Cecilia and Christopher live with their three sons Oscar, Eric and Philip in a six year old house outside of Lund, Sweden. When they moved in they didn’t prioritize the planning of the storage room, which they’ve regretted many times. But now, six years later, they decided it was high time to do it right. To their surprise they now don’t just have a clutter free and organised storage room, they also save both time and energy having to spend less time looking for things. Let’s have a look at how they went about rearranging the family’s “back end storage”.
On the family’s wish list was a storage room where you easily get an overview of, not only all family members clothes, shoes and sports equipment but also tools, gardening things, suitcases, paintbrushes, paint leftover and much more. The idea they came up with was to divide the storage into themes like tools, garden tools, seasonal clothes, sports and leisure and so on. They sorted the things according to the themes out in the garden and at the same time considered what could be sold or given away. When they were finished it was easier for them to estimate how much storage space each “theme” would need.
With three sons in the family the family used to spend a lot of time in spring and autumn looking for clothes they put away the previous season. Shoes and clothes were mostly packed in cardboard boxes in a haste, with no time for labeling. - I thought we would easily remember where we put the “hand me downs” and recall that we did have a system for it. But it’s amazing how fast you forget! Cecilia says laughing.
Now they arranged the clothes in order of size. Shoes were placed on open wire shelves, which allow for gravel to fall through. Each shelf was then labeled with the sizes of the shoes. The jackets were placed hanging on closet rods in order of size.
One of the biggest challenges the family faced was to find their sports and leisure equipment fast and effiently. Golf bags, soccer balls, inlines, skis, back packs and tents were all stuffed away on shelves and on the floor in the order they entered the room, so that when it was time to find a specific back pack, they had to spend time moving other things around. To solve this they built a wall where all sports things had its own dedicated space from the start. For example, all soccer balls were gathered in mesh storage bags on a suitable height for the kids to reach.
Backpacks were hung on hooks to make use of the depth and skis were placed on bracket inserts close to the ceiling. The golf bags were placed on large tool hooks in different heights for each family member. –The kids even enjoy putting things back now! says Christopher.
Christopher and Cecilia have an extensive collection of tools, screws, nails and other building accessories, which they had collected during the years. Now they decided they would give these things proper space. They placed all small tools like screw drivers, pliers on storage boards with special tool holders and hooks. Nails, screws and screw-nuts were sorted in boxes on the board and bigger tools like electric screw drivers were placed on wire shelves. Chords were placed on large took hooks and miscellanious mid sized things were placed in pullout drawers with labels.
There were special tool hooks for shovels and rakes which could also be used for hanging the trimmer and billhooks. The family chose to put gardening things just by the entrance of the room, to make sure they could easily reach them without dragging in dirt and dust in the rest of the room.
Like in many other homes, the family had a bunch of used paint brushes, wall fillers and leftover paint. To make sure they find them for the next project they gave the tools an own section with a storing board with hooks for the tools and shelves for the tins and bottles.
So how does the family conclude the makeover?
– The overview of all things makes it so much easier to find what we’re looking for. Now we find our things in no time, says Cecilia. - A small step for man kind but a huge step for a family of five! says Christopher laughing.
