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Stuff we store

3K views 12 replies 7 participants last post by  Spirit Deer 
#1 ·
Sometimes I'm overwhelmed with the shear amount of stuff we have. My dream is to live in a Zen simple atmosphere. That probably will never happen unless I lived alone. The other members of my family (hubby and DD) are hoarders. I barely keep them under control.

Our current house has a carport. We don't have a garage which is posing to be quite a problem. We have a shed but it is pretty far away on the property and more set up as a shop, not a storage building. As a result, a lot of the stuff that we'd normally stick in the garage ends up in the house.

In an effort to get a handle on how I'm going to deal with all this stuff, I made a list of what we store:

* Spare kitchen / dining supplies: tablecloths, place mats, seasonally used appliances, thermoses, lunch bags / tote bags, ice chests, etc
* Spare bed & bath linens: sheets, blankets (lots of blankets!), guest pillows, beach towels, etc.
* Camping supplies: Propane stove, sleeping bags, tent, etc.
* Toiletries: this includes cosmetics, bug repellant, sunscreen, back-up shampoo, bars of soap, etc.
* Medications: prescriptions and over-the-counter, first aid kit, etc.
* Books
* Craft supplies: tools and materials
* Disposables: garbage bags, paper towels, TP, kleenex, batteries, etc.
* Pet supplies: back-up food, treatments, shampoo, "dog towels", etc.
* Basic tools (Ideally, the major tools would be in the garage or shed)
* Basic home maintenance: step stools / short ladder, spare screws, hooks, etc (you know, all that stuff that ends up in the junk drawer), tape, light bulbs.
* Sporting goods: This is a huge category that includes bats, rackets, balls (so many balls!), exercise equipment, knives, guns, hunting supplies, bike helmet (and all the other helmets for other sports). This is a huge category for us. Ideally the bikes would be in the garage.
* Office supplies: pens, tape, scissors, rulers, blank checks, stationery, stamps, blank notebooks, printer paper, etc. Includes bill paying ledger and important papers.
* Photos
* Leaves to the dining room table (table is so big we don't leave them in all the time) Spare chairs. We even have a folding table.
* Cleaning supplies: Includes back-ups of chemicals, broom, vacuum cleaner, carpet cleaner, etc.
* Seasonal clothing: everything from bathing suits to muck boots, hats, umbrellas, winter gloves, etc.
* Mementos / keepsakes
* Games / puzzles
* DVDs / CDs
* Seasonal decor like Christmas decorations
* Musical instruments & printed music. Yes, we have quite a bit in this category.
* Emergency supplies: BOB, tornado box, etc.
* Computer supplies: back-up disks, operating manuals, cables, spare printer ink.
* Items staged to donate to the thrift store (I do this so often, I might as well have a designated location)

I'm sure I haven't listed everything. What do you do with all this stuff?!?!?!?
 
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#2 ·
that is a great list! I'm gonna steal it when I finally get organized better

In my old town house, I had the world's tiniest garage. We get a lot of snow up here so I wanted to keep my car in the garage. So it had very little practical storage. I hung up shovels, rakes, lawn chairs on hooks. But anything you hung up, you had to dodge and wiggle by just to get out of the car. But where exactly do you store garage items when you essentially don't have a garage with storage? I couldn't have a shed, community by law. So I hung the lawn mower up high, as well but not one more thing would fit.

I used to store the DR table leaves under a bed

what's your basement like? My town house had a big unfinished laundry area. We had very few storage areas in the house, small closets, no coat closet. Tiny kitchen, no pantry. So I lined the walls of the basement with various heavy duty plastic shelving units that I found at garage sales or forked over the money when they were on sale. It worked out really well, I could stockpile, holiday things were right where I could see them. I also, in the house I have now, I bought the wire shelving that you put onto the back of a door, Home Depot has them. They surprisingly hold a lot, especially good for HBA items.

CD/DVDs first I stopped buying them and got them from the library (I admit it- I copy music CDs, lol), then I got these big binders with pages with slots made for CDs, they held 500 and you could fit the liner notes in. $5 at that chain that sells nothing over $5 but cannot remember the name. Once my kids were older, we never bought DVDs, but DVDs fit in these binders as well. IDK about you, but I was able to store the binders in the basement because all of my music is on an iPod, I so rarely used the actual CDs.

Books- I read a lot, I rarely if ever re-read a book, so I donated them because any book I want, the library has. Purged kid books, hard because they were sentimental to me, kept a large Rubbermaid tote full of those that I just could not give away yet.

Instruments and sheet music were a problem here, too. As they got older, they wanted to play additional instruments. DD was on violin also played keyboard, wanted a piano (ah, NO), and mandolin. My son it was trumpet, bass, guitars, amps and all that stuff. We actually had an extra room in the basement that was an office I never used. I encouraged them to make that a music room, they could play together (yeah, right!), everything in one place. They didn't like having to go to the basement which was ridiculous, so I said fine, but now all music stuff stays in your BR. That worked.

I stored all my kids clothes in dressers and used their closets for storage.

that's all I got! Good luck, I look forward to what ideas you get
 
#4 ·
I currently live in somehting between a studio and an appartement, so I don't have a lot of stuff. Some of it got left behind at my parents (who have enough place and so much storage it is no problem for them). But I also just purged a lot of stuff. I donated 2/3 of my books (mostly teen stuff though) to a local charity store. I purged some cloths, to make everything fit in. I have some stuff stored up in a not so nice way, partially because this is temporary and I ll be out of here shortly.

What I am planning to do in the new house is implement a ton of storage right away, cause while it is plenty big for me alone, I don't want to lose nearly 2 feet at every wall because of storage like the sellers do. One of the ways I want to do is by using storage furniture: couches where you can actually storing things in and things like that. While I think it would be too costly for you to do that right now, maybe you could change some smaller furniture? Btw this is where I got the inspiration from: Footstools & Pouffes - IKEA. I specifically like the 'bosnäs' because of the price and size, and plan to implement 2 or 3 of them to act as a 'bench' in the entrance space.
 
#7 ·
Don't bring home anything unless you already have a plan where it's going to be stored.

Designate certain places for storing certain types of things. When the designated space is about to be exceeded, purge.

One in, one out rule, no exceptions.

Why have a lot of extra bedding? One change of sheets for each bed, purge the rest, store the extra set folded flat under the mattresses. Keep only enough blankets for each bed. Get rid of box springs and replace with drawer bases for storage, or put beds on risers and add totes underneath for storage.

Designate spaces for the hoarders and make sure their crap stays in those spaces. Keep their clutter and yours out of the common areas of the house.

Add locking storage to the carport or better yet, enclose it with real walls and make it into a garage.

Minimize all seasonal stuff. Anything that isn't used enough to be worth the space it takes up should be purged.

Minimize nicknacks and other items that don't serve much purpose.

Don't maintain and add to collections unless they serve a useful purpose.

Focus on purging single-purpose items in favor of multi-purpose items, especially in the kitchen.
 
#8 ·
I should have mentioned that we moved out of a 3500 sq ft house that had a basement and two 2-car garages plus a barn. We purged quite a bit when we moved mostly because I didn't want to pay the movers to haul it across country. When we landed here in MS we lived in a tiny 2 bedroom, 2 bath apartment and rented a 10x10 storage unit for everything that wouldn't fit. Now we're in a 2000 sq ft house as described above. I finally relented and we're renting a 10x10 climate controlled storage unit.

Thank you Spirit Deer for your suggestions. I'm doing the best I can and we clearly have duplicates we don't need. It is so difficult to get rid of useful stuff, though! For instance, I had two pairs of kitchen scissors. I use them for everything and often find that I use both because one is dirty when I need a second (cutting chicken and then wanting to snip herbs, for instance). Then one of my kitchen scissors broke. Ugh! I'm not replacing it but I really miss having two pairs.

"Don't bring home anything unless you already have a plan where it's going to be stored. ... One in, one out rule, no exceptions. Designate spaces for the hoarders and make sure their crap stays in those spaces. Keep their clutter and yours out of the common areas of the house." - Hoarders! This just isn't going to happen. I've been married to hubby for 30 years and he has actually gotten better.

"Designate certain places for storing certain types of things. When the designated space is about to be exceeded, purge." - Not enough spaces to designate. This house has THREE closets and two of them are really small - and they are all in bedrooms. We're working on finding storage furniture but it isn't easy in this area. I'd love to be near an Ikea.

"Why have a lot of extra bedding? One change of sheets for each bed, purge the rest, store the extra set folded flat under the mattresses. Keep only enough blankets for each bed. Get rid of box springs and replace with drawer bases for storage, or put beds on risers and add totes underneath for storage." We do store things under the beds. We use the extra blankets all the time ... in the winter. We don't need them in the summer. Other than the spare set of sheets for each used bed, we have sheets, blankets and pillows for the guest room and air mattress (an extension of the guest room). Yes, we use them.

"Add locking storage to the carport or better yet, enclose it with real walls and make it into a garage." Our bedroom window looks out on the carport which apparently wasn't original to the house. And, no we can't store anything in the attic ... too hot up there.

"Minimize all seasonal stuff. Anything that isn't used enough to be worth the space it takes up should be purged. Minimize nicknacks and other items that don't serve much purpose." Done in the move.

"Don't maintain and add to collections unless they serve a useful purpose." Except for the hoarders and hubby has gotten much better on this front. I don't collect anything.

"Focus on purging single-purpose items in favor of multi-purpose items, especially in the kitchen." Done

I keep looking at the list. I'm trying so hard to get a handle on this one. I always feel alone in the effort, however. Hubby and DD are happy the way the house is.
 
#12 ·
Good advice! Many people rent these storage units and never use the stuff that is in these units. Why pay for storage then. We downsized from a six bedroom home to one with four bedrooms and way less closet space. Prior to moving, we were well aware that we would need to get rid of stuff so we were pretty ruthless - donated truck loads to a thrift store and was able to leave any furniture behind in the house we sold because the new owners were going to use it as a rental. We left so much behind (piano, a couple of large dressers, some beds, chairs, large kitchen table, etc.) We took all our remaining stuff in one haul to our new place and we moved within three hours. The mover said he had never experienced such a smooth quick move. It was relaxing because we didn't have to walk around clutter. We haven't missed a thing of the stuff we left behind.

There are plenty of books on how to reduce clutter - I read a lot of them from our local library when we were thinking of moving. It's important to have a plan and then things fall into place. I should add that it took about a year to get my hubby on board because he has a harder time to let go of stuff - especially books!!! How I managed to convince him to get rid of at least half of his books is still a miracle lol.
 
#13 ·
I know what you mean, Momof5. When we moved from to our lake property, we moved from a six bedroom, two story house with basement and garage to a single-wide trailer. We had seven garage sales that summer and got rid of so much stuff I still can't believe it. We never missed any of it either.
 
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