Wednesday, September 15, 2010

BQOTD: Stuff

What do you guys do with your "stuff"--you know, books, movies, treadmills, Xboxes, wakeboards, four guitars? Basically, stuff that you do use, but don't use on an everyday basis? 


Is it all in your garage? Your attic? Basement? Tossed into a spare bedroom?

........................................................
We have an attic, which is apparently "non-functional" for some reason unbeknownst to me. Justin has explained it to me a number of times, but I honestly just don't understand. I cannot believe that our attic cannot be made to be usable. I would LOVE to stash things like Christmas decorations, and the maternity pillow {that I LOVED at the time, but now takes up the entire guest closet}, and some of Lizzy's too-small clothes up there.

We also have a garage that doubles as a laundry room, pantry, and houses a spare fridge and freezer. Needless to say, there isn't much room left for storage. Though I would like to build some floor to ceiling shelves in there eventually.

So right now, most of our "stuff" hangs out in our guest room. I would REALLY like that room to actually be a guest room, but I still have no idea how to accomplish the task, other than weeding through things that we have been hanging on to but don't use on a regular basis. I just took six bags of that stuff (mostly clothes) to Goodwill, but we are still left with a lot of "stuff" that just doesn't have a home. People always tell me to sell the books and DVDs, Xbox, guitars, etc., but that just isn't an option--Justin would be extremely upset, and it's his house too.

Are we the only ones who have issues with "stuff"? How do you contain yours, and keep it organized?

12 comments:

  1. We have a basement that's half useable and half crawl space - Christmas decorations and all go in the crawl space. But I've forced B to start parting with stuff. He would keep EVERYTHING, but if he never uses it, there's no sense. We have a garage sale every year, and what he makes from stuff he parts with he puts towards new stuff - might be a way to get Justin to part with some of his prized possessions he never uses.

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  2. John built some shelves in our cellar a few months ago. I store decorations, serving pieces that I don't use all of the time, food, etc. in there. I love having them because I can buy in bulk or a bunch if I see a sale and have someplace to put everything.

    Our attic is not usable either.. I think there may not be a floor in there or something? We do keep flattened boxes up there though. Why? I don't know- John seems to think we need to hang onto them even though we have zero plans to move until retirement... He takes after his mom sometimes..........

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  3. we have so much stuff, it's crazy. a few years ago, my husband decided he wanted to become a rockstar, and bought Rock Band with additional guitars. and then one time he wanted to start playing paintball, so he bought a brand new paintball gun. those things are no longer in use, with about a million other random objects.

    right now, we keep a lot of that stuff in the garage, and the rest is tucked away in closets and the spare bedroom. I can't wait for the day when I can declutter!

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  4. Good question...our basement is our room of crap. We've tried to organize it a few times and it always just gets messy when we need to find something. I keep wondering where all that stuff is going to go if we finish the basement. I'm going to need a new crap room!

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  5. Ours goes in various closets. And I hate that. But I don't know what else to do.

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  6. Oh stuff. We have so much of it. We both lived in 1200 sq ft townhouses before we moved into our 1000 sq ft stuff, so we basically had two houses full of stuff to cram into one. And it's not the stuff that's like multiple: utensils, dishes, tvs, etc. It's his 8 surfboards + my 2. His xbox. My guitar. His art school supplies. My books. Our guest room started out being our catch all, but we invited a friend to move in, so we cleaned it out, and then the friend didn't move down. We have no attic. And only 3 2' closets in the house. We try to store Christmas decorations in airtight containers in our shed, but we can't put anything too valuable out there. It's tough, but there is stuff under every piece of furniture - the beds, the dressers. I bring our out of season clothes to my office & store them in the back room!

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  7. we have lots of "stuff" and a very small house so we have to get creative. I found these fantastic boxes at Ikea and they fit dvds perfectly so our dvds & cds get housed in those and kept out on bookshelves through the family room (and this is about 350 dvds plus many many seasons).

    Books are housed in the office and we try to regularly weed through these and purge. I also tried to stop buying so many and use the library more.

    treadmills & exercsie equipment we have a small gym area off the back of our house for and the garage stores all of our sports equipment (we have an entire room that houses our spare fridge, chest freezer and all of hubs hockey stuff!)

    Instead of using our garage as a garage we split it down the middle and then split the back part down the middle again so that we have two rooms in the back that function as a laundry storage.

    We finished part of our "non-functional" attice so that part of it could be functional and then the rest of the stuff I've just had to get creative with (or decide if we really need it).

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  8. We have VERY little storage in our house. No basement, no attic, hardly any closet space. About a month ago, we went and rented a storage unit, mostly because we're selling our home, and we needed to get things out of here to show it. Otherwise, some things like tools and camping things and the hubby's military stuff is in our shed. As far as stored clothing goes (seasonal stuff), we use our closests for those. But we have a good bit in storage right now until we move.

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  9. We have "stuff" all over our house! It's driving me crazy! When you figure out a solution to the "stuff" problem, let me know friend!:)

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  10. Only in America .....do we leave cars worth thousands of dollars in the driveway and put our useless junk in the garage.

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  11. Thankfully we do have usable crawl space and a decent garage. Our house is so small though that honestly, we purge a lot.

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  12. We do have a lot or storage in our guest room. I dread the day that we finally decide to have kids and have to find out where we're going to put all that stuff. A lot of it is under the bed in there. I don't have a linen closest so extra bedding is usually there.

    Guitars John stores on the wall in the office. Cases are in the garage. Movies we have in a slim case in the living room. Books are in bookcases in the guest room. They may one day make it to a spot in the hallway and to the office. The Xbox (and all the gaming systems we own) are spread out throughout each bedroom on the TV stands. Our one in the living room has a drawer where the games are stored as well as two cabinets that store other crap. It has 3 shelves where the Xbox, Computer, and Cable box reside as well. About 6 months ago we bought 3 shelving units for the garage. We got a great deal when they were on clearance at Home Depot and bought them fully assembled. We have one for sports stuff. There are 2 others with giant rubbermaid containers full of stuff. Everything from clothes, old stuff from college, stuff that my parents made me take from my old room, Christmas stuff. We really need one more, but haven't bought one yet.

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