Six Months in Storage, Then the Keys to Selsey
Not every move goes house to house.
This one went house, to a warehouse, to a rented place, and then — six months later — into a home of her own in Selsey. It was also the third time this client has handed us her whole house.
The Third Time She Has Handed Us Her House
This client has now moved with us three times. That is worth saying out loud because of what it changes on the day: nobody had to explain anything. We already knew how she labels things, which pieces she cares about, and roughly what she wants dealt with first.
It also meant the middle part of this move — six months of her belongings sitting in our warehouse while she lived in a rented house — was a decision taken by someone who had already watched us pack and load the same furniture twice before.
A returning client — her third move with us. Most of her house had been in our store for six months while she lived in a rental; the rest was in the rental with her.
Two days. Day one packed the rental. Day two brought both halves together into her new home in Selsey.
Why Storage Sits in the Middle of So Many Moves
The version of moving house everyone pictures is one van, one day, old house to new house. A great many real moves are not that. A sale completes before a purchase does, a chain breaks, a renovation runs long, or — as here — somebody sells, rents for a while, and buys when the right house appears rather than when the calendar says so.
When that happens you have a problem of volume rather than of distance. A rental is almost always smaller than the house you left and the house you are heading for, and it is furnished often enough that your own furniture has nowhere to go. So most of the house goes into storage and you live with the fraction you actually need.
Six months is not unusual for that gap, and it is comfortably into long-term storage territory. What matters at that length is not the building — it is knowing precisely what is in there.
Deciding What You Live With for Six Months
This is the question clients actually ask, and it is worth answering properly because getting it wrong costs money twice. Everything you put into store and then need has to be retrieved. Everything you keep out and do not need has to be moved into the rental and out of it again.
The rule that works is to pack for the season you are about to have, not the year. Six months over a summer means you will not want the Christmas boxes or the spare duvets and you will want the garden furniture; over a winter it is the other way round.
It also helps to be honest about the rental: if it is furnished, your own sofa, beds, wardrobes and dining table are all going into store whether you like it or not, and the decision is only about the smaller things. Wolves Removals
Two categories are worth keeping out even when they seem storable. Documents and anything you might need at short notice — passports, paperwork, guarantees — because retrieving one folder from a warehouse is an appointment rather than a rummage. And whatever makes a house feel like yours, because six months in a rented place with none of your own things in it is longer than it sounds.
The Piece of Paper That Makes Storage Work
This is the least glamorous photograph on the site and it is the one that matters most for a storage move. Every item is written down as it leaves the house, numbered, with its condition recorded before it is wrapped. It is the same document that gets ticked as things come back out six months later.
Two things follow from that. The first is retrieval: you can ask for one specific item out of a warehouse without anybody opening six containers to find it. The second is the honest one — a condition note taken at the point of collection is the only fair way to settle a question about a mark on a table six months afterwards. Without it, everybody is guessing, and the person who loses that argument is usually the customer.
Day One: Packing the Rental
The whole of day one went on the rental property. It sounds like the easy half, and it is the half people most often underestimate, because six months in a rented house is long enough to unpack properly, buy things, and spread out.
Packing a rental has one wrinkle a normal house does not. You are handing the keys back to a landlord or an agent, so the property has to come out clean and undamaged, and any mark made on the way out is a deposit conversation. Floor protection goes down for the same reason it does in a client’s own house, except here the person who pays for a scuff is the person moving out.
Day Two: Bringing Both Halves Together
Day two is the interesting one, and it is the part a storage-bridged move gets wrong if nobody plans it.
The stored half is the one you generally want loaded first, because that is usually where the big furniture is — and furniture has to be in a room and positioned before anything else can be put down in it. The load packed at the rental is the everyday half, and most of it wants to arrive after there is somewhere to put it.
Get that order wrong and you spend the afternoon shifting boxes to reach a bed frame.
Get it right and the house assembles itself: furniture in and positioned, then the boxes that belong to each room, then the handful of things she needed working that evening. Wolves Removals
Selsey at the End of It
Selsey is about as far south as West Sussex goes — a peninsula with the sea on three sides and, in practical terms, one road in and out: the B2145, which arrives from Chichester and becomes Chichester Road and then the High Street. It is the only classified road serving the town, so everything a removals crew does in Selsey hangs off it. The compensation is that the residential streets running off it are wide, flat and quiet, which makes them easier to work than the lanes further inland.
The move finished on the second afternoon. Her furniture had been in a warehouse for half a year, and by the evening it was in a house she owns, in the rooms she chose, with the kettle somewhere findable. Three moves in, that is roughly the whole job description.
The Wolves Removals Team
Family-run removals · Ashington, West Sussex
We have moved families and businesses across West and East Sussex, Surrey, Hampshire and Kent since 2016, from our Ashington base. We are fully insured, Checkatrade-verified and a LAPADA Approved Service Provider for antiques and fine art. More about us, or read our reviews.
Six Months in Storage, Then the Keys to Selsey — FAQs
That is exactly what happened here. This client’s belongings sat with us for six months while she rented, and were delivered to the house she bought once it was hers. The split is usually lopsided: a rental swallows far less of your house than people expect, so most of it goes into store and you live with a surprisingly small fraction.
As long as you need. Six months is common for a rental gap; anything past about three months is treated as long-term storage. What matters at that length is that everything was inventoried on the way in, so it can be found and checked back out at the end.
It is a numbered list of every item, with its condition recorded, written as the goods are collected. It lets a single item be retrieved from a warehouse without unpacking everything around it, and it is the fair reference point if there is ever a question about damage months later.
Yes, and it is worth planning rather than improvising. On this job the stored half was loaded at our warehouse and the rental contents had been packed the previous day, so both arrived at the new house in an order that put furniture in first and boxes in afterwards.
Yes. We work across Selsey, East and West Wittering, Bracklesham, Sidlesham, Birdham and the rest of the peninsula from our base at Ashington. It is a straightforward run and access on most Selsey streets is easier than in the lanes further inland.
Often. This was this client’s third move with us. It makes a practical difference as well as a pleasant one — the crew already know how someone works, what matters to them and what they would rather sort out themselves.
