It was supposed to be temporary — three months between apartments, or while the house sold, or until you figured out what to do with your parents' furniture. That was a while ago, and the auto-pay hasn't missed a month since. Here's what it actually costs to end it: flat by unit size, $205 for a 5×5 up to $2,145 for a 10×30, cleared to bare walls in one visit — plus all five ways to empty a unit, the rent math that usually settles the argument, and what the typical Austin unit's contents price out at piece by piece.
One photo through the roll-up door — flat quote by size in seconds
Upload a Photo & Get Quote →Every method below actually works for somebody — the honest question is which one fits your unit, your calendar and your back. Here they are in order of how much of the work stays yours.
Cost: a truck, a helper, and the disposal bill. The genuinely cheapest route if you own a pickup, the unit is small, and you have somewhere to put what you're keeping. The parts people underestimate: Austin storage facilities are mostly on the metro's edges — Ben White, the I-35 frontage roads, 183 out toward Cedar Park — so every load is a real round trip. Then there's the disposal end, which is where DIY math usually breaks: the area landfill gate publishes roughly $60 per ton with a two-ton minimum per trip, so even a half-empty pickup bills as two tons. Two weekends, two dump runs, one borrowed truck and a friend owed dinner adds up to more than a 5×10's flat clear. The full self-haul spreadsheet is here.
Cost: varies wildly; often refused. Some Austin facilities will point you at a hauler they use, a few will clear an abandoned unit themselves and bill it — usually at a rate set for their convenience rather than yours, and typically only after the account has gone delinquent. It's the least controllable option: no published price, no scheduling say, and if the unit goes to lien auction the contents stop being yours to decide about. Worth one phone call to the office; not worth waiting on.
Cost: free, sometimes profitable, always slow. If the unit holds real furniture in good condition, Austin's Buy Nothing groups and marketplace listings move it — but every buyer needs a truck, a gate code and a scheduled window, and no-shows are the norm rather than the exception. This works best as a first pass: list the three or four pieces with genuine value, give it a week, then clear the rest. What we haul that's still usable goes to donation anyway, with receipts available — so the charitable outcome doesn't require you to run the logistics. The full free-options guide is here.
Cost: unknown until the truck arrives. The franchise model sends a crew to look, then quotes volume on the spot — which is a poor fit for storage units specifically, because you're standing in a facility hallway with a gate code and a billing deadline, negotiating with people who already drove out. If you use this route, get the number in writing before they dispatch and ask exactly what happens if the unit is fuller than the photo suggested. How that model compares in Austin.
Cost: published by unit size, locked before booking. Roll the door up, take one photo, get the flat price back in seconds. The crew loads from the door, sorts donation-grade goods at the truck, sweeps the unit and you hand the lock back the same day — usually inside an hour. Nothing about the price changes on arrival, because the price came from the size and the photo, not from a judgment call made in your hallway.
Flat prices, cleared to bare walls, loading and disposal included:
| Unit size | Roughly holds | Flat price |
|---|---|---|
| 5×5 | A closet's worth — boxes, a chair, seasonal bins | $276 |
| 5×10 | A studio apartment's furniture, or a bedroom set | $485 |
| 5×15 | A one-bedroom's contents | $660 |
| 10×10 | A full one- to two-bedroom apartment | $715 |
| 10×15 | A two- to three-bedroom home | $1,075 |
| 10×20 | A three-bedroom house, or a house plus a garage | $1,435 |
| 10×25 | A large home's full contents | $1,790 |
| 10×30 | The biggest common unit — whole-house plus overflow | $2,145 |
$75 minimum. Partial clears price per item instead, and the photo quote automatically gives you whichever is cheaper.
Storage is priced to be ignorable: small enough monthly that it survives every budget review, permanent enough that it quietly totals thousands. Austin-market units run roughly $80 to $300 a month depending on size and climate control — and in this city climate control isn't optional, because a non-conditioned metal unit routinely passes 120°F in July, which is how vinyl records warp, candles fuse, electronics die and pressboard furniture delaminates.
So the arithmetic: a 5×10 at $150 a month costs $1,800 a year. The clear costs $485 — about three months of rent, after which every month is savings. And there's a quieter cost the spreadsheet misses: the longer the unit sits in Texas heat, the less of it survives to be worth keeping. The unit we clear most often has been "temporary" for three to five years, and by then the contents are worth a fraction of the rent already paid to store them.
The timing trick: facilities bill on a fixed monthly date, not prorated. Clearing the unit on the 27th instead of the 2nd of the next month saves a full month — one reason same-day availability (book by 4 PM) is worth more here than in most junk-removal jobs.
If you're clearing part of a unit rather than all of it, these are the flat per-item rates for what Austin storage units actually hold:
Sofa $126, dresser $126, desk $83, bookshelf $72, office chair $61, bed frame $68 with disassembly included. The classic storage-unit sofa — bought for an apartment two moves ago, kept because throwing out a sofa felt wasteful — is the single most common item we pull out of these units. More on furniture removal in Austin, or the full breakdown of how to get rid of a couch here.
Twin $82, queen $103. Storage is where mattresses go to become unusable — even conditioned units let humidity cycle, and a mattress that's spent two summers in a unit isn't going to a donation dock. See the Austin mattress guide for every route.
Refrigerator $164, mini fridge $115. The garage-beer-fridge-in-storage is real, and it's the item the city's bulk program will never take — refrigerant rules mean it needs EPA-standard coolant recovery. The fridge guide covers the whole chain; appliance removal pricing is here.
Moving box $31, box of books $47, ten bags $178, and a small mixed pile $82. Paper is the sneaky one: boxes of files and photo albums are usually the heaviest thing in the unit and the thing most worth opening before it leaves — crews set aside anything that looks like documents or photographs rather than loading it.
TV $68 for a mid-size set, treadmill $115. Both are storage-unit staples and both need real routing — electronics to certified e-waste recyclers, not a landfill. Exercise equipment pricing is here.
Rolled carpet $68, patio table $89, propane grill $71 (tank handled separately), a medium mixed pile $129.
Every figure is our published Austin flat rate; the complete price guide is here.
If you bought the unit at a lien auction, the economics are different — you're not deciding whether to clear it, you're racing a contractual deadline that's usually 24 to 72 hours, with your deposit riding on leaving it broom-clean. The workflow that works: pull the resellable inventory first, photograph what's left, book the clear for the next available window at the same flat per-size price. We don't appraise, sort for value, or advise on what's worth keeping — the treasure hunt is yours. We're the part that makes the deadline.
A large share of Austin storage clears aren't the renter's own unit — they're an inherited one, or a parent's, or the contents of a house that sold before the family finished sorting. Those come with two extra needs, and both are standard: documents and valuables get set aside rather than loaded, and the whole booking can run remotely, from photos sent by whoever has the gate code. If the unit is one piece of a larger estate, the Austin estate cleanout guide covers the sequence — valuables pass, keepsakes pass, estate sale, then the clear.
If you haven't opened the unit in a year, the contents aren't storage — they're a subscription to a decision you haven't made. The honest test is one question: if the unit's contents vanished tonight, what would you actually re-buy? That list is nearly always short, cheap, and already replaceable for less than a year of rent. Everything else can leave, and the good pieces get donated on the way out.
Free, no signup — flat by size, quote in seconds
Upload a Photo & Get Quote →Facilities cluster along the highways, and we clear units at all of them — from the Ben White and 183 corridors to the storage strips out past the suburbs:
Flat by unit size, cleared to bare walls in one visit: 5×5 $205, 5×10 $360, 5×15 $490, 10×10 $531, 10×15 $1,075, 10×20 $1,435, 10×25 $1,790 and 10×30 $2,145. That covers loading from the roll-up door, donation sorting, disposal and the sweep-out. If you're only clearing part of the unit, per-item pricing is usually cheaper — a sofa is $126, a queen mattress $103, a box lot $31 — and the photo quote tells you which math wins before you book.
Run the rent math first. Austin-market storage runs roughly $80–$300 a month depending on size and climate control, and climate control is close to mandatory here — a Texas summer inside a metal box regularly tops 120°F, which destroys electronics, warps records, cracks vinyl and melts candles. A $360 clear of a 5×10 pays for itself in a few months of rent you stop paying. The DIY version costs a truck, a helper, at least one weekend, and the disposal problem at the end — the landfill charges by the ton with a two-ton minimum, so 'free' isn't free.
Most units clear in under an hour once the crew is at the door — a 10×10 packed floor-to-ceiling runs closer to ninety minutes. Same-day windows are often available when you book by 4 PM, which matters more than people expect: facilities bill on a fixed monthly date, so clearing on the 27th instead of the 2nd saves a whole month's rent.
Sound furniture and household goods route to donation partners — Goodwill Central Texas, Habitat ReStore and the Austin Furniture Bank streams — with receipts available. Metal goes to scrap recovery, electronics to certified e-waste recyclers, and only the genuinely unusable remainder is disposed of. Anything that looks like documents, photos or valuables gets set aside for you rather than loaded.
Yes, and speed is the point: auction terms typically give buyers 24–72 hours to empty the unit or forfeit the deposit. Pull what you're keeping, photograph the rest, and the remainder clears at the same flat per-size pricing inside the facility's deadline. We don't appraise or sort for value — that's your treasure hunt; we're the part that gets the unit broom-clean before the clock runs out.
Not necessarily. You can meet the crew and pull keepsakes first, or arrange gate access through the facility office and stay home — a lot of Austin storage clears are booked remotely by families handling a move, an estate or an out-of-state relative's unit. You get the itemized receipt and photos of the empty unit either way, which is what the facility wants before closing the account.