Storage Organization – long overdue cleaning out in our attic space

Doing some major storage organization and a big clean out. I know a lot of people would be thrilled to have extra storage space in any capacity. Fortunately for us we’ve got plenty! But I do find that the more storage space we have the more things we store and the less things we purge and deal with like we actually SHOULD… I am convinced that the more space humans have the more crap they immediately start acquiring to fill said space…

I am very guilty of this when it comes to the big storage closet in our master bedroom.

When I say “big” I mean its the entire length of the second story of our house which is over 25 feet!

Its nearly 100 square feet of storage!

HOWEVER, it is very awkward with a ceiling height starting at less than 5 feet going down to around 3 feet.

And its also only about 3 feet deep…

Que the weird squatting / bending awkward crab crawl to get around in here… and the almost certainty that I will hit my head very hard at some point… turning around in here is almost impossible without sitting down completely so you can imagine me doing this weird walk in reverse to get out of here…

My back hurts just thinking about it!

So over the years I’ve been just throwing stuff as far into this space as I can get it and hurrying away in shame.

Which means getting to the farthest reaches of this closet is now impossible. There is no storage organization… In fact, there’s stuff stored in here that I no longer have ANY MEMORY OF.

(Though I definitely recall keeping every purse I’ve ever owned and there is definitely a thirty year old white Christmas tree in here somewhere… Said tree SHOULD have been donated but you know what was easier? Throwing it in here!)

Another terrible thing I’m guilty of is I never even bothered cleaning this closet out BEFORE storing stuff in here. I’m sure I at least gave it a good SWEEP (maybe) when I first started the renovation but after that?

So there’s spray foam dust and saw dust and god knows what else brought in by mice when they were bad that one year…

SO I’VE BEEN PROCRASTINATING

But this is the kind of thing that BOTHERS me on a molecular level and I also just lost my last excuse by building the book shelf in our bedroom and getting all of my boxes of books out of here…

Welcome to the first ever pictures of this closet I have ever shared with you guys here on the blog and for good reason!

See?

(Que the 8 millionth time I’ve patted myself on the back for installing lights in all of our closets though…)

The lack of storage organization in here is embarrassing. I’m pretty certain that even if I left everything in here and I just organized it better I think half of the space would be empty!

Another reason why I wanted to get this done is because I do go in there from time to time and, every time, I was tracking saw dust etc. out into our bedroom.

Annoying and just silly…

And it wasn’t just the fact that this storage organization absolutely needed to be done for its own sake…

This needed to be done for Lodi too.

When he moved in it was very short notice. So we dropped down some plywood and made a “loft” in the garage ceiling and just chucked all of his bins and boxes of non essentials up there for the time being…

That was over two years ago.

So, of course we’re not using any of it, and Lodi’s probably forgotten what’s even up there at this point…

This gets worse too lol because we don’t want a loft in our garage, we want to clean out our entire garage either this year or next so we can spray foam its ceiling.

So I’m beyond out of excuses for this long overdue clean out.

So it turns out I was right about the purses lol anyone in the market for 40 or so used bags…

Why am I like this?!

One thing that surprised me was how much space was being taken up with just a whole bunch of empty bins and crates.

Guess who could’ve used those multiple times over the last couple of years?

*facepalm*

Besides that there wasn’t too much in here that surprised me.

I have luggage that I purged down to only essentials and three bins of just plain sentimental stuff that is 100 percent staying with me and, goodness knows, I can’t part with my 33 year old roller blades!

With everything out of the longest side of the closet the bedroom was pretty hard to walk around in so I brought up our shop vac and gave that half of the space what might have been the first vacuuming of its life.

It was at that point that I moved everything back into the closet that will be staying which included several things from the other side of the closet as well.

The big green bag is housing our xmas tree and holiday decorations.

The cloth storage bins are storing my dresses and skirts, high heals, clothes and such that I rarely need so I stored them here to free up my own closet a couple of weeks ago.

(I’ve actually since finished a storage bench for my closet to store all of that which freed up even more space in here!)

There wasn’t much left at that point on the other side.

The old white Xmas tree I was expecting was there along with a bin of old ornaments.

Nearly 1/3rd of this space was taken up with just empty bins, crates and laundry baskets! WHY?!

With the whole thing vacuumed out Lodi helped me do some hauling of everything that needed to get out of here. A window fan and little space heater and all of the empty crates, bins and laundry baskets headed to the workshop for now.

Besides that I filled five big garbage bags for donation and two to go to the dump.

With some purging, storage organization and cleaning well over half of this space is totally empty and ready for Lodi’s things!

And that’s that!

This Month’s DIY Blop Hop: Organization! (Click here for our upcoming themes and more info on how to join us every month!)

Niki from Life as a LEO Wife – Free & Cheap DIY Storage & Organization