Reset Your Home: Bonus Week ~ Storage Areas

We have an attic space behind our closet. This was an unused space above our garage, so we added a door in our closet and some plywood to create a floor in this space. It’s a wonderful place to easily access things like suitcases and Christmas decorations, but it can easily become a catch all room. I have tackled this space multiple times. Decluttering and minimizing is never a “one-and-done” situation. 

Here are some tips that helped me. 

1. Determine Zones
   Grab a pen and paper and quickly write out the different categories that you see in your attic/storage closet/garage area. Some of my categories are: Suitcases/travel, Seasonal decorations, Toys (these are things like our train set that we only pull out occasionally), Empty baskets/bins, Church storage, Single bins (these are categories that are only in one bin.)

2. While I usually recommend pulling everything out to get started on a project, in certain situations it’s difficult. In a garage or storage closet, if at all possible, I recommend pulling everything out. But in our attic space, it would be very difficult to pull it all out at once.
   
   If you can’t pull it all out. Pull out a certain category or zone.

3. Go through all the items in that particular zone and then put it back. Be sure you are putting things back in a clean space.

4. Move through the entire space.

When determining what to keep in your attic and storage spaces, ask yourself these questions:

1. When did I last use this?

2. When will I use it again?

3. Is it worth taking up valuable storage space?

I try to be really brutal with my purge in an attic space. I will drop things here that I have for sale on websites such as Poshmark or Facebook Marketplace. If these items have been online for a while I think about 2 things. 1. Can I mark the price down to get rid of this quickly? 2. If this hasn’t sold yet, is it worth it? I had some jeans for my son online for a few months and realized I was only going to make a few bucks once I paid all the fees. I decided to just donate these and let someone else use them. 

Really ask yourself when you are going to be accessing your items again. How much we can keep in a space is determined by the size of the space. If you have a really small storage space, you might not have the luxury of hanging on to certain items. Don’t make it difficult for yourself to get in this storage area and access something you really need. 

I have my Christmas boxes in the far corner of my attic space. I get to these once a year. But right beside the door I keep my suitcases. I access these almost once a month. 

Storage areas are usually really difficult to keep tidy for 2 reasons. 

1. Out of sight, out of mind. We don’t have to look at it all day, so it doesn’t bother us as much if it’s not neat.

2. We keep things here we don’t want to deal with right away.

What if the next time you went to access something in your storage unit it was simple to reach? Envision what you want your space to look like and that should inspire you to get to work on it!

For this zone, I set a timer for the amount of time I had to work on it. Follow along this week on Instagram as I tidy up my own attic space!