clean out the storage room

My wife and I spent three and a half hours on Sunday clearing stuff out of the storage room, organizing it, and then putting it all back. During that process I removed two old shower doors, some venetian blinds, and some scrap metal that the landlord had left in there from renovations for a previous tenant (he said he would come back and get them, but never did), as well as a lot of Rubbermaid bins full of memorabilia and stuff that we put away “to deal with later”. Well, apparently “later” was yesterday. I did most of the heavy lifting and moving around, while my wife did most of the shuffling through old papers and bric-a-brac.

But now all the camping stuff fits in one easy-to-get-to corner of the room, the Christmas stuff is away but still reachable, and there’s plenty of room for the stuff we don’t need right now but don’t want to get rid of just yet. Plus, I can walk into the storage room and get stuff without worrying about stuff falling on me or falling backwards into a surprise sinkhole. It wasn’t fun, but it’s made the storage room more manageable and the apartment more liveable (no more camping stuff piled in the office and dining room!). It wasn’t pretty, but at least it got done.

When I was packing up for our camping trip this past weekend, I had to dig into the deep, dark corners of our storage room, and by the time I was finished I had had enough of it. I had to crawl around or move half-empty giant tupperware containers, boxes of books & movies we need to sell or give away, bags of dirt from my wife’s gardening attempts, and old furniture that is essentially garbage. So before we put all the camping stuff back in the storage room, we’re going to have to go through it and tidy up: get rid of what we don’t need or want, and organize everything else better. I’m going to have to figure out some kind of system, but hopefully when it’s done, looking for wrapping paper won’t be like a spelunking expidition.