A Storage Room Seemed Like a Great Idea at the Time

At the time, having a storage room in the house seemed like a great idea!

I had cleared an entire room of clutter with only about 10 storage tubs full of stuff left. It was great. You could get in the room and walk around and find the stuff that was in there.

But then the holidays came a long and I needed a place to shove stuff. Not put it away or find a new home for it, just shove it all in there.

For awhile, I was so proud of my shoving it in there skills. I was able to clear out my whole living room and dining room by shoving it in the storage room that I had cleared out. It was great to have that space.

Although, nothing ever left that room. It just went in there until we couldn’t even shut the door anymore. I have no idea how it happened. It was all stuff that I loved and didn’t want to get rid of but now I couldn’t get to any of it anymore.

When we started packing, those great “shoving it in there” skills that I had loved in the beginning became my worst enemy. The room was nearly impossible to dismantle. It was all so tightly packed in there that it was hard to pull anything at all out.

I must’ve made over 50 trips up and down the stairs hauling things out. You know how when you’ve just done too much and your legs kind of give out from underneath you? By the end of the day, a full day, I physically couldn’t make another trip up and down the stairs. My legs were giving out.

It took an entire day just to get everything out of there. I wasn’t even looking at anything, I was taking it out of the room and taking it downstairs, boxing it up, and taking it to the storage unit. I was so physically and mentally exhausted that it was all I could do.

And by the end of that day, I was really angry at myself for shoving all that stuff in there. A lot of it was just junk but I spent an entire day out of my life moving it.

So angry.

And so much for that great idea!

After dealing with this nightmare, I have a few new storage room ideas:

1. Don’t have one. (This is the best advice!)
2. If you really must have one, plan it out first before you put a single thing in the room. What are you going to store in there? Are you going to use shelves, cabinets, or plastic tubs? Or a combination of those?
3. Keep it a storage room. Don’t let it turn into a dash and stash room.
4. Make a space for two boxes. Mark one of them Donations and the other one Dumpster. Once your storage room starts getting a little full, don’t put another thing in it until you find something else in there to put in either the donation or dumpster box. When the boxes are full, get rid of them. Then get new boxes.
5. Keep a chair in the room so that you can sit down and go through boxes that might have snuck in during an emergency stash session (even though you were never going to let that happen). Deal with it as soon as the emergency has subsided!

You can fit a crazy amount of stuff in a storage room, even a small one. Even when you know the very best storage room ideas, it can still turn ugly in a matter of weeks or months. You can find lots of ideas on Pinterest. Stay aware and don’t let it take control! Only let enough stuff in that room that you can manage comfortably. Don’t waste your time tending to stuff!