Basement – the word itself is enough to make you shudder thinking about how unorganized and cluttered it must be. All the junk of the house, over time, finds its place in the basement & clearing it out later can seem like a mammoth task. If that is something that bothers you, this article is for you.
We have listed some basic but best ways to declutter and organize your basement
Read on.
Get Rid of The Excessive Stuff
Collecting and storing things is a basic human tendency. But once something goes into the basement, it is lost in the sea of forgotten items. It can be hard to admit that you might not need your first cricket bat anymore. But that is the first step towards achieving your cleaning goal.
You can discard anything that is not in use anymore. Junk in your basement might include things like:
- Old toys, PlayStations, and mattresses
- Broken and outdated e-waste
- Old, not in use sports equipment
- Broken exercise equipment
- Broken, old, or unwanted furniture.
If you are from Florida, consider searching junk removal florida on Google and getting professionals to haul the junk off for you. When it comes to decluttering the basement, you can best leave it to the professionals!
Use the Three Pile Decluttering Method
Rather than working all at once and adding to your amount of stress, divide your basement into sections. Tidy up one segment at a time. For each room, create three piles – Keep, Toss/Donate & Store. These piles will make it easier to organize the items once you are through cleaning up.
Keep: In this pile, include things that you often use. This pile could save toolboxes, usable sports gear, exercise machinery, and some old items that hold sentimental value for you, like old family photos.
Toss/Donate: Anything in working condition but of little use to you can find its way in this pile. You can donate these items to the needy.
Store: This pile can contain all the things you know you’ll need in the future, but they don’t have to be immediately accessible. For storage, you can use cardboard boxes and plastic containers. To make things more organized, label the front of the boxes.
Divide the Basement into Segments/Zones
Since the things in the basement rarely come to your use, you might forget where you kept them. Hence, it only makes sense to store similar items together.
Keeping related or similar things together will make it easier for you to locate them later. Here are some of the basic ideas you can employ while organizing your basement:
- Holiday Items: You can put lights, decorations, bows, wrapping papers, and other holiday items together in the same place but in separate boxes.
- Tools & Hardware: All the tools and hardware can be kept in a single box where it is easily accessible. You can also use Mason jars but make sure to label them.
- Childrens’ Things: Toys, Old clothes, Yearbooks and old school books
- Pantry Items: All the surplus food items, toilet papers, and other similar household products can come under this category. Just make sure you label the boxes with the items’ expiry dates.
- Sports Equipment: All the exercise and sports equipment go in the same place. This category might include your camping gear, treadmill, golf clubs, etc.
- Room-by-room Storage: This category can contain all the items you put under the ‘Storage’ pile. Lock them up in boxes and label them so that you can locate items when needed.
Setting up a foolproof Organisation System
A little bit of organization can do wonders for you. Rather than leaving items cluttered and in a chaotic mess, assign boxes and shelves to them. These are some of the things you can use to store your things:
- Wooden Shelves and crates
- Plastic boxes/tubs with a lid – to store pantry items.
- Baskets
- Old bins – to store tools and hardware
- DIV Shelves
Final Word
Clearing out a basement can be an overwhelming job. But that is why we’re here. If you follow the ways highlighted in this article down to the T, you’ll have no issues decluttering your basement and keeping it that way.
Good luck!
