Storage between houses: How Geelong families bridge the gap

The removalist truck is booked for Friday. Settlement on the house you’re leaving is Friday too. Settlement on the place you’re moving into is three weeks after that, because the vendor’s own purchase fell through and everyone agreed to shift the date rather than collapse the chain.

So now you’ve got a four-bedroom house worth of furniture, a family, and twenty-one days with nowhere to put any of it.

If that sounds familiar, you’re in good company. It’s one of the most common reasons people call us, and it’s almost never something anyone planned for. Here’s how the gap between houses actually works, what it costs you in time and hassle, and how to plan it so the three weeks in the middle aren’t the worst part of your move.

Why the gap between houses happens more often than people think

Settlement dates are set by contract, not by convenience. When you’re selling one property and buying another, you’re relying on two separate chains of buyers and sellers lining up on the same day – and each of those chains has its own finance approvals, building inspections and last-minute wobbles.

Most of the time it works. When it doesn’t, the gap can be anything from a few days to a couple of months.

We see the same pattern across the greater Geelong region. A family in Lara sells quickly in a strong market, then spends six weeks finding the right place in Highton. Someone in Norlane settles on a new build in the northern growth corridor that’s running behind schedule. A couple in Bell Post Hill moves out on time and moves in late, because the vendor’s removalist cancelled.

None of these are unusual. They’re just rarely accounted for until the dates are already locked in.

What short-term storage between houses actually involves

The idea is straightforward. Everything comes out of house one, goes into a unit, and comes out again when house two is ready. What catches people out is the practical detail around that.

You’ll be handling your belongings twice instead of once, which means two loading days rather than one. You’ll want the things you need day-to-day – clothes, school gear, the kettle – accessible rather than buried behind a wardrobe. And you’ll want to be able to get to the unit outside work hours, because moving days rarely finish at 5pm.

That last point matters more than people expect. Our site access runs 7am to 10pm, seven days a week, including public holidays, which means an evening drop-off after work is a normal thing to do rather than a favour you have to ask for.

Plan for longer than you think

In our experience, the single most common mistake with a settlement gap is booking storage for exactly the number of days on the contract. Dates move. Builders run late. Finance takes an extra week.

If your gap is three weeks, plan around a month. It’s far easier to finish up early than to scramble for an extension while a truck is idling in the driveway.

What size unit do you need for a whole house?

This is the question we get asked most, and the honest answer is that it depends less on the number of bedrooms than on how much furniture you’ve accumulated.

As a rough guide, a 2m x 3m unit will take the largest items found in a regular home, while a 3m x 2.5m unit is big enough to fit a large vehicle with room to spare. A smaller 1.5m x 2.5m unit suits about a small apartment’s worth of belongings.

The detail most people miss is height. Our units are roughly 8ft tall, and that vertical space is genuinely usable if you pack for it. A unit that looks too small on the floor plan often isn’t, once boxes are stacked properly and mattresses are stood on their edge.

If you’re not sure where you land, the space calculator takes about two minutes and gives you a far better starting point than guessing. For a fuller breakdown of what fits where, we’ve written a separate guide on what size storage unit you need.

Five steps for packing a settlement gap

Packing for a short gap is a different job from packing for long-term storage. You’re optimising for retrieval, not preservation.

1. Separate a “living out of” box before anything else. Two weeks of clothes, chargers, medications, school uniforms, the coffee gear. This stays with you, not in the unit.
2. Load the unit in reverse order of need. Anything you might want during the gap goes in last so it’s nearest the door. Bed frames, garden tools and the spare dining chairs go to the back.
3. Leave a walkway. A narrow aisle down the middle costs you a small amount of floor space and saves you unstacking half the unit to reach one box.
4. Label the ends of boxes, not the tops. Once boxes are stacked, the tops are invisible. The ends are what you’ll be reading.
5. Photograph the unit when you’ve finished loading. It’s useful for your own memory and it’s useful for insurance purposes if you’ve arranged cover for the contents.

What to look for when you’re storing everything you own

There’s a difference between storing a few boxes of seasonal gear and storing the entire contents of your home. For a settlement gap it’s the second one, and that changes what’s worth paying attention to.

Ask how the security is structured. At our Corio facility, every one of our 200-plus units has its own individual alarm, so an alert triggers if someone approaches your specific unit – not just when the front gate opens. That sits alongside perimeter fencing, electronic gate access with recorded entries and 24/7 CCTV across the entrances and common areas.

No facility can promise that nothing will ever go wrong, and any operator who tells you otherwise is overselling. What a purpose-built site can do is design security in from the start rather than bolt it on afterwards. We built ours in 2021 to our own specifications, which is why the corridors are extra wide, the lighting is modern throughout and the ground floor units have drive-up access – you reverse the truck to the roller door and unload straight in.

The trolleys on site are free to use, which sounds minor until you’re moving a household in February heat.

Making the drive work with a moving schedule

We’re in Corio, about 20 minutes north of Geelong CBD, and that distance is a fair thing to weigh up. For a settlement gap it usually works in your favour rather than against it.

You’re making two big trips, not twenty small ones. Drive-up access at ground level means the loading itself is faster than a multi-storey site in town where everything goes through a lift. And with access until 10pm every night, you’re not fitting your move around a facility’s opening hours.

If you’re coming from North Geelong, Norlane or Lara, you’re on the doorstep anyway.

Where to start

If you know your settlement dates, work backwards. Book the unit for a week either side of the gap, size it slightly larger than you think you need, and get the truck booked early – removalists in Geelong fill up fast around end of month, which is when most settlements land.

Run your inventory through the space calculator to get a size, have a look at our personal storage units to see what’s available, or call the team on 03 6163 1053 if you’d rather talk it through with someone. If your dates are still moving around, tell us – we’d rather help you plan for the gap than watch you guess at it.