How do you guys organize storage in your house?

[Rich Riddle]

Brian,

Being a Marine helped me with not accepting "piles." I either put items in their places as soon as they get home or immediately find a spot if there isn't already an assigned area. It's just a lot easier to have the, "everything has its place and every place has its thing" mentality. Less work in the long run.

My friend on the other hand finds the first empty horizontal surface. If it's the garage floor where a car normally gets parked, he doesn't care. If it's the kitchen counter and garage items, they will be there for years. He claims to know where his "piles" are located but frequently purchases items he owns because he's not organized.

Saying that, I know neither of us will ever change. Organized folks seem to stay that way and those who pile tend to stay that way. Good luck on cleaning up in the next few weeks. It's always good to at least clean all the piles up every once in a while and situating items so you don't keep acquiring identical items, especially expensive woodworking items/tools.

[Brian Elfert]

A guy I know was just commenting that the new island he recently installed has become an instant junk collector. I wish I had a mud room of some sort to hang coats and jackets and also have a bin to holding incoming mail and such. The way my house is designed makes for not a lot of places to store things, but I admit that the places I can store stuff are not full by any means.

I found a lot of stuff during cleaning that I would use on a regular basis if I had a place other than boxes in a closet to store them

[Brian W Smith]

Good luck on this ongoing situation!I hear shop folks all the time,"if I just could get it clean/organised it would make it so much nicer to do work here".

The problem....like house organization...is,it isn't a one shot deal.It's an ongoing affair.Stop thinking of it as a stationary target.......that would be like,taking an MRI of ones,"life in a shop/house".A snapshot once a week or month,when everything is straighten'd up is NOT having your **** together.You need to learn proper management techniques,which books could be written on.Speaking of books....go snag some used books off Amazon on small house and/or cottage style houses.You will get plenty of ideas on this subject.Good luck.

[Eric DeSilva]

It sort of sounds like you may need some kind of drop zone--a place that is organized that you walk by every time you walk in with stuff in your hands. You said you had a 5x5 walk in closet right next to the kitchen--could you organize that better to hold the kind of stuff you typically walk in with? It also looks like you might have some wall space next to the kitchen--what about installing some more closed storage over there?

In my household, we scan all our paperwork--the stuff that is still coming by paper--and store it on a server. Server data is also encrypted heavily and backed up to some private cloud storage. Every time we get something with a manual, it goes in a pile on the desk. Once the pile gets to be more than a couple things, I'll go on line and find the manuals in pdf format from the manufacturer and download them. The desk area also has a recycling bin and a "outbox" for the shredder. That's how we keep paper controlled...

[Brian Elfert]

Here are pictures of the house after cleaning it top to bottom and throwing away or recycling a LOT of stuff! I started just about a month ago and finished a few days ago except some minor cleaning in the garage today. Some of the photos are dark and I can't figure out how to get the flash to activate or something.

Now I have to keep it clean and not let it get back like it was.

[Brian Ashton]

I usually leave it on the floor or on the table… and somehow it mysteriously finds it's way to where it should be. I just chalk it up to magic.

[John Coloccia]

Here are pictures of the house after cleaning it top to bottom and throwing away or recycling a LOT of stuff! I started just about a month ago and finished a few days ago except some minor cleaning in the garage today. Some of the photos are dark and I can't figure out how to get the flash to activate or something.

Now I have to keep it clean and not let it get back like it was.

I should hire you to come do my house.

[Brian Elfert]

New photos that are not so dark. The sun apparently made the camera do strange things.

[glenn bradley]

Here are pictures of the house after cleaning it top to bottom and throwing away or recycling a LOT of stuff!

Congratulations Brian! That looks fantastic. Taking that extra few seconds to put something where it goes as opposed to setting "right here for a moment" will keep you from ever having to do that again ;-) Best of luck.

[Brian Elfert]

I should hire you to come do my house.

My parents are retired and they did a lot of the actual cleaning. I did all the work of sorting through my stuff and throwing away or recycling a lot of it. I ended up sorting through about 30 boxes of stuff along with piles of paper on the floor. I ended up taking a week of vacation to get it done.

[Roger Rayburn]

Congratulations! Well done. This was the hard part. You should go buy yourself a new tool as a reward. I'm serious, you earned it.

[Brian Elfert]

I spent a ton of money on this so I can't afford to buy anything else right now. It cost me almost $1,500 to get the house in the condition it is in now. I had to replace a set of shower doors, get the carpets cleaned, pay for trash disposal, and buy some miscellaneous stuff. I am going to buy a new mouse for my computer since the right click switch is dying.

[David Weaver]

It really does look spectacular. I'd hate to move away from a place like that if I were you! I used to live in a space like your first picture, but my wife is a taskmaster. I sort of figured out that I just needed to mentally budget one more step every time I did something to make sure I put stuff away, and I almost forget how overwhelming it would be to see a mess that was too big to comprehend and stress out about it.

[Jeff Erbele]

Here are pictures of the house after cleaning it top to bottom and throwing away or recycling a LOT of stuff! I started just about a month ago and finished a few days ago except some minor cleaning in the garage today. Some of the photos are dark and I can't figure out how to get the flash to activate or something.

Now I have to keep it clean and not let it get back like it was.

Great job Brian!
I was not a member of SMC when you started this post and posted your "before" photos. My impression of those was, its' not that bad, just a lot of clutter that needed sorting and a final disposition, toss it, donate it, sell it, or store it; a place to store it being the problem.

My wife and I, and especially me are in a much worse situation than your before photos. Not that we are messy as much as we have so much stuff. A lifetime accumulation and a lot of it we don't even want. Getting rid of it takes time, especially if it has monetary value.
We merged households at the end of 2006 so we had two or more of everything. Both of us traveled a lot before we met each other and had all kinds of collections from destinations, spoon collections, she has a plate collection, caps, tee-shirts and coffee cups.

I have a ton of tools, being a welder, mechanic and machinist. I used to manage and maintain rental properties so I have a lot of building trades tools to. I am retired from the Army so I have uniforms, papers and that memorabilia. For 4 years I owned a mobile food concession business and still have it but do not operate it. I have a coin collection, a serious aquarium hobby I want to sell. I use to have a professional darkroom (as a hobby) and finally got rid of that truck load of equipment. Both of us love photography and have good equipment for that. We have 3 desktop computers, two are going away, and 4 laptops, one of those are going away. I am a serious gardener and have the stuff associated with it, a lot. My wife enjoys scrap-booking and has a lot of that stuff, although she is converting to digital, it will take some time for her to use the consumables and dispense with the hardware & equipment. We also have a home based travel business. I used to work it full time but we now do that as a part time business. There are a lot of papers, records and brochures associated with it. The good news is we purged the office of trash bins full to the large curb-side recycle bin. Both of us read and we had a home library going. That has been thinned down to two book shelves with more to go.

I use to collect magazines, lots of them. It started when I was in high school, when an elderly lady in our church learned I liked to read Popular Science and Popular Mechanics. Her deceased husband had 4 boxes of those in their attic and she gave them to me. The dated from around 1910 to 1940's with many missing. I lost track of how many times I moved those. Finally I realized I never went back and read old issues. Time wise it is impossible. I was choking with book cases full of them. Today one can obtain them electronically if the need arises. And Google is your friend.

With a new house under construction we know we are moving as early as mid-May. We have been working on thinning down in earnest for a couple of years. Now its become a higher, high priority. Tossing and donating is easy. Selling stuff takes the most time, especially if one attempts to get higher prices for used stuff.

Reading your posts I thought a file cabinet would be useful but those take diligence too. Our home office has three 4-drawer and one 2-drawer filing cabinets, plus maybe as much paper in portable file tubs. Scanning papers takes time but is helping greatly. Even more so just purging files no longer needed. It's amazing what was important when it was filed, quickly turns to clutter simply with the passing of time.

Our goal is to reduce by 50% or more before we move and we believe it is realistic. First we don't want much of it now, second we don't want to move it, much less pay to have it moved, and third we don't want it in our new house, at all.

I told my wife we should donate most of our clothes and buy new stuff after we moved. She laughed at first, but looking in the closets I find I wear some of the same stuff most of the time and some of it never or rarely. The same is true of her. I think I have her convinced, at least to make some attempt at that. I read a trick, hang all of your clothes with the hangers backwards. When pants and shirts come out of the laundry hang them the normal way. After a month, maybe two tops, get rid of all the clothes on the backwards hangers. That has worked well. Thankfully she isn't a shoe collector. She maybe has a dozen pair and wears all of those.

Another thing that helps is a rule we follow, when we buy an item of clothing something of like kind must come out of the closet. If a new shirt goes in, an old one must come out.

I reached a point where I decided I had to give up some of my hobbies and interests. I prioritized them and decided to keep those I enjoyed the most and get rid of the rest.

Overall its a battle, but one we are winning, one item at a time.

Anyway great job. You are an inspiration.

[Rich Riddle]

Wonderful job of cleaning up. Did you make/purchase items used as storage or simple get most of the space from attrition?