I read the news over breakfast and my toast went down the wrong way. According to Statistics Portugal (INE), the median house price in Portugal rose 18.4% in a year, reaching €2,445/m². Lisbon is already at €5,299/m², Cascais at €5,200 and Oeiras at €4,704. On the Setúbal Peninsula, prices rose 22.2%. And at the same time, 9% fewer homes were sold across the country.
In plain English: fewer and fewer people are moving house, and every square metre is worth more than ever. To free up space at home, buying more metres is off the menu. That leaves freeing up the ones we already have. I put down my toast and went to do the maths on the back room.
The sum nobody wants to do
Our “guest room” is about 10 m². No guest has ever slept in it. Who does sleep there is an exercise bike working as a clothes rack, three boxes of “moving stuff” (from 2019), the dismantled Christmas tree and a cot waiting for a baby who’s already at school.
10 m² × €4,704/m² (the median price in Oeiras) comes to €47,040. In Lisbon, it would top €52,000. I’ve got nearly €50,000 of house working as a warehouse. That exercise bike has never been so well paid.
And it’s not just the room. It’s the garage the car no longer fits into (it sleeps on the street, evicted by boxes), the storeroom begging for mercy and the enclosed balcony turned into a nest of bags. Every metre taken up by clutter is a metre paid for and never used.
Keep, sell, donate or store
Before buying more shelves (which are just clutter with legs), I gave every object a job interview:
- Keep: have I used it in the last year, and does it have a proper place? It stays.
- Sell: in good condition, but no longer for me? Off to the second-hand sites.
- Donate: does someone need it more than I do? Off to a charity or the neighbour.
- Store: needed, but not every day? It doesn’t have to take up metres of the house.
The exercise bike cried, but it was sold.
What can go on holiday
The “store” pile is the sneakiest: it’s all things you need… sometimes. That’s when a friend asked me why I didn’t put it in self-storage. I took a look at KUBOO and realised the obvious: I was using metres worth nearly five thousand euros to keep things I see once a year.
What makes sense to store outside the house:
- Bikes and sports gear out of season.
- Christmas decorations, which spend eleven months taking up space to shine for one.
- Cots, baby seats and baby clothes waiting for the next heir.
- Archives: the paperwork you have to keep but don’t want to see.
There are self-storage units from 1 m³ to over 30 m², and sturdy kuboo boxes for anyone who, like me, was still packing their life into supermarket bags.
The unit as a waiting room
And what if you really are thinking of moving? With the market like this, dates rarely line up: the old house already has a buyer and the new one still has no keys. A storage unit works as a waiting room between homes, and the sofa waits sitting down, in no hurry. Along the way, the house for sale gets rid of its boxes, which works wonders in the listing photos.
In the end, I realised I didn’t need a bigger house. I needed fewer things in it. KUBOO has self-storage in Carnaxide, Abóboda and Seixal, with 24/7 access. And the back room has had its first guest: me, with a book.
Checklist: gain metres without moving house
- ☐ Measure the rooms that are doubling as storage (spare room, garage, enclosed balcony).
- ☐ Multiply the m² by your municipality’s median price and take a good look at the number.
- ☐ Sort everything into four piles: keep, sell, donate, store.
- ☐ Give the “sell” pile 30 days. Whatever doesn’t go gets donated.
- ☐ Set aside anything seasonal or rarely used.
- ☐ Pack in sturdy boxes and label each one on the outside.
- ☐ Make a quick inventory with photos on your phone.
- ☐ Choose the unit size by actual volume, not by “we’ll see”.
- ☐ Heavy at the bottom, fragile on top, most-used at the front.
- ☐ Put the dates you swap seasonal gear in your calendar.
Source: Statistics Portugal (INE), local housing price statistics, Q2 2026, via Observador.
