It’s been about a year since moving into the new house and the mess of a basement is killing me. Here’s a before picture! (Sometime in the future there will be an “after” picture link, hopefully.)
Yes, it was seriously that horrible. I had thrown up a couple shelves, but not nearly enough when we were moving in. The rest of our stuff has become a haphazard mess. I know, I know, you’re saying “You just have too much stuff, you packrat!” Which, I do. I admit it, and I’m currently purging. But, there is a LOT of stuff that I have, which I like, that I use only a couple times a year. Here’s some of that list:
- Holiday Decorations – used once per year, but apparently we need them. And apparently there’s multiple holidays we need to decorate for.
- Camping Stuff – yes, we only use this once or twice a year, but it’s pretty fun, so we’re keeping it.
- Baby Clothes/Toys/etc… If you have ’em, you know why you’re keeping ’em.
- The list is a lot longer, but I’m trying to narrow it down.
In the meantime, I am building a garage storage shelf system, in addition to some attic storage. I’ll be documenting all of this here, so stay tuned. Hopefully this organization will help others out as well. The storage system is just that: a system. It’s very modular and very simple. Inexpensive to build, and tough enough to last a lifetime. Here’s the basics:
2’x8′ shelves, sized to fit totes of your choosing. I like to leave around 20″ of ground clearance, then around 44″ of clearance for the middle shelves. There’s nothing scientific here, it just seems to work for the plastic storage totes I’ve found to be reasonably priced from Sterilite:
