Decluttering and Organizing Basement Storage: Continuing Along with our Journey to {Sparking Joy}

Because sometimes you can’t just get rid of everything, I’m sharing our process for decluttering and organizing basement storage using the KonMari Method, so you’ll have the tools to take on your own storage.

Welcome back to our journey to {sparking joy}!

Just a few short months ago, we embarked on a journey that would completely change our lives. No, we didn’t hop in the car for an epic road trip or board a plane for some far off land – instead, we focused our efforts closer to home.

Following the principles of this little book, we worked hard to rid our lives of unnecessary clutter with the hopes that it would make our every day lives a bit simpler.
And boy did it ever!
We worked our way through:
The Closet
Make-up, Shoes & Accessories
Books (& a million other things!)
All Things Paper
The Kitchen and
The Playroom

And I have to say that, even months later, I’m completely blown away at the far-reaching effects all of this decluttering has had on our lives! Not only is our home tidier, but our minds are feeling less cluttered too.
Everything just feels simpler somehow.
It didn’t take us long at all to work our way through the entire house, well almost anyway …

Though each and every drawer, closet and shelf in our house was clean and clutter free, our basement was most definitely looking like a bomb had gone off.

Honestly, we just didn’t have it in us to take that mess on any time soon.

So, instead of tackling that dreaded basement, we enjoyed our Christmas – each and every magical minute of it!

And then it came time to put Christmas away, to find a spot to store all of those decorations until next year and then we realized, there was nowhere for it to go. Somehow, we’d completely run out of room. Our entire storage room was full of so much crap, that we couldn’t even find a spot to set a single box of Christmas decorations.

And it didn’t end there. All that stuff had been ever so slowly, inching it’s way into the rest of our basement as well. In fact, there wasn’t a corner of our basement that didn’t have something jammed into it.

Even this little room, which is framed out to be a bathroom, was filled to the brim with sporting equipment and other randomness. Because everybody stores their sports equipment in the bathroom, right?!

Oh my gosh! How ridiculous, really. Not to mention, utterly embarrassing!

So, unless we wanted to live with boxes full of Christmas decor in the middle of our living room, we were going to need to tackle this damn basement.

Ugh.

I suppose it was time to continue on with our journey to {sparking joy}.

---

So, how did we declutter and organize this mess? By putting one foot in front of the other my friends.

step one: Completely clear out the space. For us, this was a massive job in and of itself. Removing each and every item from our storage room took ages and created a giant mountain of stuff right in the middle of our basement.

I cannot believe we’ve collected SO MUCH STUFF! It’s scary really.
step two: Sort & purge. This is the most daunting part of the process for us, especially after seeing it all piled together. And if I’m being honest, sorting through all of this crap took FOREVER! Seriously.

This process was certainly different than the approach we used to declutter the rest of our house, simply because, by nature, the items we choose to keep in storage tend to be items we don’t use as often – things like camping supplies, out of season sporting equipment, seasonal decor, ect. But, just as I had with the rest of my house, I held each and every item in my hand and asked myself if we really needed it, if we would ever use it, if keeping it would bring me joy.

I’ve also created quite a collection of baby stuff, you know, having held onto every single thing that Carson has worn, played with or touched for the last three and a half years under the premise that we might need it again some day. Not surprisingly, Carson’s things were the most difficult for me to sort through and I ended up keeping far more than I probably should have, but with room to store it all, I’m just not ready to let it go.

After making my way through each and every item in that mountain, I was able to donate two full truckloads of stuff to our local charity shop and managed to fill a few garbage bags as well.
step three: Organize what’s left. With every single item gone through and our pile of things to keep a little smaller, it was time to get it all organized.

We started by sorting things into categories and piles – biking gear, skiing gear, camping supplies, Christmas decorations, – you get the idea. Then, we simply dumped put it all into a few a ton of these Rubbermaid Totes to keep each group of items together. We even got fancy with things and labelled them all with a bit of painter’s tape and a Sharpie!

Probably the most important part of this whole process for us was building up some shelves in our storage room for everything to rest on as it went back in. Because we’re hoping to finish our basement this year, we wanted to make sure we got that main space as cleared out as we could. Plus, we have a pretty big storage room off of our furnace/ laundry room, so there’s really no reason that all of our stuff couldn’t find a home in there. In order to fit these 5,673 boxes and bins into our storage room, we knew we were going to need some shelves. Thankfully, it didn’t take too long for hubs to have two walls completely lined with them (find similar plans here).

Building all of these shelves was key for us – now we can stack our totes all the way to the ceiling, while still maintaining easy access to everything!
step five: Put it away. Finally, it was time to find a home for each and every box and tote on our new shelves! Hello floor!

I can’t tell you how great it feels to finally have this disaster completely and totally organized! That basement has been hanging over our heads for months now – who knew it would take just one weekend of hard work to finally have the entire space looking and functioning as it should.

Taking on our basement storage was most definitely a BIG job, but so totally worth it!

Have you got any organizing projects planned for 2016? I’d love to hear about how you plan on tackling them!

Read more about our journey to {sparking joy} for a ton of ideas to declutter and organize every area of your home!

Wishing you SUCH a lovely day!

PS. This post may contain affiliate links. For more information please see our disclosure and privacy policies.

Did you miss something? Catch my entire journey to {sparking joy} below:

The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up: {A Journey to Sparking Joy}