a few hundred kilometers away with no intention of crossing Italy for an IKEA desk.

There, giving up the room is the natural call, and the question becomes where your things end up. For years the answer was "at a friend's", which is why Milan holds an underground network of cellars where the bicycles of people who graduated in 2019 quietly rest.

If that's your case, our off-campus student storage page explains how doorstep pickup works, and summer storage covers the seasonal version.

How to give up a room without hauling everything home

In this order. The first point is the one everyone skips, so start there.

1. The contract comes first: count the notice days for termination. The rest of the calendar depends on it, and it can't be guessed by eye.

2. Split your things into three piles: what goes home with you, what goes into storage and what you'll happily never see again. The third is always bigger than expected.

3. For the space there's the calculator, which estimates the right size, from 1 m² up.

4. You need real boxes, and trash bags don't count: the packing guide explains what holds. Maximum 20 kg each, because one person lifts it.

5. Book the pickup for a day when you or someone you delegate will be there: the flatmate, the concierge, or the friend with the cellar, who finally redeems himself.

6. Before handing back the keys, photograph every room. The photos help you get the deposit back, and they're the only proof that the mark on the wall was already there.

How much does summer storage cost?

Each month you pay a fixed rate for the size you choose, by the square meter, and at the start you pay once for pickup and transport. Redelivery is separate: you book it when you need it, and the price depends on the day you pick, which you see before confirming. Commit to more months and you get the discount on the pickup, while the rate stays the same.

The online quote shows the rate and the pickup before you book, and the pricing page explains them line by line. I won't write a figure here, because it depends on size, dates and address, and an average number on a blog is a number nobody actually pays.