We made a big dent in the storage room progress over the last few weeks, so I thought I’d take some time to officially introduce you to her and the plans we have. But first, here’s a before photo from when we moved in. The room is 18.5 ft long x 7.5 ft wide–a pretty generously sized storage room.
If you’re like us, maybe you’re blinded by how finished everything looks, to really pay attention to how it might function. When we first looked at the house, we were so impressed by the painted concrete floors and how the shelves were painted instead of left wood. And even though the room sported “boob” lights, they were nicer boob lights…which actually doesn’t look better, but you could tell effort was put in to this room. After we moved in, and were getting settled, a lot of boxes, holiday storage and luggage ended up here in our storage room, naturally. And it was only then that we realized that we had a problem.
(rough picture!)
The room, with 11″ deep shelves (and not much taller) was built for food storage and not really any other kind of storage. This is a good time to probably mention, we are believers in food storage and emergency preparation. However, over the course of our marriage, we’ve discovered–partially due to the way Chris likes to cook and eat along with my medical needs–we don’t eat a lot of dried pantry goods. During our first couple years of marriage, we’d stock a few months supply of emergency food only to have it all expire because we never rotated through it.
When we moved here, we decided it’s still important to have an emergency stash of food, and we invested in a six month supply for our family of the 25 year shelf life stuff. There’s a variety of breakfasts, lunches and dinners that you only have to add water to. That way, if there’s an emergency, we’ll have something to eat but we don’t have to constantly worry about it expiring. So we’ll keep some of the shelves shallow on one side to accommodate that, but as for the rest of the room, it’s looking more like this now.
If you listened to last week’s podcast, you know we emptied everything out of the room first. We made three piles: keep, donate and trash. We ended up bringing the biggest pile to our local thrift store. Everything from clothes and shoes, to home decor, toys, old luggage sets and electronics, and holiday decor. Dropping all that off was a huge weight lifted.
Once the room was cleared, Chris demo’d out the majority of existing shelving and we made plans to rebuild. We’ll be building extra deep shelves on the back wall (where there were no existing shelves at all previously) and the right side of the room will have shelves about 27″ deep to accommodate standard sized storage bins.
And then we had kind of a crazy idea. Could we add a mini workout area to this room? Right now, there is a 7′ square space from where the shelves finish to the end of the room where you walk in. It could be just enough room for a treadmill and a few free weights. To which Chris chimed in, “Maybe we could mount a small TV.” The more I thought about it, the more I warmed up to the idea of adding some every day function to the space too.
We hope to have the new shelves built this week, and everything re-painted. I’m even considering repainting the concrete floor lighter (or warmer?) to not clash with the shelves which I envision going a little darker on, similar to these beautiful built-ins found here. (I believe the color is Cape May Cobblestone by Benjamin Moore.)
Besides that, we have ordered two of these industrial-style lights to replace the boob lights and I’ve started looking at the never-ending storage tupperware options out there. In my mind, I’d love everything to be matching, with a label distinguishing what’s inside. Or is it easier to have lid colors coordinate to different holidays/categories?
I’m sure a few of you are wondering if we’re putting too much effort into a storage room. But, time after time, and room after room, I have learned you get out what you put into a room. If we take extra time and effort on paint color and finishes and making it look as good as it functions, I know in the long run, the room will serve us better and we’ll be more motivated to keep it looking like photoshoot day. Excited to share more progress with you in the coming weeks!
I like all the same clear kind of bin (uniform in look and helpful in the event that you need to stack them) and while a numbered key may look cleaner, we just use standard size Avery labels and good handwriting. :) We can easily pop on a new label over the old should we reorganize things. It doesn’t surprise me at all that you’d want to spend time on this! It’s always so annoying when you can’t find what you’re looking for. Worth doing it and doing it right.
I love the idea of matching bins. You build it right from the beginning. If its 10 or 20 bins – then that’s what you get! I say this and none of mine match, but I have also decided I am no longer buying bins. I’m 45 and don’t need more crap! Now I know why our parents give us stuff to take home every time we visit. :)
I can’t wait to see how it turns out.
“boob lights” hurrah! Ha ha ha. I was so surprised to read that. You must have explained these somewhere else (new reader). I thought I was the only one to think that. I wish I could have seen those boob lights in the before photos just to make sure I was on the right track. I hate boob lights! I am totally serious.
We’ve been working on new storage solutions in our messy basement storage room and have found that in addition to storage bins having a couple sets of storage drawers has been really helpful as well. It allows us to store things that are needed more than once a year but less than monthly/daily (batteries, light bulbs, infrequently used/ specialty baking things). This makes it so much easier to organize and we just slide open a drawer rather than having to pull down a bin and dig through it. It takes up about the same amount of space as a bin so that’s a bonus. we use a couple like these (minus the wheels) http://www.target.com/p/3-drawer-wide-cart-white-room-essentials/-/A-50398893
I’m way late to the game here, but if it’s going to be a gym as well foam flooring is always a good option and this is some that could give you that wood look you like but inexpensive and super functional! I know it’s a reach, but we got some in black for out workout space and it worked amazing!
https://m.uline.com/h5/r/www.uline.com/Product/Detail/H-5835/Special-Use-Mats/Foam-Floor-Tiles-24-x-24-Wood-Grain
Per usual, can’t wait to see it complete!