You’ve booked the flights. The itinerary is planned. You’re ready for your gap year, your sabbatical, or that long trip abroad you’ve been building towards for years. There’s just one problem — what do you do with everything you own? The reality is that planning storage while travelling is something many people overlook until the last minute.
Whether you’re heading off for six months or a year, the last thing you want is to spend your final weeks before departure scrambling to sort your belongings. Finding somewhere to store your things that’s genuinely secure, affordable, and flexible enough to work around an unpredictable return date makes storage while travelling far less stressful, so you can actually focus on going.
At Giant Storage, we’ve helped dozens of travellers from across Wiltshire, Salisbury, Amesbury, Warminster, and Somerset, Frome, Yeovil, and Crewkerne store their belongings safely while they explored the world. This guide explains everything you need to know about storage while travelling — what to look for, how to plan ahead, and how we can help.
Most travellers set off with a rough plan, not a fixed return date. That’s part of the adventure. But it does make storage while travelling tricky — you need a solution that won’t lock you into a long contract or charge you a penalty if your plans shift.
Standard removal storage and many self-storage companies ask for a minimum term, often three or six months, and charge significant fees if you want to leave early. If your trip extends, you’re stuck renegotiating. At Giant Storage, we designed our approach to storage while travelling differently: we work on a simple month-to-month basis with just seven days’ notice to leave. That means your storage works around your travel plans, not the other way around.
Leaving your belongings for months at a time is a different experience to short-term storage. The question isn’t just “will it fit?” — it’s “will it be safe?” Furniture, bikes, musical instruments, boxes of clothes and kitchenware: these things matter, and leaving them in the wrong environment can cause real problems, especially when you’re relying on storage while travelling for extended periods.
Our containers are solid steel, not the flimsy plasterboard walls you find in some indoor storage centres. They’re weatherproof, secure, and covered by CCTV. Customers travelling from Salisbury, Frome, Yeovil, and beyond have trusted us for storage while travelling, while they’ve been away — some for six months, some for well over a year. We understand what’s at stake when you’re leaving for a long time.
Our containers are genuine steel shipping containers — built to survive ocean crossings, so your possessions are in good hands. They sit at ground level with drive-up access, making it straightforward to load before you go and unload when you’re back. For people arranging storage while travelling, that kind of simplicity matters. No lifts, no awkward staircases, no wrestling furniture through narrow corridors.
Before you leave, you can pack everything into your unit in a single visit. When you return, it’s just as easy to retrieve what you need. If a friend or family member needs to collect something while you’re away, access is simple for them too — another reason many customers rely on our facilities for storage while travelling.
The last thing you need when you’re managing a trip budget is a storage invoice that doesn’t match what you were quoted. Our pricing is straightforward, which makes planning storage while travelling much easier: from £115 per month including VAT for an 8ft container, £180 per month for a 20ft container, and £250 per month for a 40ft container. No hidden admin fees, no insurance upsells built into the quote, no surprises when the bill arrives.
Our month-to-month terms are particularly helpful for storage while travelling, because you’re never locked in. Whether you’re back in four months or fourteen, you simply give us seven days’ notice when you’re ready to empty your unit. That’s it.
• 8ft container (56 sq ft): £115/month inc. VAT — ideal for a studio flat or a single person’s belongings
• 20ft container (160 sq ft): £180/month inc. VAT — suits a 2–3 bed house worth of contents
• 40ft container (320 sq ft): £250/month inc. VAT — for larger households or storing a full home
Natalie from Salisbury used Giant Storage when she and her family travelled overseas. As she put it, they felt confident leaving their things behind, noting the containers were clean, safe, and very new — and the staff were lovely too. She’d done her research before choosing us for storage while travelling, and came back to us again after returning to the UK.
That kind of experience is exactly what we aim for. You should be able to get on a plane knowing your belongings are in good hands and that your storage while travelling is taken care of without constant worry.
Most people underestimate how long it takes to sort, pack, and move their things into storage. We’d suggest booking your unit at least two to three weeks before your departure date. That gives you time to declutter properly, pack without rushing, and organise your storage while travelling in a calm, structured way before the final clear-out day.
If you’re renting a property out while you travel, your timeline may be tighter. Don’t leave arranging storage while travelling until the week before handover — things always take longer than planned.
It sounds obvious, but writing a clear list of what you’re storing and what you’re taking or giving away saves a lot of last-minute chaos. Seasonal items, furniture, bicycles, kitchen equipment, and sentimental objects are all good candidates when preparing for storage while travelling. Electronics are fine in our steel containers, but it’s worth wrapping them well and keeping an inventory for peace of mind.
If you’re storing a full flat or house’s worth of belongings, our team can help you work out which container size is right, so your storage while travelling setup actually fits everything comfortably.
Most travellers don’t need to access their storage while they’re away. But if you think a family member or friend might need to retrieve something on your behalf, just let us know in advance. We’re a family-run business, and we’re used to working practically with people’s real circumstances when it comes to storage while travelling.
We also recommend keeping a digital photo of what’s in your unit before you leave. It takes ten minutes and means you always know what’s in there, even when you’re on the other side of the world, relying on your organised storage while travelling back home.
