Why Organize Your Storage Room?

For heavens sake, it’s just a storage room! Right, I get that. But I’m here to tell you why you want and need to organize your storage room. I hope by the time you are done reading this you will be jumping right out of your seat to get started.

We are lucky to have a pretty good sized storage room in our house. It hasn’t always that way. In our tiny basement apartment that we were in before we bought our house we used part of my son’s room for our storage.

It was a shelf basement, so we did our best to organize what we had on the shelf.

OK!!! I’ll be honest with you! We also has access to our landlord’s little garage. And by access to it, I mean we pretty much took it over. Sorry about that JoAnn! It’s a good thing she’s awesome and that we were good friends.

As you, hopefully, gathered when I refer to storage room I am referring to any space that you are using for a storage room. In my storage room we mostly have food. We have hanging shelves in our garage for other storage (camping, holiday, kid clothes, baby things, etc.).

So the type of storage I’m focusing on here is food and consumable. I’m going to give you many great reasons why you need to go get your food storage room in order. And some help also. 🙂

As I was doing my storage room I wasn’t able to completely empty the room out. We have some pretty heavy things in there, I’m talking about you freezer. So I did my best to clean around those few big and bulky items.

I have another confession… I wasn’t going to take everything out of the room or even off the shelves. However, I’ve been practically yelling that you need to. So I did it. It took me longer but the end result is amazing!

And I’m not even going to go there with the spiders!!! AHHHH! Most were dead but still, many screams came during this part!

After everything was out I was able to clean our storage room as best as I could. Then it was time to go through everything and decide what we were going to keep, donate, trash it, or recycle.

Lastly the fun part of putting everything back in. Organized, categorized, and looking beautiful!

Now that you know the process I went through to get my after photos I want to share with you why it’s your turn. 🙂

Start Off With a Clean Slate

Who doesn’t want a nice and neat space? Even if that space is an unfinished storage room. I don’t know about you but it just feels so nice to have a cleaned room to start out with. You will feel better knowing that it’s not only organized but clean.

Know What You Have

This will be a great time to see EVERYTHING you have. All the food that maybe you forgot about. Or the can of beans that fell down into a pit of black.

You now know everything that you have hanging around in your storage room. Once you know what you have this will help with some of the following reasons.

Secure Your Shelves

I know that my kids are not in the storage room too much. But if they decided they really needed something on the top shelf and they still can’t reach it while standing on the step stool we have in there, they may find themselves laying on the floor under a pile of food boxes, cans, and shelves.

With most of the walls being cement it wasn’t easily possible to secure all of the book shelves. So we did our best and secured a few. Make sure you have the shelves where you want them first before you start securing the.

Make a Food Inventory or List

You may think I am the most crazy person ever, but hear me out. If you have a list hanging by the door of all the food you have or of the food you are going to need to stock up soon, then, my friend you will love it!

For me an inventory might actually make me crazy, but a food list of things I need will be helpful. Whatever type of person you are and whatever fits your needs best, I got your back. Keep reading and I’ll get to the free printables soon. 🙂

Keep on Top of Food Rotation

It really is the pits when you go to get something from your storage room and it’s expired. ARG! After your newly organized room and knowing what you do or don’t have by filling out the free printables you will be less likely to get a can of expired and bad coconut milk.

You can buy the fancy shancy rotating can shelves (oh boy those are pricey!), buy one of the fancy shancy rotating can shelves on the cheap from your sister in law (thanks Min!), make your own (did that for our apartment), buy ones you can use on any shelf, or simply stack your cans.

Just remember to put the newly bought things in the back and use the older things first. This will help you out a ton.

Know Where Things Go

You know I love when things have a home and are IN their home. 🙂 The same goes for spaces where no one will see. I like to make things nice and neat if only for me. 🙂

I like to store like items together throughout my house. My storage room is no different. I keep all of my baking items on the same shelf. Flour and sugars go together. Spices, chocolate chips, and other smaller baking items are grouped together on the same level.

It’s also easier to have my kids grab things if they are organized and labeled. Before I labeled things I was pretty much the only one putting things away after a shopping trip. I had a love/hate relationship about that. HA!

I love putting things away nicely. But sometimes I don’t have time and it would be nice if someone else did it, and did it right so it looked nice.

Know What You Need to Buy

How do you know what you need or what you are running low on if you have one big messy storage room? You can’t, not really. By having a decluttered and organized storage room you will better know what you have and what you need to purchase.

This will help you when there are case lot sales, great deals going on, or when you have extra money left over in your grocery budget to stock up on things.

Less Waste

When you have an organized and decluttered storage room AND you know what you do and don’t have you will waste less food and money. That’s what I call a win/win situation.

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Did I do my job? Was I able to convince you to declutter and organize your storage room?? I sure so hope. 🙂 Good luck and let me know how it goes in the comments.

Xxx, Steph

Do you want a copy of your own storage room inventory trackers and examples of what you have for each category?? Your wish is my command! 🙂 I’m just going to give them to you, no strings attached! I would love for you to either (or all!) share this post on all of your social media accounts and sign up for my weekly email. No spam, I promise!

Please no stealing. If you want to share this just send them this blog post. I’d appreciate that so much! 🙂