Organizing My Storage Area on a Budget
After over two years of living in this house, I have finally tackled my basement storage area! I really don’t know why it took me so long. However, the closer I get to my due date (of July 31), the more motivated I am to tackle house projects, and I have declared a serious war on all possible clutter or useless items lurking about the house.
This project is definitely not anywhere close to magazine worthy, but I still wanted to share, because it’s real life organizing. This is the main extra storage area of our house, an it’s just a little unfinished room in our basement. It’s just not pretty and it gets no natural light, but I’m so thankful to have such a large storage area. I also did this project on a zero dollar budget. I didn’t think the unfinished storage room was worthy of spending tons of money on matching storage containers, so I used what I had. I’ll admit I do happen to have a lot of different organizing bins since I’m such an organizing addict.
I did use matching labels on everything to try to unify the space, and I think it definitely helped. These are my chalkboard labels edged in white, and I love how well the white edging makes them show up even on darker bins. Also, it will be super easy to change what the label says if the contents of the bin change. You can get some labels like this here.
This is the large bookshelf that contains cleaning supplies, spray paints, miscellaneous items, and extra kitchen stuff:
To the left of this, we have this wall with two small bookshelves and some built in upper shelves:
The built in shelves in this room are a little bit strange. They are narrow and kind of built on the studs, so it makes the space a little awkward. Toe the left we have some more built in shelves:
You’ll notice some bins are empty. That will gives us room to grow, and this is also where I store my extra organizing bins. It’s bad when you have to organize your organizing bins, but I’m sure my fellow organizing addicts will understand!
The opposite wall from all this houses are washer and dryer, and there are a couple built in shelves above those:
I’m so happy to have this room organized, and I only have one more small space of clutter in another part of the basement to tackle before I can say the house is completely organized! That space will also be tackled before the baby arrives, and some of that stuff will move into here.
I also did a video tour of this space. In the video, I talk about what’s in each bin, so I’m not going to include that in the post:
Carrie Says
It looks great! I like that you labeled everything, but didn’t feel the need to get matching bins for everything. That just costs too much money!
Mary beth Says
I have an unfinished bonus room that you literally cannot walk into
Because so much stuff has accumulated but our biggest problem is the amount of army gear we have accumulated through 24 years combined service and I just have no idea how to store it and keep it both accessible and organized!! There are no shelves and only a plywood floor with a pile of Sheetrock in the middle from where we planned on finishing the room and never did….. Any ideas? They would be greatly appreciated!!
Betty819 Says
I see you get stuck with that ugly corregated dryer vent pipe in your laundry room area like we have. Ours is attached some how to a vent pipe that goes up to the attic to outside. This is a 1977 house and I would love to see how others in our neighborhood have dealt with that ugly pipe. If it went straight up instead of at an angle, you could frame it in and make it look attractive. Next is the furnace/ac unit and the old homeowner had a dehumifier attached to the A/C. which doesn’t make sense. It’s an ugly thing. All of the closets and the laundry room area(not a room)have floor to ceiling sliding doors that are pains in the you know where. The tracks are so worn out, they don’ t work half the time. When we moved here, we had the rollers replaced to make them work better. Replacing all the sliding closet doors in on my “To Do list” in 2015. I guess we’ll have bi-fold doors put on when the renovation begins. You’ve accomplished a lot of organized space with your set up. Thanks for sharing your ideas.
LauraJane Says
Post authorYes, I also have several things in my laundry room that are a pain told deal with and definitely not so beautiful!