Here in Sweden almost every apartment, including rentals, have a storage room in the attic or the basement which is very convenient if you live in a smaller space and don’t want to clutter your living area. How common is this in the rest of Europe, and if you don’t have one and live in a small apartment – how do you cope?
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Not very common, but not unheard of. More common in suburban new developments that usually have a common pool and recreation areas too.
I just leave half of my things in my old room at my parents home
It‘s very common, but if your building is old (19th century old) and the storage in the basement, these rooms are often quite moist, so their usability is limited. Storage rooms in attics are rare, but sometimes- if they haven’t been upgraded to rooftop apartments- they are used for drying laundry.
In Denmark it is the norm to have at least one (either basement or attic). Sometimes both.
Very common, majority of apartment complexes have them. Sometimes it is small closed room and in older buildings there is one big room divided to wooden or metal cages (so you still have your private locked space).
I’m in Sweden too and for the first time in my life I don’t have a storage unit. It’s very unusual and sort of annoying. I’ve solved it by asking to keep a few boxes and things in my mother’s storage unit instead, which works but it isn’t really ideal
I live in Greenland. Technically not in Europe, but still kinda. Here, basically all apartments have a storage room. Usually it’s a separate door right next to the apartment entrance door.
A storage room? I was gonna say not at all. But most apartments have a department in the basement as storage. I guess that’s that.
In Poland some apartment buildings have a basically little rooms in the basement you can put stuff in, usually padlocked. Sometimes shared sometimes private.
Mine doesn’t unfortunately which sucks.
I’d go as far as to say it’s close to 100% (including rentals).
(Germany) In all flats I rented I had some storage. They were very different in quality and size:
Best: 25m² of clean, dry storage on the same floor
Worst: <4m² of damp basement, very narrow, only fit for 1 bike, full of spiders
It was the same when I “English ” lived in Finland for over 20 years.
Also, a lot of 60’s + built houses in the UK have a Store room next-door to the kitchen. When I was younger, my parents’ new build had one almost as big as the kitchen itself. It opened to the kitchen and to the outside.
All apartments will have storage, usually in the basement/ground floor. Some have a storage/laundry room inside the apartment but that’s less common.
If you’re in an apartment building, you’ll usually get a small storage space on the ground floor where you can keep your bicycle and such.
I have a storage room in my apartment where I can also place the washing machine and such. I think it is quite normal here in the Netherlands
It’s in laws here in Iceland, when you build a house/apartment you must have storage I think 9M2 correct me if I’m wrong.
My apartment building in Norway is from the late 60s and all the apartments have three storage rooms each in the basement. Fortunately nice and dry.
Very common. There’s a bomb shelter beneath of almost all apartment houses, and that is often used as a storage space
Whatever storage room we have is usually just where the boiler lives.
In Greece is not very common in the older buildings. Usually there is a storage space over the bathroom where you can put stuff. In the newer buildings I think is common practise
In many towns in Italy the building codes for new houses / flats require to have a certain surface percentage reserved for a storage room; it can be connected or not to the living area, and may be combined with the garage (itself compulsory as well)
Very uncommon in Russia. Some new blocks of flats offer them, but you have to pay extra to get one.
Very common in Norway. We were lucky enough to buy an apartment that has one storage room in the basement of the building and one inside our apartment.
One place I used to live, in Trondheim, had a cold storage room in the basement and each apartment had a locker in there, for storing food. That was a nice idea but I never seemed to use it much!
Estonia
Depends on the building.
I would say something like 75% of apartments have one.
In newer buildings you buy one out like a parking space and they are on your deed so the ownership of storage goes with apartment, older apartments it’s just ” oh apartment x has used that part of basement so the next owner will use it too” unofficially.
Very common in new-ish apartments in Spain (15-20 years old) not so much older ones.
At least in Madrid they usually build them with a parking spot on the underground and storage room close to it
In Switzerland it’s standard, in the UK it’s not, apartment storage space is horrendous there
Pretty common in Portugal Ours is in a building dating from the early 2000s but I think 5 out of 6 apartments we looked at a couple of years ago had storage.
Not very common in apartments here. Developers focus more on parking provisions instead.
Even our new build houses are much smaller than they used to be and have very little storage.
I’ve never seen, let alone lived in, any apartment that didnt have a basement compartment.
No one from Ireland has answered.I bet you can all guess why.
Very common in typical bygårder (terraced multi-floor buildings of flats arranged around a courtyard), found in the inner suburbs of Norwegian cities between the centre and detatched-house suburbs. Seems less common in new-build flats. Useful for storing bikes and stuff, often a cellar divided into lockable ‘cages’ and each flat gets one. New build blocks seem like they have them less often, instead having car parking spaces underneath.
Pretty common in Hungary. One of our neighbors even used it as a sewing room for her small business. Most buildings also have a common storage room, which is usually subjected to gradual occupation by one of the residents, going from “just putting these few things here, for a short while” to “this room as always been for my stuff” so imperceptibly that you’ll never be able to pinpoint the exact time it became theirs.
It is very common in communist era buildings to have both basement and attic rooms. I think it’s rare to have them both, especially the attic, in modern buildings. However, garages are much more common in newer buildings.
We, personally, have a 24 m2 garage and a 5 m2 “basement” (it’s on the ground level, right next to the garage, but we call it a basement for lack of better term). A lot of people in Bulgaria prepare pickles for the winter and that’s an important usage of basements. I can’t imagine keeping the sour cabbage container inside our apartment 😀
Not very common in Ireland, I’ve actually never seen that, but most individual apartments have storage rooms inside them, usually near the front door
Quite common. There is usually a dedicated small room, often the same room that houses a boiler and/or circuit breakers.
España..Mi piso construido en 1998 tiene trastero,al lado de mi plaza de garaje,en el sotano..
In Italy in most modern buildings (i.e. not the ones as old as 300-400-500 years) you normally have a cellar (we have 2) and it’s really handy.
Common enough, but far from being something that virtually everyone has.
Its quite common here in appartment buildings to have 1-2 storage rooms. Ive got 3 myself, 2 in the basement and 1 in the attic
Pretty common to have 2-4 M2 on the ground floor. Sometimes a nice room with hard walls and a door. Sometimes a big shared room, where some wood and mesh separate the individual storages and a simple padlock to close it.
It’s almost certain that there’s separate storage spaces. All buildings of certain size need to have shelters, and common dual use is to have storage cages for apartments there.
In the basement? Pretty much everything. Mine is about 1.5m by 1.5m. Not big enough for a bike, but big enough for winter tires n stuff. Sadly quite hot since the central heating pipes go through there, so not cold storage. Bikes are in their own room (bikes of everyone in the building)
Very common. Practically all older apartment buildings have a “piwnica” – a small storage room in the basement, where people keep spare tyres, christmas decoractions and whatnot. I had one even when I lived in a 13-storey commieblock.
New apartment buldings often don’t have them because the whole basement is dedicated to garages. It does suck, especially if the aparment is small. People cope by asking family members to let them use theirs or just cut down on the amout of stuff they own. So, they use all-year-round tyres instead of seasonal ones, don’t keep preserves, have one winter jacket instead of three etc.
It is very common for owned ones but if you are renting it’s rarely included. Unfortunately my apartment doesn’t have one (I have an awesome terrace instead). I just don’t own a lot of stuff and when I have had to store stuff, now that I’m living abroad and renting it out, I leave it at my older siblings’ storage room, they have a huge one.
Austria. I have a place in the cellar, which is full with stuff. And when we are not able to stuff more into it, we decide to give things away.
I had 3 appartements in my life. The newest one bigger than the one before. You have space at home for lets say half a year, and then the new appartement is again full.
And then we either sell the stuff or give it to charity.
It’s required by code in new buildings in Norway. Don’t think I’ve ever lived in a flat that didn’t have any kind of storage room(called “bod” in norwegian).
As a U.K. resident…the what, now?
Quietly sobbing into the absence of any storage in the flat, let alone elsewhere on the property….
United States – Pretty common for an apartment complex to offer storage, but it typically comes at an added cost. It’s about $100/month where I am currently living.
In hungary it depends when was the building built. If its older it 100% has if its new its unlikely
I’ve never seen at least a small one.
Our last apartment had 3 in the basement and one on the balcony + locked storage room for bikes.
I’ve one on my balcony here in Finland. Most of the other apartments storage spaces are downstairs in the bomb shelter.
That is very common in Germany too, some apartments also have a small storage room in the kitchen or hallway where people lock food and drinks, their vacuum cleaner and Christmas deco.
Some houses that were built before WW2 had the toilet separately accessable from the staircase, before bathrooms were built into the apartments. Only a few of these rooms still have a toilet in use inside, in most cases the room was changed into a storage room as well. Other houses had toilets in the backyard, as well as washing rooms (old school by hand, before washing machines existed) or former stables for horses. In most cases people have their bikes and garden tools there nowadays.
We still didn’t figure out the part of how to have an apartment in the first place.
Thank you for the question, I would never had thought that buildings are so different in other European countries
Slovakia here. Most of the older apartments buldings and some new ones have a storage in the basement, both a small private one (we fit 2 bicycles in ours) and a communal one.