That spare room has had a good run as a dumping ground this year. The desk you meant to clear in January. The exercise bike. The bed frame from your eldest’s old room. It’s all been sitting there quietly, “sorted later,” and now Christmas has put a date on later. Family are coming to stay and the room needs to be a room again, not a holding pattern.
In a hurry? Pick your branch:
Guests arrive in under three weeks? Skip to how far ahead you need to book (the two-week minimum means you’re not too late). Just want a price? Jump to what it costs. Not sure what size you’d need? Go straight to the sizing table.
Your spare room isn’t messy, it’s just full of things with nowhere else to go
Most spare rooms carrying a “for guests” label are really carrying a desk, a wardrobe’s worth of overflow clothing, a fold-up treadmill, and four or five boxes of things that don’t have a home anywhere else in the house. None of it needs to disappear forever. It just needs somewhere else to sit for a few weeks while there’s a bed to make up and a floor to walk across. Think of it as moving the holding pattern a short drive down the road rather than clearing it out for good.
What needs to move (and what can just be tidied)
You rarely need to clear the whole room, just two or three categories within it. The rule of thumb: if it’s bulky and rarely touched, it goes into storage; if it’s small and just needs putting away, a tidy sorts it.
The usual suspects
The desk and its filing boxes, the wardrobe overflow, the exercise kit, the spare bed frame, the seasonal decorations still in their boxes from last January. These are the pieces still in their holding pattern from earlier in the year, and they’re the ones worth moving out rather than shuffling to a different corner.
The one thing to check before you start
Measure the biggest piece first, usually the bed frame or the desk. Everything else in the room will comfortably follow whichever size unit that one item points you toward, which is exactly what the next section works out.
Which size unit fits a spare room’s worth of stuff
There are really only three sizes a spare-room clear-out lands on: boxes and clothing alone need a small unit, add a bed frame or desk and you’re into a medium, and clearing the room completely calls for a large unit. Here’s how the contents map to size and weekly cost, with one caveat to flag plainly upfront: the figures below are illustrative price bands from Wigwam’s Chipping Norton pricing page, not a quote for your room, and prices can move, so treat this as a guide and confirm your figure through the quote tool.
| Contents | Unit size | Weekly price |
|---|---|---|
| Boxes, clothing and small furniture pieces only | Small (10–50 sq ft) | £10–£48/wk |
| The above, plus a bed frame or mattress and a desk | Medium (75–100 sq ft) | £66–£82/wk |
| A fully furnished spare room, cleared entirely | Large (150+ sq ft) | £99–£162/wk |
One more thing to note: that “from £10 a week” figure belongs to the smallest 10–50 sq ft band only. A medium or large unit costs more, because it’s holding more.
If you’re only clearing the obvious stuff
Boxes, off-season clothing and a couple of smaller items. This is the small band, and it’s the cheapest and quickest option if the room’s problem is really just clutter rather than furniture.
If a bed frame or desk is coming out too
Once a bed frame, mattress or desk joins the boxes, you’re better served by a medium unit. It gives the bulkier pieces room to sit without being stacked on top of each other.
If you’re clearing the room completely
Bed, wardrobe overflow, desk, exercise kit and boxes, the whole room’s contents in one go. A large unit at Wigwam Self Storage Chipping Norton handles this without anything needing to be squeezed in.
What it costs to get through the hosting window
For a typical three to four week hosting stretch, a small unit at the top of its price band works out at roughly £144 to £192 in total, which is the kind of figure worth weighing against a one-off van hire plus a favour from a friend’s garage. That’s an illustrative sum based on the current weekly bands on our Chipping Norton pricing page, not a quote for your specific room.
The worked example
Say family arrive mid-December and head home in early January, a stay of three to four weeks. A small unit at the higher end of its band, £48 a week, adds up to somewhere around £144 to £192 for the whole run-up-to-and-through-Christmas period. A medium or large unit follows the same logic against its own band, scaled to what’s actually going in.
Why this beats a van and a favour
A van hire is a one-off cost with a fixed day, which means everything has to be sorted and moved on schedule or the booking’s wasted. A friend’s garage is free, but it’s not always dry, it’s not always secure, and there’s no clear end date, which tends to mean the desk is still there in March. A storage unit gives you a fixed, flexible window and somewhere clean, dry and secure to put things down, without leaning on anyone else’s goodwill.
The figure above is illustrative. If you’d like an exact price for what’s actually in your room, get a quote in under a minute.
How far ahead you need to book
You need a fortnight, not months, which is a relief if December already feels tight. Wigwam units run on a two-week minimum stay with no long lock-in, which means even if Christmas is three weeks out, there’s still time to book, load up, and have the room ready before anyone arrives.
Can you get to your things over Christmas itself?
Yes. Access runs 6:00am to 10:00pm, seven days a week, which covers Christmas Day and Boxing Day the same as any other day of the year. The site itself is unmanned outside office hours and opened with smart entry rather than a member of staff on the gate, which is simply how the access works day to day, not a sign anything’s less secure. So if the last box needs shifting on Boxing Day morning, that’s entirely normal, not a problem you have to plan around.
Office hours vs access hours
The office is staffed Monday to Friday 9:00am to 6:00pm, Saturday 9:00am to 2:00pm, and closed on Sunday, for anyone who wants to speak to someone directly. Access to your own unit runs on the separate 6:00am to 10:00pm window, every day, including the holidays themselves, so you can drop off or collect whenever suits around the hosting itself.
Why this is the local option, not just an option
The Chipping Norton site sits on Hook Norton Road, OX7 5TE, a short drive rather than a 40-minute round trip, with drive-up units that make loading a bed frame or a desk straightforward on your own.
Where to find us
The Chipping Norton site has over 11 unit sizes from 10 to 300 sq ft, so whatever’s coming out of the spare room, there’s a size that fits it without paying for space you don’t need. You can call the local team on 01608 656300, or the general line on 0800 2545585, if you’d rather talk sizing through than work it out from a table.
If you’re nearer another Wigwam site
The Chipping Norton site also serves Moreton-in-Marsh, Banbury, Burford and Stow-on-the-Wold. Shipston-on-Stour is its own separate Wigwam location rather than part of the Chipping Norton site, so if that’s genuinely closer to home, check the full list of locations to see which one suits your drive best.
A spare room for a few weeks, not a commitment
This is a two-week minimum arrangement, not a long-term contract, which is really the point: the room gets sorted, the guests get a proper bed to sleep in, and nothing about it ties you into months you don’t need. A refundable deposit is taken when you book, alongside the first period’s rent. When you’re ready to bring things home, you give 14 days’ notice to end the licence, and the deposit along with any unused paid days is refunded once that notice period completes. Three distinct steps, not one, and each one’s straightforward.
No van to organise, no favour to call in, just a spare room that’s ready before the family walk in the door. Get a quote for your room in under a minute, or call the Chipping Norton team on 01608 656300 if you’d rather talk through sizing first.
Frequently Asked Questions
A couple of weeks is genuinely enough. Units run on a two-week minimum stay, so booking three or four weeks out, or even less, still leaves time to move things in and have the room ready.
It depends on what’s coming out. Boxes and clothing alone usually fit a small unit (10–50 sq ft), a bed frame or desk added to that calls for a medium (75–100 sq ft), and clearing the room entirely tends to need a large unit (150+ sq ft or above).
Yes. Access runs 6:00am to 10:00pm, seven days a week, including Christmas Day and Boxing Day. The office itself keeps shorter, staffed hours, but your own access to the unit isn’t limited to those windows.
No. The minimum stay is two weeks, with no long lock-in beyond that, so it suits a short hosting window as easily as a longer clear-out.
