Best Organizing Practice — Store and Label
This crazy warm Chicago weather in February has given everybody a big dose of spring fever. We just returned from a great ski trip to 60+ degree days — Love it! It makes me not even care if I ski again this season!
That said, I’ve cleaned all the ski gear and am boxing it up for storage. I have a lot of just general cold weather gear that I will keep out and store separately, but I find it best to keep specific ski stuff stored together so we can find it again for the next trip.
My current favorite storage boxes are the 50 qt. Rubbermaid boxes with the clear sides and snap-on lids. I use them for everything! These boxes are sturdy — I’ve had quite a few make it through several years of storage and 3 moves; they are inexpensive — around $15, and you can get them at lots of places including Target and Amazon.com. They also stack and fit well on most shelves, whether in the attic, basement, storage room or garage. Best of all, they are clear, so you can tell what is inside, even without a label, but of course, I recommend labeling! (More on that in a minute) You may have your stuff in cardboard boxes, but if it is something worth keeping, it is worth keeping dry and clean and organized! Get rid of the cardboard! Cardboard boxes are flimsy, they get dirty, they don’t protect the contents well and can attract bugs.
Sort your items for storage down into whatever makes sense — as I mentioned above, I keep ski gear in one box and general winter stuff (long underwear, scarves, etc) in another.
Check the condition of your gear before you pack away — there is no sense whatsoever in taking up valuable and often scarce, storage space for scratched goggles, old helmets that don’t fit, torn socks, etc. If you are not wearing something or if it doesn’t work anymore, get rid of it!
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The final step before storage is to LABEL the boxes. Don’t rely on your memory to know which box has what. Especially if you end up using something like these clear boxes and have 5 or 12 or 20 of them on the basement shelves. You won’t know Christmas decorations from camping gear and it will make you crazy.
I like to use fairly specific labels. For instance, this box obviously contains ski helmets, hats and gloves. I do this because, I will have another box of ski jackets and pants, another for long underwear, and so on. If they are all labeled just “SKI”, that’s not so helpful when you are searching for your ski jacket and pants to go on a snowmobiling trip and you have to hunt through 4 or 5 boxes to find them.
If you take a few extra minutes on the storage end of the process, it makes finding things later SOOO much easier. I like to just print a page of the contents in a Word document. I copy the words 4 times as large as possible on one page, then cut the page and stick one label on each side of the box. Then no matter which way the box is stacked, there will be a label showing.
The boxes are now ready for storing. I stack them only two high because, 1) that is the proper height for my shelves, and 2) it makes them easier to retrieve if they are not stored in a teetering tower!
Sarah Campbell is a professional organizer in the city of Chicago. She specializes in decluttering, organizing, preparing for moves and unpacking and setting up after a move for households and small businesses. Contact her at Sarah@anorganizedlifechicago.com for help with your organizing challenges!
