Where Do You Keep Your STUFF?
We all have stuff. Stuff we don't need on a daily basis but stuff we need to keep for that one day when we will need said stuff. We all also store said stuff in our homes, whether it be in closets, under beds, in cabinets, or crammed in a corner somewhere. For me, my stuff is in our basement storage room. Anything that does not have a specific home is kept here and if it is not used it's gone. By keeping only one "room" open for the random stuff it keeps me accountable to actually using what we own because I only have this one room to keep it all. If it gets too messy, things have got to go. Recently I had to put away my first box of newborn clothes Evey's grown out of (tear...) so I took the opportunity to reevaluate what was going on down there.
Meet our storage room:
It is located in the back part of our unfinished basement with the laundry room and on the other side is our family room in the finished part of the basement. Yeah we've got exposed beams and wires and pipes but honestly I am so thankful to have the space! If we didn't have this unfinished area to store stuff I don't know what we'd do with it all!
We were lucky enough to inherit these wire racks with the home and have put them to good use! The first rack on the far left used to be in the laundry room, the middle rack was in the family room and the previous owners left it for us, and the third rack on the right wasn't being used in the garage so we put it down here.
I would love to get more racks for this side of the room but for now it works and we took advantage of the two shelves that were already there.
As for what we have down here, here's a quick run-down of the photo above: Black metal roof rack for my car and a black shelf, steam vac, cardboard box with dining table leaves, bag of borrowed maternity clothes needing to be returned, plastic bin with a set of china we never use, two white bins of "memory" items, two green bins of "memory" items, and Dan's paintball gear.
On the other wall the three racks were recently consolidated to keep like items together. The far left shelf holds: paint, home improvement items like extension cords and switch plates, extra cleaning supplies, a cat carrier, and a few summer/winter items like extra bathing suits and scarves.
I hate having so many small boxes for Christmas items and it just makes it a pain to take everything upstairs to decorate and put back away each year. I want to get some more bigger plastic bins so I can fit more in each, make less trips up and down stairs, and be able to stack them all nicely. I didn't waste an inch of space up top and my tall trees fit right up into the rafters! This rack was originally intended to be a free-standing closet so I used the hanging bar to hang bags of pinecones and extra Christmas decor.
The third rack on the right, closest to where you walk in, holds all things baby such as: hand-me-down clothes not yet sorted/needed as well as a box of newborn clothes grown out of, my maternity clothes, baby items not yet needed like extra car seat base, booster seat, Bumbo, extra diapers and extra wipes.
Back past the roof rack and behind the furnace is a bit more storage and I've used it mostly for Dan's things like: spare car parts, car manuals, school books, and sports gear. We also keep our griddle down here since it's too big to keep in the kitchen and we don't use it all that often.
Ultimately I would love to get more boxes, even if they're just diaper boxes or even liquor boxes (taken for free at the store, I really don't drink) and organize things a bit better and label everything so I don't have to go rooting around to find what I'm looking for. I definitely want to get the Christmas stuff put back away this year in a much more organized fashion so that's something to look forward to! Exciting stuff. As for the baby clothes, I need to go through the hand-me-downs (from my sister in law whose daughter is a year older than Evey) and organize everything by size so when the time comes to use it I'll know where to find it.
So tell me, where do you keep your stuff?
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