Seasonal Storage: Garden Furniture & Kit Through a UK Winter

Seasonal storage clears the garage and loft of the things you only use half the year — garden furniture, the BBQ, parasols, Christmas decorations — and keeps them dry and safe until the season comes round again. We collect, store and bring them back when you need them.

Half of what fills a garage or shed is out of season at any one time. Storing it properly frees up the space you actually use, and keeps it out of the damp, unheated sheds where garden kit and decorations slowly rot, rust and grow mould.

What can you put into seasonal storage?

You can put almost any out-of-season item into storage: garden furniture, the BBQ, parasols and loungers in winter; heaters, winter gear and Christmas decorations in summer. As long as it is clean, dry and not hazardous, it can be collected and stored until you need it.

• Garden furniture, loungers & parasols over the winter months.
• The BBQ and outdoor kit — cleaned and with the gas removed.
• Christmas decorations and lights the rest of the year.
• Winter gear, heaters and spare bedding through the summer.

How do you store garden furniture over winter?

Store garden furniture over winter by cleaning and drying it first, then keeping it somewhere dry and ventilated rather than a cold, damp shed. The RHS advises the same — clean and put furniture away at the end of summer in dry weather. A cold metal shed sweats with condensation and rusts metal and grows mould on cushions — the same dew-point effect that ruins furniture in an unheated unit.

A damp shed is where garden furniture goes to rust — clean it, dry it, and keep it somewhere the air actually moves.Winter care for outdoor kit

Wrap and pack it the same way you would indoor pieces — see how to pack furniture without wrecking it, and why the dry environment matters through a Sussex winter.

When should you store seasonal items?

Store seasonal items at the end of the season you have finished with, and bring them back just before you need them again. A simple rhythm keeps the garage clear all year round:

What can’t you put into seasonal storage?

You can’t store the gas and fuel that often live with seasonal kit. BBQ gas bottles, patio-heater gas and petrol for mowers or strimmers are all flammable and not allowed — remove the gas, store the appliance clean and empty, and see what you can’t put in storage for the full list.

Is seasonal storage worth it?

Seasonal storage is worth it when the space you reclaim matters more than the weekly cost — a clear garage you can park in, or a loft you can use, for a few pounds a week. On flexible weekly terms you only pay for the months the items are away, and good garden furniture lasts far longer kept dry than left to a damp shed.

How does collected seasonal storage work?

Collected seasonal storage works on flexible weekly terms, so you store only for the months you don’t need the items. We collect your garden furniture or decorations from the door, keep them in our dry warehouse, and redeliver when the season turns — no lugging things to a unit and back twice a year.

How much seasonal kit fits in one container — and what does it cost?

Most people over-estimate what they are storing. One container holds 250 cu ft — 5ft × 7ft × 8.6ft, about the contents of a one-bedroom flat — and a typical garden’s worth of out-of-season kit does not come close to filling it. A six-seat table and chairs, a parasol and base, two loungers, a cushion box, a cleaned BBQ and the Christmas boxes will normally sit inside a single container, which is £21 a week for the storage and the insurance, with collection and redelivery quoted upfront as a separate charge based on volume and distance.

If you are clearing the whole garage rather than just the garden — bikes, tools, spare furniture and the seasonal kit together — two containers is the usual answer. The ladder runs £21, £42, £63 and £79 a week for one, two, three and four containers, all of it covering storage and insurance with collection and redelivery quoted separately and upfront. Our storage size guide is the quickest way to sanity-check which of those you actually need, and the pricing page sets the whole thing out in one place.

How do you clean each type of garden furniture before storing it?

“Clean and dry” means something slightly different for each material, and getting it wrong in October is what shows up as damage in April.

The instruction that applies to all of them is the dull one: dry means dry the whole way through, not dry to the touch. Cushion foam and parasol canvas hold water long after the surface feels fine, so give them dry days rather than dry hours. Once everything is genuinely dry, wrap it the way you would indoor pieces — breathable covers rather than sealed plastic, which is exactly how our furniture storage service handles anything upholstered or wooden.

A year in seasonal storage: how it actually runs

The rhythm is easier to picture as a calendar than a checklist. A year for a household that stores seasonally tends to look like this:

Because storage is billed by the week with no tie-in, a household storing garden furniture for roughly half the year and decorations for the other half only pays storage for the weeks things are actually away — with each collection and redelivery quoted upfront as a separate charge. Access is on 24 hours’ notice rather than drive-up self-access, so getting the parasol back for an early heatwave is a phone call the day before rather than a drive to a lock-up. How managed storage works walks through collection and redelivery step by step, and container storage explains the container itself.

How should you prepare the mower, the heater and the powered kit?

The appliances are usually fine; the fuel that lives alongside them is not. Beyond the gas bottles and petrol already ruled out above, there are a few practical steps worth taking before collection day.

• Run a petrol mower or strimmer dry rather than storing it with fuel in the tank, and wipe the deck down once the clippings are off.
• Take the battery out of cordless tools and keep it at home — loose lithium batteries are a fire risk and are better not stored.
• Disconnect a patio heater from its bottle, clean the reflector, and store the heater itself empty.
• Coil hoses drained, and empty water butts, pots and anything else holding standing water.
• Check nothing has become a home — birds, mice and insects move into stacked garden kit surprisingly fast in autumn.

One thing worth saying plainly: we store household and business goods, not vehicles. No cars, caravans, motorbikes or boats go into storage with us, in any season. Everything else on the prohibited list, and the reasoning behind it, is in what you can’t put in storage in the UK.

Seasonal storage for pubs, cafés and clubs

It is not only households that run on seasons. Pubs, cafés and clubs face the same swing: outdoor tables, benches, parasols and patio heaters that earn their keep from May to September and then block a cellar, a yard or a function room all winter — plus gazebos and event kit used a handful of weekends a year. The same containers, billed weekly, solve it the same way, and business storage covers how that runs for a business, including seasonal stock and display kit that has been squatting in a stockroom with better uses. We collect across the county — the areas we cover lists the towns, and there are local pages for individual towns such as storage in Worthing.

Shed, loft or container — which is right for seasonal kit?

Each has a job it does well, and a catch that people find out about the following spring.

The honest summary is simple: if you need it this week, keep it to hand. If you will not touch it until the season turns, it does not need to occupy the space you park in. For a single winter, short-term storage covers it on weekly terms; for kit you only use one season in three, the same containers simply stay with us for longer.