DIY Storage ~ How To Store Your Stuff

Mr. Fanatic was BUSY this week! 

He took a week of his vacation time to work on one of our storage room in the basement. 

I know, exciting, but we've already taken a couple of week long trips and have had a few weekend getaways this year and we really needed to get this done.

 Having all the space you need doesn't do you any good unless it's  organized and you can find your stuff easily. Being organized saves you money, because if you can't find your stuff when you need it, you will go out and buy another one...

or is that just me? 

I should really first show you how Mr. F made this room pretty, instead of showing you the finished room, but I like to have a pretty post on Monday and this room was really a mess just a week ago. 

On to the storage part... 

I store almost everything in 18 gallon Sterilite (made in America) plastic tubs. 

This storage room had two storage shelves in it before, but the shelves weren't spaced correctly and stuff got piled up. 

Here's a photo of the old shelf after Mr. F had been working in the room awhile and piling stuff  up on it. It DIDN'T look this bad before and had some plastic containers on it, so it isn't really a true before pic.

Here's what the storage room looks like. The room is about 15 ft x 11 1/2 ft.

Mr. Fanatic reused all of the materials from the old shelving units and bought some extra 2 x 4's to make a 3rd shelving unit.

These shelving units are simple to make. He just used two  8 ft long 2 x 4's and cut two more 2 x 4's  down to 24" for the ends. The total length of the unit is 8ft, so the long 2 x 4's have to be cut down a little because you are adding the short 2 x 4's to the end. He screwed them all together as you see in this photo. Screws are so much better to put shelving together because this allows you to take them apart if you have to rework them another time. It would have been much more difficult to take apart the old shelves to make the new ones had he used nails.
Mr. Fanatic used torx head, 3" self tapping deck screws.

Mr. F then screwed  1/2" thick OSB  to the 2 x 4 frame. He made 3 of these for each unit. 

Then he attached 2 x 4's on each corner to complete the unit. The shelves are spaced the height of the plastic storage boxes we have plus 1 1/2 to 2" extra space.

These shelves are super easy to make and are inexpensive, as far as shelving goes.

 He made this shelving unit a little shorter so that the plastic storage containers could be double stacked on the top shelf. I organized this shelving unit to hold my girls childhood toys, books and clothing they wanted to keep.  The clear boxes on the bottom right hold their artwork and school mementos.

The shelving unit on other side of the room holds Christmas and seasonal decorations. The armoire holds hunting clothes and heavy winter coats. We found the Ikea Armoire on Craigslist.

I didn't get to organizing the 3rd shelf that Mr. Fanatic built, so I will have to show you that another time. Those shelves will hold all of our luggage, sleeping bags, camping gear, space heaters and other household stuff that we don't use all the time.

I still need to do some more organizing within the boxes and will be making new labels for all of them. 

It's such a good feeling to get all of my storage organized and I know how lucky I am to have all this space!

Our last house was only 1,500 sq ft. and I had to get very creative. The space under beds, closets, space under sofas and the garage were all utilized for storage.

Where  do you store your stuff and how do you keep it organized?

Pam 

ps: I finally started having a few hours on Friday  and was able to to help with the organizing. I seem to have a little more energy every day. Thanks for all the prayers and well wishes!

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