Michelle’s basement storage area was neat, but it was tough for her to find things there. She wanted a better system, but didn’t want to spend money on new shelves. Would I be able to help her?
On my first visit, I saw Michelle’s storage area looked neat on the surface, but it was clear that her shelves were not being used efficiently. For example, she had scattered sports gear between the two units, making it hard to locate the things she needed quickly at the start of a new sports season. As seen in the photo “Before_Unit1” the units overlapped in a corner, forcing her to move boxes out of the way to gain access to part of her shelves. The second unit had no shelves and held stacks of storage boxes, so there, too, Michelle would often have to pull out many boxes to access a particular item. Both storage units included forgotten items and empty boxes that took up valuable space, in part because everything was so tough to access.
We started off figuring out which items were the most important to Michelle, and which she needed to be able to access quickly. Her priorities were sports equipment, family memorabilia and luggage.
Since Michelle is an extremely active seasonal athlete and had already filled more than half of the first unit with sports equipment, it made sense to dedicate one unit to her gear. She mentioned that it was easier to store her bike in unit 2 because the configuration of the space and hallway made it harder to move the bike in and out of unit 1. So we decided to dedicate unit 2 to sports gear.
The next step was to divide the rest of the boxes/items by categories (family history, sports gear, etc.) and designate them for unit 2 (gear) or unit 1 (everything else). This gave Michelle the opportunity to go through each box, confirming which items she wished to keep and which could be tossed or given away. We were able to consolidated some of the boxes and get rid of a few empty or broken ones. Items she no longer wanted were set aside for donation, which gave us more storage space for the things to keep. The boxes are now appropriately labeled so she knows which is which.
The “After_Unit1” photo shows we removed two shelves from unit 1 and placed them in the second unit so all of Michelle’s seasonal sports gear could fit there (see photo “After_Unit 2”). Photo “After_Unit1” shows how the first unit was reorganized by other categories– family memorabilia, art supplies, luggage and, etc. — and labeled. Only one shelf was needed to place boxes that she can access to on a regular basis. Michelle now has a much easier time locating her stuff in both units, and we were able to clear a walking path to make storing and retrieving items much easier as well!
Money spent on:
-Post-its to label boxes during the process
-Sticky labels sticking to permanently label boxes at the end
-Black permanent marker
-1 box of large plastic garbage bags to hold items to donate
Side note: These blog stories feature real clients and their organizing solutions. To protect privacy, all names have been changed.
