Looking for a great way to make over and organize a storage room for your home? We just completed ours and I'm sharing how we did it!
Sam Cooke sang it best when he said 'A Change is Gonna Come.'
And boy did it!
It just took a lot longer than anticipated, but on this side of things, it was well worth the wait.
We finally have our storage room reveal ready to show off!
However, this was a huge bunny trail from our original project.
This all started because I wanted to make over our kitchenette in our basement.
But first things first, we had to tackle the issue at hand.
Our unused kitchenette had become a drop zone for household clutter, like items to sell, donate, or throw away. Sprinkle in some seasonal decor and kids memorabilia that needed a new home and we had quite the mess.
Unfortunately our storage room wasn't much better off!
Which brought us to making over this storage space first.
When we moved into our Birmingham home 2 years ago, things were put away, but not in logical, organized spaces.
We have needed to create a system for this house and find a good solution for our family!
And that is my mission for this year: to declutter and organize my home in the hopes of creating a relaxing space that each family member enjoys.
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Table of Contents
How to Make Over and Organize a Storage Room
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Let me tell you a bit about our storage room.
When we moved into this house, the previous owners had taken the utility room and added a built-in shelving unit and a work bench.
While this was a good solution, the layout for this space was rather poor.
And it looked like a small space.
I knew there was a better storage opportunity with this room.
So we decided to take down a false wall that they had built to hide those wall shelves.
By taking down that wall - we could start to see how much floor space we actually had.
If you are looking for the details of the building projects for this room, then check out this post.
Check out how open it is now!
To be honest, it doesn't even look like the same space to me.
Repurposing the Long Shelves
We were really lucky in that we already had the materials to rebuild the existing long shelves that the previous owners had installed.
The best way to get the most out of your home storage system is to take advantage of the vertical space.
The biggest mistakes people make is not using every square inch available.
Click here to read how we installed these shelves.
Part of the organizing and decluttering process is going through old items and deciding what stays and what goes away.
We had existing plastic bins that I wanted to reuse, but simply had too much stuff to fit in them.
We chucked a lot of items, have a huge pile to donate, and also sold some decor on the Facebook Marketplace.
It took a little help from everyone, and a lot of time, but it is well worth that extra step of purging.
The best thing to do is to organize your storage area into zones.
The left side holds our larger home decor items.
The top shelf are a stack of bins that hold items we don't need to access regularly, like personal items from when the boys were babies, as well as our own childhood mementos.
The lower center shelves house picture frames and seasonal items, except for Christmas decoration. I'll show you that area in a bit.
The lower right shelves are filled with fabric based craft supplies, like my sewing machine, fabric swatches, ribbon and pillow forms.
It's a great idea to keep similar items grouped together to make those things easy to find.
The Peg Board Corner
As a DIY and Home Decor blogger, I always have a ton of wreaths, garlands and swags.
Some of this stuff is new and some is just waiting for an update.
We took the old peg board that hung over the work bench that we sold and repurposed it in this corner.
We also found a bunch of hooks when we were cleaning out our decor. I thought it would be a good idea to create a wall hook system to extend the wreaths.
I also kept this old chest that was a part of the work bench to store craft supplies.
Hot glue guns, craft paints, and brushes fill those cabinets.
The large metal bin came from our in-laws attic.
It holds large pieces of unframed artwork that we didn't want to see get damaged or bent.
The Home Decor Shelves
Now if you're not that big into decorating, this section may not be of use to you.
But I often get the itch to switch my decor out, and having multiple options to grab from has saved us lots of money.
We moved this white shelving system from our laundry room into this space.
The shelves are shallow creating an easy way to find just the right decor piece I am looking for.
So instead of going out and buying a new decor item, I'll check here first to see what I may already have.
And it's an excellent way to keep track of what I don't utilize anymore helping me get rid unused items.
Our Christmas Decorations
Last year, I took some time to sort through all of the holiday decorations I had collected over the years.
I ended up selling a good bit of items that were outdated and not my style anymore.
But with Christmas trees, ornaments and all the decorations that go with our favorite season, it was still a lot.
Since our trees were already stored under our basement stairs, we decided to dedicate all that real estate to Christmas.
And it's not that pretty, lemme tell ya!
It's almost spilling out the door!
I had a few extra curtains and tension rods and decided to hide the Christmas storage behind the curtain.
Since we only access these items once a year, it seemed like a good place to tuck everything away.
The Last of the Storage that Needs a New Home
This storage room not only held all the storage containers, cardboard boxes and home decor, but also music gear.
That black door goes to our music studio and this room was easy access to store items out of the way.
So this is the last of the stuff that will eventually find a new home.
Our goal is to move our laundry room (which just so happens to be in our music studio) to our upstairs. We will convert that room into a dedicated music closet to hold all the gear.
But we are no where near getting to that laundry room, so those DIY projects are down the road!
We have found that our HVAC system is operating better. With more space and less clutter, there is more air circulation which is good for our furnaces!
Long Term Goals for this Room
Don't get me wrong, I love how this now functional space turned out.
But I still hope for a beautiful room with better shelving. Here are some of my dreams
- Move out the remaining music equipment to another storage closet
- Install a metal wall storage unit with doors to hide everything
- Update our storage bins to have one uniform color
- Add a work table on wheels for future projects
With a little creativity, there are so many different ways to make the most of the available space you have in your own home, no matter how much space you have.
While you may not have extra storage space like we do, you can revamp a your closet storage to work for you.
The good news is that there are home storage solutions for you! And I hope that this encourages you and inspires you to tackle your own closet space, small bedroom, or home office to find something that works for your family.
If you have any tips of your own, drop a comment below and share your experience with us!
Now we are officially starting the kitchenette makeover, so be sure to subscribe to my newsletter so you won't miss the next post. You can also follow the behind the scenes shenanigans over on Instagram!
Check out these posts for more ideas and inspiration:
Living With Less Stuff and Clearing Clutter
5 Decluttering Tips When You Don't Know Where to Start
Tearing Down Walls - Our Start to the New Year
My Journey to Finding Balance in My Home
Progress on Our Storage Room Update
Stress Free Home Organizing Project and How to Stay on Track
Moving an Interior Door
Brendt Blanks
I love this so much, and the space you have for storage is amazing!
But, I still want to come over and shop it all haha!
xoxo,
Brendt
Kristin | White Arrows Home
What a dream Jen! Talk about making "Shopping your home" easy and fun!! You made a storage room beautiful and I'm swooning!