Some records you’re required to keep for years — but they don’t have to live in your office or garage. A local provider picks up your boxes, stores them securely, and brings any box back when you need it.
Old files piling up at home or the office? Enter your zip code to compare local shredding and storage companies, see upfront prices, and book online in minutes.
Tax records, contracts, client files, medical charts — plenty of paperwork has a legally required keep period (called a retention period) measured in years. Until that clock runs out, those boxes are taking up your closet, your garage, or square footage you’re paying office rent on. Do the math on what a file room costs at your rent per square foot, and the boxes are usually the most expensive thing in it.
Off-site box storage moves them to a secure records facility instead. A local provider picks up your boxes, logs each one with a barcode so it can always be found, and stores them in a monitored, access-controlled building designed for exactly this. Need a file back? Request the box and it’s delivered to you — you’re never cut off from your own records.
And when a box finally reaches the end of its retention period, you can have it securely shredded straight from storage, with a certificate of destruction to close it out — it never has to come back to clutter your office first. Store while you must, destroy with proof when you’re done: that’s the whole lifecycle, handled.
Enter your zip code
Compare Verified Providers offering records storage near you, with monthly per-box pricing shown upfront.
Book your pickup
Choose a provider, schedule a pickup, and pay online. Your boxes are collected right from your home or office.
Stored, tracked, protected
Every box is barcoded and logged, then stored in a secure, monitored facility — out of your space, never out of reach.
Retrieve or destroy on request
Need a box back? Request delivery. Done keeping it? Have it securely shredded from storage with full documentation.
The moment your boxes are collected, each one gets a unique barcode tied to your account. From then on, every movement is scanned and logged: onto the truck, onto its shelf in the facility, out for a delivery back to you, and — eventually — into the shredder. At any moment, there is an exact, auditable answer to “where is that box?”
Label your boxes well before pickup (“Invoices 2021,” “Closed client files A–M”) and that description rides along with the barcode — so when you need the 2021 invoices three years from now, you request that box, not a guess. Compare that to the alternative most of us know: an afternoon in the garage opening boxes one by one, hoping the one you need isn’t at the bottom of the stack.
This is the same discipline professional records centers use to manage millions of boxes for banks and hospitals — available for your ten.
Retention periods vary by record type and situation — but these common benchmarks explain why the boxes pile up:
The pattern: important records need to be kept for years, and then — just as importantly — they should be securely destroyed, because expired records are pure liability with zero value. Storage handles the keeping; destruction with a certificate handles the letting go. (Retention requirements depend on your situation — when in doubt, check with your accountant or attorney.)
Records storage is typically priced as a small monthly fee per box, with pickup, retrieval, and eventual destruction priced as simple add-ons. For most businesses it costs dramatically less than the office square footage those boxes currently occupy. Unlike a self-storage unit, you’re paying only for the boxes you store, not an empty room around them.
On Annex, local storage providers list their prices openly. Compare monthly rates and service fees side by side, and book your first pickup online in minutes.
What moves the price up or down
Verified Providers
Every provider on Annex meets our Verified Provider standard for security, insurance, and service quality.
Real prices upfront
You see each provider’s actual price before you book. Not an estimate, not a range, and never a callback.
Book online instantly
Pick your provider, pay online. Done in minutes, no phone tag.
Proof it’s done
You get documented confirmation when the work is complete.
✓ Businesses required to keep records for multi-year retention periods — tax, legal, medical, HR, and financial files
✓ Offices reclaiming file rooms, closets, and expensive square footage
✓ Home-based businesses with paperwork overflowing the spare room
✓ Anyone mid-move or mid-renovation who needs records safe but out of the way
✓ Firms that want retention handled properly: stored while required, destroyed with proof when it’s not
Ready to destroy records that are past retention? Book one-time shredding — mobile or off-site. Storing tapes or backup media? See media storage. Oversized or delicate items? See specialty storage. Retiring the computers those records lived on? Add hard drive destruction.
Old files piling up at home or the office? Enter your zip code to compare local shredding and storage companies, see upfront prices, and book online in minutes.