Organizing and Prioritizing Storage For The Home
While you may think of the plastic shed in the garden as the storage center of your home, in reality that is not the case. Every room in the home has a multitude of items that have to be “stored” one way or another. Outside, you also have the garage which can become something a warehouse and the center of household clutter for many families.
Keeping your clutter down, and your whole home neat and tidy, is the ideal approach. In other words, view storage for the home as a whole, not just individual rooms, the garden shed or the garage in isolation.
If you have a serious clutter problem, that may be easier said than done, so organizing storage needs to be accompanied by some prioritizing.
How, though, do you prioritize? There is no set way. It boils down to your tolerance levels in each room, how annoyed you get when something is lost in the garage, and whether you tread on a garden rake in the garden shed and are hit by the handle as it springs up on your chest!
You could look at it another way. What would give you the most pleasure: having the bedroom looking perfect for the first time in years, or ever, or being able to get the car back in the garage? These sort of questions will tell you where to start, but as a general rule, if there is just too much left lying around inside the house, see if any of it can be stored outside, or thrown away altogether.
If you do have things you can discard altogether, you may as well give priority to clearing out any surplus possessions in the garage and shed. That way, your overall home storage problem may be reduced before you set to work on getting better organized.
Storage for the home, though, is a matter of personal choice, and people's priorities will vary greatly. Your first inclination is probably right, so follow it.
It can be a good idea to tackle the worst “room” first, even if it is outside such as the shed or garage. That way, you should be left with the feeling that, if you can get the worst part done, the rest will be easy. In many homes the garage is the most cluttered area. Once that is all organized, and everything is neatly stored away, you may even find that some of the indoor clutter can be properly accommodated out in the garage. The same applies to the storage shed.