PCS to Buckley? Storage in Aurora, CO That Fits the Move

A PCS to Buckley Space Force Base rarely lines up cleanly. Your orders give you one report date, the home you want opens up on another, and your household goods arrive on a third. Storage is what covers the gaps between those dates. Lockaway Storage rents month to month units in Aurora, and military families coming to or leaving Buckley use them for exactly this kind of overlap.

At a Glance

• Lockaway Storage Aurora is at 1563 Jasper St, north of East Colfax near Chambers Road and a few minutes from I-225. Units rent month to month and can be reserved online, so you can set up storage before you arrive and end it when your housing settles.
• Unit options include indoor units and drive-up units, all on the first floor, in sizes from 5x10 up to 10x30 depending on what is available.

The Gap Between Pack Out and Move In

Most storage stories start with too much stuff. PCS storage usually starts with too much time, or too little of it. A few common versions come up for families heading to Aurora.

You arrive first and your family follows once the school year ends. You sign a short term rental near Buckley while you look for something permanent, and the rental is smaller than the home your furniture came from. Your household goods ship, but the delivery window lands two weeks before you have keys. Or you are leaving Colorado and need somewhere to put the things that are not shipping with you while you wrap up your last few weeks.

None of these need a long commitment. They need a place to put things for an unknown number of weeks, and a way to end the rental the day it stops being useful. That is the case for month to month storage here. You are not guessing at a lease term you cannot predict, which is the same reason many people find a PCS so hard to plan around in the first place.

For the official side of the move, Military OneSource keeps a PCS and moving support page that points to the Plan My Move tool and describes the Defense Personal Property Program for moving and storage services. Your transportation office decides what applies to your orders. A personal storage unit is for everything that falls outside of that, which is usually more than people expect.

What Actually Goes in Storage During a PCS

People tend to picture an entire house in a unit. More often it is a short list of things that do not fit the next few months.

Furniture that does not fit the temporary place. A one bedroom rental will not hold a sectional and a dining set. Put the pieces you will not use in storage and keep the bed, a table and a couch.

The second half of the move. If you are driving some belongings yourself and shipping others, the extras waiting on the shipment sometimes need a place to sit. Boxes you will not open until you have a permanent address are good candidates.

Seasonal gear. Colorado changes how you pack. Ski equipment, winter coats, patio furniture and camping gear are easy to leave in a unit until the season turns, especially if you arrive in the middle of one and do not have a garage yet.

Things you are not ready to decide on. A PCS is a natural moment to downsize, and not every decision gets made in a week. Keeping the maybe pile in storage for a month or two is cheaper than shipping it and less stressful than rushing the decision.

Items for family still on the way. If a spouse or kids are arriving after you, belongings that belong in their rooms can wait in a unit until everyone is in the same house.

A reasonable limit applies. Lockaway Storage Aurora does not allow combustibles, firearms, living things, food or anything illegal in a unit, so check that list before you pack the garage. Our team can answer questions about what is and is not allowed.

Sizing Storage for a Home You Have Not Seen Yet

Choosing a size is harder when the next home is a mystery. The better approach is to size for what you are putting in storage, not for what you will eventually own.

At the Aurora location, indoor units start at 5x10 and 10x10, and drive-up units run 10x10, 10x15, 10x20 and 10x30, subject to what is open when you reserve. As a rough guide, a 5x10 holds the contents of a small closet and a few boxes, which suits a single person storing seasonal gear. A 10x10 is a common choice for the furniture and boxes from one or two rooms. The 10x15 and 10x20 sizes are for families holding most of a household for a few months, and the 10x30 is for a full house that needs to wait.

Our storage unit size guide shows what typically fits in each size. Sizes are approximate and what is open changes daily, so confirm on the Aurora page or by calling the team at (720) 790 3700 before you plan around a specific unit.

One practical suggestion: if you cannot decide between two sizes, rent the smaller one and see if it is enough. Ask the Aurora team how switching to a different size works if you outgrow it, since a unit that is too large starts costing you immediately. When you are paying month to month for a gap you hope will be short, extra space you do not use is the most common waste.

Drive Up or Indoor When Your Calendar Is Tight

Both unit types are on the first floor at this location, so neither involves stairs or a lift. The difference is how you load.

Drive-up units are on the outside of the building, so you can pull the truck or trailer to the door and load directly. For bulky furniture, a rental truck on a tight return window, or a day when you are moving the whole load yourself, that saves a lot of carrying. It matters more than people expect when you have a rental truck due back at a certain hour.

Indoor units sit inside the building. They are more protected from the weather than a drive-up unit, which makes them a better fit for items you plan to keep for longer, or things like boxed records and keepsakes that you would rather not have exposed to Colorado's weather swings each time the door opens. They are not climate controlled, so if you are storing something that is sensitive to temperature, ask us how best to pack it.

A simple rule: if you are loading everything in one day and rarely going back, drive-up usually saves effort. If you are storing boxes and smaller items for several months and want them tucked inside the building, indoor is worth a look.

Getting In and Out When Schedules Shift

Military schedules change, and a storage unit that needs a trip to an office during business hours does not help much when your orders move. Access at the Aurora location runs through your phone. You open the gate and your unit with a Bluetooth enabled smartphone, with no physical key to carry, and access is available within the posted access hours. Because you do not need to bring your own lock, there is one less thing to buy during a week when you are already buying everything.

If you may be deployed or traveling, think ahead about who else would need to get into the unit. Call the Aurora team and ask how a spouse or family member would be set up, rather than working it out after you leave. Our guide on what to do with your belongings during a deployment covers the longer term version of this if your situation goes beyond a few months.

Reserving From Another State

You do not need to be in Colorado to get this done. The Aurora location offers online rentals, so you can look at available sizes, pick one and move in without a trip to the office. That is useful when you are still at your current duty station and would like to know your things have a place to land. Browse the live unit list on the Lockaway Storage Aurora page, or call (720) 790 3700 if you would rather talk through sizing with someone first.

If you are still choosing where to live, our local guide to storing in Aurora near Colfax and Chambers explains how the neighborhoods around the property connect, which helps when you are comparing housing and want storage close to where you land. For information on the base itself, the Buckley Space Force Base website lists a newcomers page and unit resources.

Start with the smallest unit that holds what you are not ready to unpack, rent month to month, and end the rental when your home is settled. That is the simplest way to deal with a PCS timeline that does not run in a straight line, and the Lockaway Storage Aurora team is glad to help you pick the size.