My husband and I decided to down size our house. We had lived in a five bedroom home، but once our children were grown we decided that we did not need the amount of space that we had. We bought a much smaller three bedroom lake home. We did increase the size of our garage. The garage of our lake home is heated and insulated. There are shelves along the walls from floor to ceiling. We decided that we would buy plastic storage bins so that we could use the garage area to store things that we had previously had in a large storage area in the basement of our old home. The plastic storage bins would protect the items from getting dusty and would also allow us to stack them.
Originally we thought we would put camping supplies and occasional kitchen items in the storage containers. Once we realized the amount of space on the shelves we decided that we could also place paperwork such as saved tax documents and insurance policies in the plastic storage bins also. This would allow us to get rid of our file cabinet that we were going to store in one of the spare bedrooms. We felt that the plastic storage bins would protect against moisture better than the metal file cabinet.
I went to a local discount store to purchase the extra storage containers. We had measured the shelving area so I knew the largest size I could get that would fit on the shelves. When I was looking through the plastic storage bins I realized that they had many different sizes as well as features. There were plastic storage bins that hold hanging file folders. I would be able to simply transfer the files from the file cabinet to the storage bins. There were also containers that were designed for storage of Christmas decorations. This was ideal. The Christmas containers were green with red covers، so we could easily pick them out from the non-Christmas containers. I have collected Christmas ornaments for several years. Many of them are quite valuable so I did not want them in the garage area. I found plastic storage bins that are designed to store under the bed. I transferred all my ornaments into three of the under the bed plastic storage containers and stored them in the master bed room.
The shelving area looks neat in the garage area and our items are easily accessed. We have also placed yard games، grilling items and beach items on the shelving. Everything is very well organized. With all the storage in the garage we have not missed having the larger home. It certainly is faster to clean the smaller home and we love being on the lake.
