Organizing Your Basement

It’s the stuff of nightmares. The place that fills you with dread and causes beads of sweat to drip down your spine. It’s like a scene from a horror movie that makes you cower in your seat and cover your eyes. That’s right: It’s the basement. That unorganized mess of a room that you keep avoiding and that you’re afraid to enter in the dark because you’ll probably trip over something. It’s time to tackle that room, and get it back in order. But where do you start? Do you remove everything and then clean? Clean as you go? Clean the open areas first and then tackle organizing and cleaning around that? Stare blankly at the piles and piles of your stuff that you wish would just disappear? We’ve got a few ideas for Organizing Your Basement that will turn this nightmare into a dream.

Organizing Your Basement

After you’ve convinced yourself to go downstairs, move everything into one area where you can go through it. The more that you get rid of, the less that you will need to organize later. Have garbage bags or bins ready to fill up with things you won’t need anymore. If something hasn’t been seen or used in over a year, it’s probably something that can disappear without notice.

Once you’ve gotten rid of all the clutter that you don’t need anymore, here are some tips for organizing your basement in the future:

• You can use large tote bins for everything, or smaller ones for smaller items. Label the bins to remind yourself what’s inside, and make sure that you can see the label from wherever the bins will be stored. For example, holiday decorations should each have their own bin. Old clothes that you might be saving for the next baby or as hand-me-downs are best organized in bins by size so you’re not digging through to find something that you know is in there.

• For items that don’t fit in your bins, use a shelving unit or choose a designated floor space. Everything in your basement should have its own space, and should always be put back into that space when you’re done with it. This will help keep the place clean so you’re not so afraid to go down there!
• As you are moving things around you can clean areas, vacuum, scrub, mop, and disinfect. Whatever it is that you need to do to clean, don’t forget to do it! Keeping it clean will keep bugs away and make cleaning easier in the future.

All done? Give yourself a pat on the back and soak up that feeling of accomplishment. Your basement is no longer a horror movie waiting to happen, and you now have space that you can use for whatever you would like. Making more room is always beneficial in your home.