Friday: storage room is finished!

One year ago* I started cleaning the storage room.  I had been hoping to do it last in the Operation: Clean the House list, but it had reached a critical point.  It got a lot better quickly, but Ben and I spent the last month finishing up the few last things.

*I took the before pictures on January 10, 2025, it is really only 364 days ago.

And so, with lots of elation, I present before and after for the storage room.

There's not a ton of change here.  The white fridge broke so we needed a new one.  I cleaned up some of the area behind the freezer, but am now storing full boxes of donations there.

The stuff on the left stayed mostly the same, but I dealt with the boxes in front of the water heater so the space has opened up.

Look at all the stuff that was moved!  A lot was just moved to a different area, but it is now a calming experience to enter the storage room instead of a harrowing dance among the boxes.

I just like the difference for this picture.

This is one of the better pictures that shows how cluttered it was...and how much it has changed.

Same location, slightly different angle.

It is hard to show just how terrible this back corner was.  The shelves weren't being used very effectively because they couldn't always be reached.  It had become a dumbing ground.  I also couldn't get a very good picture of how bad it was because there was too much stuff in the way.

Box storage moved and I put up a few high shelves...so that we can stack things underneath later.  (Hopefully much later, but based on the rest of the house it takes about two-three years to need another round of cleaning, but nothing has dissolved to its original state either.)

The picture doesn't show well how hard it was to walk to the other side of the storage room.  It was very possible, but kind of balance beam-esque.  

There is a dedicated place for tables and ladders now too.  They had just been moving around the house and so it was always hard to find them when needed.

So the three bookshelves went down to two shelves of books.  I feel like I should do more, but it just wasn't in me.  Next time.  Ben also cleaned up the cable area so we could move everything down the wall three feet.  The black shelves are now my "get rid of stuff".  EBay, donations, electronic recycling, books for the library, etc.

We removed several large boxes for electronics, and dated the ones that we did need to keep.  Box storage also moved into this area.  It's still rather full, but it is stacked better.  We also added the indoor bike for Joshua's winter exercise.

It isn't a good before and after picture, but Ben cleaned up the cords so we could move the bookshelves.

 

And a few extra pictures, because I could actually stand in good places for them.  The white shelves that disappeared earlier got moved over here into the shelf row.  After that are some black wire shelves with our extra Lego - it is a massive improvement to the bucket we had before that was so annoying to look through.