Basement Storage Room Ideas
If there's one positive outcome from all this time locked down at home, it's
that my home is as organized as it's ever been. One area that has benefitted
from this extra attention is the basement storage room.
Basement Storage
Whether you have a finished or unfinished basement, there's always a need
for good basement storage. In our home, we have a cold storage room. It's
an unfinished, long and narrow (19' x 5') space which sits beneath our
front porch. You access it through this door in
our craft room.
It's great to have an enclosed storage space, but basement storage can be placed where ever you have room. All you need is a place to put some shelves. Let's take a peek behind that door, shall we?
Basement Shelving
The key to efficient basement storage is undoubtedly the shelves. We were
lucky that the previous owner already had these basement storage shelves
in place and left them for us. They're
IKEA Hejne shelves
which are the exact same shelves we used in our old home.
Side note: Did you see our
hidden basement storage
in our old basement? It's worth popping over to take a look!
The great thing about these shelving units is that they can be attached to
one another to fit your space. They're not too deep which makes them ideal
for a narrow basement storage room like ours.
The shelves are simply constructed and if you wanted, you could create
your own DIY basement storage by
building shelves using 2x4 and plywood. Solid wood is ideal for basement shelving as it is strong and can hold
the weight of heavy boxes and objects.
How To Organize A Basement Storage Room
A basement storage room can be efficient, orderly, and neat if organized
properly. Here are 8 storage room ideas to help you get the most use out
of your space:
1. Organize your belongings by category
There's nothing more frustrating than looking for an item you know you
have, but you can't seem to find it. In this room, the basement
storage room layout is clear and easy for everyone in the household to
understand. We've organized our items into different zones:
- Off-season coats and shoes
- Cookware and appliances
- Christmas decorations
- Food items
- Home decor
- Seasonal accessories
- Paperwork and books
Keeping similar items together allows you not only to find and access
them quickly, but you can readily see what you have. As you can tell by
this shelf, I don't need any more lamps in this house, lol!
Having zones also promotes tidiness. It's easy to know where to take AND
put things back. Everything has a home and every person in the household
(not just Mom!) can contribute by putting things back in their place.
2. Use storage bins sized to fit your shelving units
Many of the items we have in our basement storage are small and need to
be put in boxes or containers. Picking just the right storage bins can
be challenging. There are many options: plastic bins, see through bins,
bins with lids, bankers boxes, cardboard boxes, baskets.
The type of storage bin you choose should depend on your shelving.You
don't want your bins to over hang your shelving and be at risk of
falling down. You also don't want to have wasted space; your storage
bins should fit neatly and compactly together on the shelves.
I store our Christmas decorations in
long bankers boxes. I prefer these boxes to more conventional plastic bins as they are
narrower and fill up almost the entire shelf. They allow for great
organization of my Christmas decor which I separate by colour (pastel
ornaments vs blue ornaments), and by type (wreaths vs figurines).
3. Make use of vertical space
When space is at a premium, think of how you can use your vertical space
from floor to ceiling. Here we've tucked a narrow shoe rack at one end
of the storage room. By placing the rack perpendicular to the wood
shelves, we make use of otherwise "dead space". The shoe rack has a
small footprint but the three shelves maximize storage in that area.
Not even the smallest of spots is put to waste. The tiny area below the
coats stores rolled-up off-season rugs. Larger rugs sit in the opposite
corner as well.
4. Size your shelving to fit the contents
Shelving units like the IKEA Hejne system are great because the shelves
are repositionable. You can move them up or down to fit your contents. On
this rack, we've removed the bottom shelf so we have space to store taller
items like the box of leftover wallpaper rolls and the deer figurine.
6. Store less frequently used items in less desirable spots
Where do you store your old taxes and paperwork? We all have items that we
need to keep but don't need to access every day. Our paperwork is stored
in boxes and bins in a far corner of the storage room.
Paperwork and mementoes can quickly get out of hand, so to keep them under
control, I find it helpful to restrict our hoarding to one box per person.
Chloe, Sean, and I each have one "personal memories" box to store any
photos, schoolwork, art, or papers we want to keep. The one box rule
forces you to decide what's important enough to store and keep, and let go
of the rest.
7. Keep heavy items in the open and low to the ground
Where possible, keep heavy to lift objects close to the ground, at chest
level. You don't want things to topple on your head as you bring them off
a shelf.
The heavy Le Creuset pots and spare Kitchen Aid mixer sit on a shelf that
is easy to access. We use the pots fairly often so they sit out in the
open and are just given a wash before they're used.
It's important to decide what sits on the floor and what sits on shelves
in a storage room. Hard goods and items in plastic containers are fine,
but you might want to put paperwork and more fragile decor items on
shelving where they won't be damaged if you have flooding or condensation
on your basement floor.
My solution is to keep an IKEA bag handy to store such items and when the
bag is full, make a run to the thrift store and donate the items. Everyone
knows where the Goodwill bag is and can just place items there as needed.
8. Have a constant donation pile
Despite these basement storage room tips, my ideal scenario is actually
to have less stuff that needs storing. Perhaps I'm becoming a
minimalist, but I find there's always an opportunity to edit the items
I'm storing. No doubt there are items I've kept that really should be
given away or donated.
These particular bags are full of Chloe's American girl toys which she has
sadly outgrown. I won't be donating these but I do need to find the time
to itemize them, take photos, and sell them on Facebook. Yet another
project to do!
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