How to DeClutter Storage

I’ve often admired people who can be perfectly happy with no basement, no attic, and a few neat closets. Everything they use is where they can find it, and they have no need for boxes of junk.

I didn’t realize how much junk I was hoarding until I helped a friend move. Every box I unpacked was full of neat, clean things she used almost every day. Where was all the junk? The stuff that moves from basement to basement and gets bigger and voluminous over the years?

She didn’t have any. I compared that to my piles and boxes in my storage areas – full of cooking utensils I never used anymore, a second roasting pan, and rugs that didn’t match anything anymore, not to mention scores of boxes of old toys, books, and electronics.

“But it’s perfectly good stuff!” I could argue. Truth is, I didn’t use it anymore, I didn’t need it anymore, and it had no business collecting dust in my basement.

An entire generation of Americans tended to hoard, save, and accumulate from having lived through the Great Depression, a time when people saw the value in everything.

Even younger generations have their reasons for saving things: There are compulsive buyers, those with forms of attention deficit disorder who can’t bear to throw things away, and people who simply love to collect things.

If you think the perfect home is one with enough storage to keep anything and everything, think again. The more storage area our homes have, the more we tend to keep. And hanging onto too much causes clutter, mess, and not exactly a clean, simple life.

Reducing clutter in your home’s storage areas may require a complete mindset change for you: If you automatically think more is better, quality beats quantity hands down, and your life is based on how much “stuff” you have – you may be in need of an attitude transplant.

Ellen Sandbeck, in her book Organic Housekeeping says the key to an organized home storage area is knowing where everything is.

“If you can’t find it, you might as well not own it,” Sandbeck says. She suggests a household indexing system in which you record on Rolodex cards where you’ve kept things in storage. When looking for old financial records, photographs or mementos, you simply consult your Rolodex and see which room, shelf and box it’s in.

Here are some other suggestions from experts on lean, mean, clean storage areas:

• Use labeled shoe boxes to store things on closet shelves, Sandbeck says. They’re the perfect size for storing small items and look neat in a closet.

• Plastic containers with lids come in all sizes, configurations and for almost any special item. Containers are available to store Christmas wreaths and ornaments so they stay intact year after year. Choose the right type of container depending on how often you need to open and close the lid, what type of shelf it’s going on, and whether it’s going to be stacked.

• Photo storage should be limited. Stop throwing all photographs into cardboard boxes to save. Throw away all blurry, overexposed, underexposed, and otherwise bad photos. Store the good photos in photo albums or photo boxes labeled with the year.

• MyGreatHome.com suggests using empty tissue boxes, gallon milk jugs cut in half, empty laundry detergent boxes and other old containers to store things in storage.

• Think about the flow of clutter when you bring something new into the house. Sandra Felton, in her book Organizing For Life says avoiding clutter starts with your shopping choices. Before you buy something, think about what you’re going to do with whatever it’s replacing. Want a new lamp? What are you going to do with the old one? If you’re not willing to give it away or throw it away, and it’s destined to be stuck in the basement for years, don’t replace it.

Think practically. Remember that if you have too much saved, you won’t be able to find the important things. “Having extra vacuum cleaner bags, spare fuses, candles, a cake decorating set, a chimney cleaner, or a hiking compass has no merit when you can’t find it,” says Don Aslett in his book Clutter’s Last Stand: It’s Time to De-Junk Your Life!

“When you don’t know where something is, you’ll dig like a hungry dog for a bone trying to unearth it, and tear up every storage area in the whole house.” De-cluttering allows you to find all the “good stuff” you’ve almost forgotten you have, Aslett says.