Household Storage in Dubai
Emptying a whole home is a different job from storing a few boxes, and it is the most common booking we take. It is the core of personal storage in Dubai: the crew arrives, the property is cleared, and everything is held until you have somewhere to put it.
Whole-home bookings are usually driven by a date rather than a want — a tenancy ending, a handover slipping, a sale completing, a posting starting. That means the collection has to happen on a specific day, and the day is usually not negotiable.
Storage is AED 12.65 per sq ft per month, VAT included, on the floor space your goods occupy. A one-bedroom is typically 60–90 sq ft, a two-bedroom 120–150, a three-bedroom villa 240–270.
What clearing a Dubai property actually involves
More coordination than lifting, which surprises people. In a tower, the service lift usually has to be booked, sometimes days ahead, and some buildings only permit moves inside a fixed window. In a gated community, the vehicle and the crew often need registering with security first. Both of those are ours to arrange, and both are why a self-drive move on a deadline goes wrong.
The lifting itself is predictable: a studio is two to three hours, a one-bedroom three to five, a three-bedroom villa most of a day. What extends it is loose belongings — a flat where everything small is already boxed loads roughly a third faster than one where it is not.
The part people forget is the last hour. Handing a property back usually means it has to be empty and clean, and the crew removes furniture rather than rubbish. Decide before the day what is being thrown away and arrange that separately.
If you are clearing the property because you are leaving the country rather than moving within it, storage for expats leaving the UAE covers the parts specific to that.
What to do the week before
In rough order of how much time each one saves on the day.
- Box every loose small item. This is the single biggest lever on both the time and the price.
- Decide what is not going — by room, not by item. Deciding item by item on the day is what makes a collection run long.
- Book the service lift, or tell us to, and confirm the building's permitted moving window.
- Empty, defrost and dry the fridge and washing machine. Both need a full day.
- Walk the balcony, the store cupboard and the garage. Everything that cannot be stored lives in those three places.
- Set aside a suitcase of things you need this week — documents, chargers, medication, a change of clothes.
The full list of what cannot go in the van is on what you can and cannot store.
What a whole-home booking looks like
| Property | Crew time | Typical stored space |
|---|---|---|
| Studio | 2–3 hours | ~30 sq ft |
| 1 bedroom flat | 3–5 hours | 60–90 sq ft |
| 2 bedroom flat | 5–7 hours | 120–150 sq ft |
| 3 bedroom villa | Most of a day | 240–270 sq ft |
| 4+ bedroom villa | A full day, sometimes two | 300+ sq ft, quoted on survey |
Plan to be present for the first twenty minutes and the last ten — the start is where you point at what goes, the end is where you sign the inventory. Everything between is ours.
Common questions
More in Personal Storage Dubai
Everything below is part of the same service — pick the page that matches what you are storing.
Clearing a property?
Tell us the size, the date and the floor. That is enough for both numbers today.
+971 50 577 3388 · support@safestorage.ae · from 12.65 AED per sq ft, VAT included