730 things — Day 94 of 365

There's an oft-quoted minimalist saying, "If you need to buy more stuff to organise your stuff, maybe you have too much stuff." 

Good point.

However, everyone (surely even a one-bag minimalist) uses a certain number of made objects in the course of the average day; and, since most of us lead a settled rather than nomadic lifestyle, we need somewhere to put it in sensible categories and locations. Enter the storage unit.

In my own room, I have three types of unwieldy things to store — clothes/bedding, toys for story-telling, and pills. The toys have a shelf-and-a-bit to sit on. The clothes and bedding are herded up into packing cubes. The pills I had stashed in an assortment of plastic boxes, but they were crammed in and jumbled together, which put me off taking them. I recently got some boxes from the Really Useful range which store the pills neatly and effectively, allows me to get at them and see what they are, which results in my actually taking them more regularly — which is a good thing because they are improving my health.

I don't take such a mind-boggling number of supplements as you might imagine looking at that photo — they're cheaper in larger quantities, so the ones I take a lot need several little boxes to absorb one bag/bottle.

My clothes and bed linen are all packed into packing cubes (Amazon Basics, or Bago).

A drawback to that is all the packing cubes look the same, so you have to remember which things are in which bag, to save hunting through all of them every time I want a clean t-shirt.

I have my bedlinen (because I don't need to access it quickly or randomly) at the bottom of the stack on the bottom shelf. Stacked on and with it are my coats, the warmest and largest underneath the lightweight ones that double as cardigans.

On the upper shelf, trousers and sweaters are underneath, nightclothes, underwear and tees along the top.

My stationery and documents and sewing things are in the plastic drawers.

I always put things back in the same place, so habit takes me to look where something will indeed be.

I do not love the box (re-used food packaging) my wash things are in. Ideally I'd like a white plastic caddy, but I haven't yet found one of the perfect dimensions. I know exactly what I want, I just haven't come across it. In the meantime, what I have serves perfectly well; there's no point in buying something that's still not ideal.

In the days when I wore skirts, I used to hang things up in outfits. I find my present system makes better use of the storage space in my room. Everything fits in nicely and I can see what I have.

I bought the packing cubes and pill storage and stationery drawers, but it isn't the case that I have too much stuff because I bought storage to categorise and keep my things — it just keeps the space I need to a minimum by storing everything effectively. 

Storing things rationally also allows me to see what I have easily, which then makes me more inclined to monitor/review what I keep, and thus avoid accumulation and unintended duplicate/repeated purchases. And it keeps everything clean, and easy to move if necessary.

How do you store your belongings?

Today, I am moving on some storage I did not keep (Freegled it); two sets of hanging shelves. 

In the days when I wore skirts, so had everything hanging on the rail, it was handy to have some hanging shelves alongside for shoes and sweaters etc. What I do now maximises the space better, though.