This week, we are answering the three questions we hear most often when it comes to organizing storage rooms. We talk about storage inside your home and off-site units. Real questions behind the clutter about letting go, about systems that actually hold, and about where to even begin when a space has been ignored for years.
In This Episode We Talk About
- The top three questions we get asked about storage rooms and the honest, experience-based answers behind each one
- Why storage spaces (home and offsite) have their own unique organizing challenges
Review full show notes and resources at https://theorganizedflamingo.com/podcast
Review Transcript:
If you have been listening to our podcast for any length of time, you know that I love going deep into a topic. And this year we have gone really deep, like really, really deep into storage rooms, and we've talked about why storage space has become dumping grounds in the first place. We've explored the purpose of the intention and what it is that you want to do with the space.
We've gotten into the psychology of just in case thinking so far. We've talked about containers, the soft ones, the hard ones, and the ones that become clutter themselves. We have all kinds of topics planned for the rest of the year as well. And along the way, you have sent me questions and so many good ones.
So today we're doing something a little bit different than I do every year, but this time it's about storage rooms and I'm answering the three questions I get asked the most. This specific episode will be about storage rooms. So whether you are organizing space inside your home, tackling a garage, or trying to figure out what to do with an offsite storage unit.
These are the questions that keep showing up in my inbox. Even some of you have texted me, some of your community members or clients that I work with all the time, and I have seen some patterns. So we're gonna talk about them as I continue with this episode. I'll do another one. So if you have other questions that.
Today's episode Sparks, uh, send them our way so that I can answer them. Okay? So here we go.
Welcome to the Organized and Cherished podcast with the Organized Flamingo. I am your host Stephanie, your compassionate and efficient professional organizer. Whether you are part of the sandwich generation helping a loved one declutter, or just trying to simplify life, this is the place for you.
Together we will tackle those overwhelming piles of stuff, uncover purpose in what we keep, and let go with dignity and care, because it's not just about throwing everything away, it's about respecting memories and simplifying life. Sound like a plan? Let's jump in and get organized. Okay, so let's dive into question number one.
Where do I even start? This is the most common one, no matter what people are organizing or what they hired me to do, or what year we're focusing on here on the podcast. And honestly, it makes complete sense because, I mean, where do I start? That's probably why you called a professional organizer. That's probably why you're searching solutions on what to do with your stuff because you don't know where to start, right?
So. Storage rooms, especially ones that have been accumulating for many years, they can completely feel overwhelming before you even open the door because you don't know what's in there. It's been a long time since you've seen this stuff. Maybe this stuff does not belong to you, so you have no idea what's in there, or you do know what's in there and you're dreading it.
And I think part of why that is is because we've made the space mean something about us. Like the state of the room is a reflection of our character or our capability. I have, uh, an episode that I made about how that area, usually that storage room that you have is usually a telltale sign or a good, it tells me kind of like a good idea where you are in life or the story of your life, but it doesn't mean it's who you are.
It's a reflection of life happening, of decisions that got deferred, got got delayed, things that needed a temporary home and just stayed because life. And so how I answer this question with people and, and how I'm going to answer it with you is start with one decision at a time. I mean, everyone probably knows or has heard will start small or baby step it right.
The reason it applies and it's really important with your stuff is because you need a little testing ground. This is actually a very similar process to when you are testing out a big change, like let's say cleaning fabric. I know this sounds really silly, but just hang on, hang on with me here. The advice is usually try a small section that you can't see of your fabric.
So let's say you're trying to, uh, wash or clean your sofa, right? With a new cleaner, the recommended. Solution is for you to try a small section of your couch, of your sofa before you go all in because you don't know if that cleaner will damage the fabric. You don't know what you don't know. You don't know if it's easy.
You don't know if it's hard, you don't know how, if you should, maybe instead hire a professional versus doing it yourself, et cetera. It's kind of similar. It's that process where. We just want you to try out a small section of your storage room, clear it out, open one box at a time, one small section at a time so that you can train your brain and yourself.
You can start practicing the action of organizing because you're not born with that, with that trait. Even if, if you are the most organized person, you probably learned it somewhere along the way, or you just naturally became gravitated towards being a more organized dec, clutter free, you know, a clut free person.
You weren't born with it. You learned it along the way. You need to practice this if you haven't done this for a while. So that's why I always say start small storage rooms. You're probably not in that room in and out all the time. You don't know what you don't know. You don't know. If you want the, um, the stuff to go towards the back, if you want it to be more of aisle to be organized in shelves and in aisles, do you want it to be, uh, a vertical organizing system where it's all in one wall or do you want it to be above?
So if you have very tall ceilings, especially if have a garage. Do you want it to go all the way to the top and have some kind of solution above the storage room at the very, like, towards the ceiling? If you have an offsite storage unit, you might be, you might have different, um, more limited options in that space because of what they allow.
So you don't know what you don't know. So go to your storage space and pick that one box, that one corner, something small if you haven't been there in a long time. And start asking you yourself some questions like, does this item have a home outside of this room? Does it belong somewhere else in my house?
You know, it start kind of asking questions, open it up and make progress with that one box first. Don't think about the rest of the area, even though I know it's hard because it's right in front of you. But I want you to start practicing and then start making a habit of it. So if go into that room every day, maybe you go diligently.
Every Saturday you tackle one small section and then build the momentum from there. Hi, cherish friends. Life can get overwhelming, especially when you're juggling caregiving, clutter and everything in between. That's why I created the Organizing Cherish Weekly email that goes out every Wednesday's straight to your in.
To help you keep the momentum inspiration going with tips and reminders of our upcoming events, all you have to do is head on over to organize and cherish.com and sign up for the email newsletter. It's free and you can up subscribe whenever you'd like. It's my way of helping you simplify your life and respecting memories along the way.
Now, back to our show. Okay, so question number two is. How is organizing an offsite unit different from organizing a storage room at home? I love this question because this one I don't think gets talked about enough. Sometimes your space, your home, the one you, your primary residence becomes the storage room.
So your guest bedroom may, or your basement or attic, whatever, or another spare bedroom becomes the storage room unintentionally, and you don't really ask yourself, okay, should I just. Put this stuff in an offsite storage room. Now I'm not advocating for you to spend extra money that is unnecessary to be spending, but sometimes you just have to, and I have a whole episode for I we did a couple of months ago about the positive side of storage rooms, because I don't want this to be a doom and gloom topic.
Storage rooms exist. They're obviously used and very popular for a reason. Now we always want to have some boundaries. We want to have a timeline, making sure that we're intentional, but it's not always a terrible idea. So, okay, so here's some of the differences between the offsite storage unit and storage space inside your home.
And if you treat them exactly the same, you'll kind of run into some problems, right? So here's the, the big one, access. When your storage space is down in the hall, like down the hall, or in your store, or in your garage, or a shed, you can grab something. Very quickly. As long as you can find it, you know where it is.
Okay, let's forget that for just a second. In theory, you can go quickly and grab it. When it's offsite, there's a trip involved. There's a lock, there might be elevator access or business hours. It's a whole thing. Your offsite unit should only hold those things that, that you genuinely don't need in a reg, regular access to.
So it's like seasonal stuff, right? So I'm talking once or twice a year or however, you know, even up to a month. I wouldn't if you need it. Every couple days, probably an offsite unit is just going to have a lot more turmoil than it's worth. But you know, seasonal items, things tied to a specific life stage that you were holding onto with intention.
Sure. Stuff you inherited, you truly do want to keep. It's stuff of value that you need it to be safe. You need it to be in a climate controlled space. Absolutely. But if you are making monthly trips to your unit to dig out things you use regularly. That's a sign that those things don't belong there. Now the second difference is the emotional distance.
This one might surprise you, but you know, I see it all the time. An offsite storage room can actually make it harder to let go of things and not easier because you don't see them out of sight, out a mind. It has a shadow side out of sight. Also means the decision never gets made. So it's kind of that little in between.
Well. You know, I'll make, I'll, I'll decide it later, or, oh, I don't feel like it. So things just sit and monthly rental fees become the price of avoided decisions. You know, I've worked with clients who have been paying for storage units for years. I mean like 5, 7, 10 years, 10. And when we finally open those boxes, they barely remember what's inside them.
And a big portion of it is. Things they could have let go of a long time ago, but they didn't have the ability at that time, which is understandable. But they also just kind of kept throwing the can down the years down the road because they didn't have to see it all the time. The stuff was somewhere else.
So if you have an offsite unit, you know my honest question for you is that. If you had to move everything in that unit into your home today, what would you actually keep? And that can start the conversation and have you take action because the answer's going to tell you a lot about the stuff and how much it matters.
Let's go to question number three, and it's a version of this. I organize it and it just goes back to the way it was. What am I doing wrong? So it's kind of a, a variation of that. You've, several of you asked me that question. Okay, so my honest answer is you're not doing anything wrong per se. I really don't.
Um, we don't adhere to that. I've been doing this for over 20 years. I have done some trainings. I've, I've also, you know, gone down the, like, more to of the psychology piece of it. We don't really label it as wrong. Okay. But something is missing. So first I'd like to kind of redirect that question. So you ask yourself, what am I missing?
And instead of saying, what am I doing wrong? It'll change the perspective, but also it won't pigeonhole you into thinking that you can't do this. It'll allow you to start moving forward so that you can search for answers that work for you so that you can build the momentum and go from there. When a storage space keeps, um, going back to chaos, it usually comes down to a couple things.
Sometimes it's a combination of these three things. Sometimes it's one of them. Um, but there's no system that matches how your household actually works. A lot of organizing systems are really pretty. They're visually lovely in theory, and then they fall apart in practice because they require more effort to maintain.
Then the people using them are willing to give. Not because those people are lazy or like they, you know, they, they don't like it. It's just because a system wasn't designed for their real life. Like your, the momentum of your actual life is going. So if your system requires every item to be labeled and put back in a specific container, but your household runs very differently and that's just not doable, then the system wouldn't hold.
I'll give you an example. If you, your storage area is in your garage and you park your car in your garage as well. But when you open the door to get in and out of your car, you are always hitting boxes. You can't get get to stuff. You probably will start shoving things to the corner so that you have some room to get in and out of your car, and they're not in the way.
But now you don't have easy access to the stuff because they're all shoved in the corner. So you have to kind of think about how you actually live your life. How you're living in that storage room now. Now, if you have a storage room that is specific like a basement and there's nothing else except the stuff that you're holding, then let's make sure that it's, it's also optimal to how you use that space.
The best storage systems, um, that are simple enough to maintain in under five minutes is what I have noticed has the greater impact. So like you can quickly tidy it up or, or at least you know where to put things. In around five minutes. It doesn't have to be perfect. It just means that you know where things go and you can quickly, you know, put it away in about five minutes.
If putting something away takes more than that or, or kind of more steps than that, it just won't happen. Uh, okay, so second, the piece is over full. This one is really common when storage spaces are stuffed. And when every inch is used, there's no room for things to go back where they belong. Like you need some, some white space is what we call it.
So basically it's space that, so think of like at the Tetris game, it's, it's that space where in order for you to, to move another, another one of the pieces, you need some wiggle room, some open space, some white space so that you can think clearly, but you also have space to get in and out of that area.
So they, you know, because if they're stacking on top of something else and it's hard to get to the bottom and, and you just never go and, and get what you need because it's just too hard to get into, then you won't, you know, and then, then, and then things start to get displaced. And within a few weeks it looks like it just like it did before.
Okay, so if this is you, my answer is going to be that your storage space does need breathing room. So this doesn't mean wasted space. Now, that's where it gets confusing for some people. Some people think that breathing room is wasted space. They'll immediately see an area that is unused, like a shelf that doesn't have stuff in it, and they will immediately want to fill it.
And I want you to try to practice to avoid that. You need some breathing room, some white space. Okay? That margin is. What makes a system sustainable? It's kinda like a piece of paper when you're typing, right? Like a document. You need those margins around the paper or else everything feels and is very crowded.
So, okay, so we've talked about three of the top questions. Let me know if you have any more, and hopefully this works at least gives you some momentum. If I were to have one takeaway from this episode, it's going to be, have some breathing room in your area. So meaning some space that you can move stuff around.
It can't be so packed that you can't make any movement, and that should at least give you some momentum to get rid of some stuff. Not because we're getting rid of just for the, the sake of getting rid of it, but you need to be able to move in there so you can actually use the stuff. You can find your stuff or else it just becomes a warehouse.
The other is to start small so you can start practicing the action of. Tackling the storage room and letting go. So you need to start small, especially if you haven't been in those spaces for a long time. And the third is in no particular order, but in the third would be knowing the difference between offsite and onsite storage rooms, and make sure that you're picking the right one for you.
Um, so that perhaps you're storing your stuff in your home where that stuff maybe could be better, um, spent, or the, the stuff could be better put. The money could be well worth it if you put it in an offsite. It's not always terrible, um, but just make sure that you are looking at the offsite, onsite. Pros and cons.
Until next week, happy organizing. Thank you for listening to the Organized and Cherish podcast with the Organized Flamingo. If you enjoy today's episode, I'd be so grateful if you left a rating and review on your favorite podcast player. It helps others discover our show. For full show notes, resources, and more organizing inspiration, visit www.theorganizedflamingo.com/podcast.
Until next time, happy organizing.