JellyFish Real Estate Inc.

Sizes, loads and spaces — a plain guide

Learn · Checked November 2, 2026

Four small diagrams that answer the questions our shelves get asked most: how much fits in a storage unit, what counts as a load of laundry, how wide a mobile home sits on its lot and what a self-serve wash bay actually looks like. Everything here is general knowledge, drawn in plain terms. No operator's figures are used and no facility is pictured.

Storage unit sizes

Storage units are sold by their floor footprint: width by depth, in feet. The height is usually eight feet or so, but the footprint is the number on the door and the number you rent by. The six footprints below are the standard set, drawn to the same scale so the jumps between them are honest. A 10 by 10 is not a little bigger than a 5 by 10 — it is twice the floor.

5 × 525 sq ft5 × 1050 sq ft10 × 10100 sq ft10 × 15150 sq ft10 × 20200 sq ft10 × 30300 sq ft
The six standard footprints at one scale. The blue edge is the door side and depth runs up the page.
  • 5 × 5 — 25 square feet. A small closet: chairs, cabinets, electronics and boxes.
  • 5 × 10 — 50 square feet. A walk-in closet: a sofa, a mattress set and the boxes from one room.
  • 10 × 10 — 100 square feet. Half of a single garage: the contents of a one-bedroom home, appliances included.
  • 10 × 15 — 150 square feet. A two-bedroom home with room to spare: beds, wardrobes, a table and the garage overflow.
  • 10 × 20 — 200 square feet. A full single garage: a car with boxes around it or a three-bedroom home emptied carefully.
  • 10 × 30 — 300 square feet. A garage and a half: a vehicle plus a workshop or a whole house with walking space left between the stacks.

Our storage cards quote sizes in these footprints, so this ruler is the one the whole directory uses.

Laundry loads

Wash-and-fold is priced by weight and self-serve machines are priced by the load, so the useful question is what a load actually is. The trade's working answer is a hamper: one standard laundry hamper holds roughly ten pounds of mixed laundry and fills one standard washer. A comforter breaks the rule: it is light for its size and it still needs a drum to itself.

One hamperOne standard load — about 10 lb (4.5 kg) of mixed laundryOne standard loadFills one standard washer, start to finishOne comforter or duvetCounts as its own load, whatever it weighs
The load, translated. One hamper is the unit every price on the laundromat shelf is measured against.

A mobile home on its lot

In a land-lease community you rent the lot and own the home that sits on it, so the lot is the product. Homes arrive in sections: a single-wide is one section, usually about 14 feet across. A double-wide is two sections joined on the lot and usually runs about 28 feet across. The drawings below are plan views — the shapes a home leaves on its lot, drawn to the same scale.

Single-wideOne section — about 14 ft acrossDouble-wideTwo sections joined — about 28 ft across
Plan view: the shape each home leaves on its lot. Both lots are drawn the same size so the homes compare honestly — real lots vary.

A self-serve wash bay

A self-serve bay is a covered stall with a meter, a foaming brush and a pressure wand. You drive in, feed the meter and do the washing yourself, one vehicle at a time. The drawing shows the bay from the front: the arch is the stall, the car sits under cover and the blue fan at the right is the wand's spray.

The stall,under coverYou holdthe wandOne vehicle at a time
A self-serve bay from the front. One vehicle, one meter and one wand, under cover.

Where these drawings get used

The storage footprints are the ruler for the Ontario storage shelf and the North Carolina storage shelf. The load is the unit on the laundromat shelf, the lot is the ground under the mobile parks shelf and the bay is the stall on the car wash shelf.