42 Storage Solutions in Your Home

Welcome to 42 Storage Solutions in Your Home!  If you are a new visitor to my blog, I’m working on my own personal household inventory and decided to share it as I go.  We lost our home in a wildfire in 2007 (see series of posts, starting with Any Way the Wind Blows) and it took me 9 months of working nights and weekends to compile our household inventory list for our insurance claim.  Even though we have lived in our new house almost 5 years now, I’d not yet started a list of our new belongings, so a year ago decided it was time!

You would think this is the logical thing to do:  if you are starting from scratch, build your list for the beginning.  That would have been the smart thing to do {grin}.

But, starting from scratch is overwhelming – both physically and emotionally and making a list of purchases is the last thing on your mind!  In one of my posts in the Any Way the Wind blows series, I believe it’s the one called Much of Muchness, I describe likening the way we were feeling those first several months after we moved into our new home, like one of the recipients of the old TV series, Extreme Home Makeover. Although it’s an amazing time, we were flooded with different conflicting emotions: gratitude, guilt, sadness.

• Gratitude because we are so grateful to friends, family, strangers who helped us during the recovery process.
• Gratitude because our insurance was adequate and our insurance carrier easy to work with.
• Gratitude that when the world was collapsing financially (2008), that we’d chosen a trust-worthy contractor to build our new home.
• Gratitude to have a beautiful new home and all the wonderful new things in our life.
• Guilt because we questioned whether we “deserved” this new stuff.
• Guilt because others who have suffered similar catastrophic losses may not have recovered as well as us or maybe not recover, ever.
• Sadness because we lost all our family mementos, treasures, photos – irreplaceable belongings that no longer exist.
• Sadness because a chapter of our life is now closed and our life is forever defined as “before the fire” and “after the fire”.

It was easily 6 months of living in our new home before we started to think of our new home as “home”.  I think part of the problem with assimilating and acclimating into a brand new environment filled with brand new things is that they don’t feel like they are “your” things.  Most people collect their belongings over time – a combination of purchases, inherited treasures, gifts.  It is rare that you get an entire household full of new stuff.  Even if you picked out every single one yourself (and we did; no design team standing by like in Extreme Home Makeover {grin}), it really feels like you are visiting someone else’s home or living in a fancy, well-stocked hotel.  And, that the bubble is going to burst or you are going to wake up from a fabulous dream.

Anyway, this list of 42 Storage Solutions in Your Home is a rather “generic” list.  My intent in making it “generic” was to restrict this list of storage solutions to one page of 42.  It is meant as a “tickler” to get you thinking about those personal property items that can be easily overlooked.

For example, when you open a kitchen drawer, filled with cooking implements or eating utensils, do you have a way of organizing those items within the drawer?  When you look under your bathroom sink, do you have baskets, boxes, bottles and jars that are used to store your supplies?  Do you have baskets in closets where you have thrown items just as a way to contain those items so that when you open the closet, they don’t all come tumbling out?

A good example is spices:  normally you purchase spices in spice jars or tins.  But, in my neck of the woods (Southern California), we have a line of spices sold in our local grocery stores that come in cellophane bags.  Once you open the packet, you need to store the contents somewhere else or risk losing some of your precious spices every time you open the cellophane packet again.  So, I bought a few empty spice bottles from a local home organization store to store my packets of spices.  But, if I were making a household inventory list for insurance claim purposes, unless I remember to include those spice jars on the list, I wouldn’t be paid for those spice jars.

I think most people consider it is important to include the “big picture items” on a household inventory list for insurance claims purposes.  And, that would be true.  But, it’s the minutia that adds up.  In our particular claim with our particular insurance carrier, if it wasn’t on the list, we did not get paid for it!

Here’s the list of 42 Storage Solutions in Your Home:

1. Paper towel holder/dispenser
2. Napkin holder/dispenser
3. Glass, plastic, metal canisters
4. Glass, plastic food storage containers
5. Pet food containers, storage
6. Bakeware/cookware organizers
7. Lid organizers, can organizers
8. Drawer organizers, divided boxes
9. Carousel, coffee organizers
10. Closet shoe organizers, baskets
11. Belt, tie, scarf, hanging organizers
12. Jewelry, handbag organizers
13. Media storage
14. Underbed & bedside organizers
15. Bath & beauty supplies organizers
16. Undercounter organizers
17. Plastic bag dispenser, kitchen wrap
18. Laundry & cleaning organizers
19. Holiday organizers, gift wrap
20. Baskets, cubes, cubbies, carry all’s
21. Flatware caddy, utensil crocks
22. Office supplies organizers
23. Magazine racks/baskets
24. Hooks and peg racks
25. Magnetic boards, cork boards
26. Coat rack, tall tree, trunks
27. Countertop organizers
28. Rolling stack organizers
29. Shelving, shelf organizers, dividers
30. Space bags, large storage bags
31. Plastic tubs/trunks of various sizes
32. Toy chests, boxes, hammocks
33. Tins, cans, jars, bottles
34. Trash and recycling organizers
35. Tool racks, boxes, bins, parts
36. Dinnerware and serving storage
37. Wine racks, beverage organizers
38. Spice jars, racks, tins, bottles
39. Refrigerator/freezer organizers
40. Cabinet organizers
41. Pull-out and roll-out drawers
42. Decorative boxes with lids and/or drawers

Please note that even if the item doesn’t say “organizer” after the name, I’m talking about an organizer.  For example, item #19 on the above list, “Holiday organizers, gift wrap.”  In my attempt to keep this list short, I ran into spacing problems on the FREE printable checklist.  So, this item #19 means “Holiday organizers, gift wrap organizers.”

In my particular situation, I have 3 different containers that I use for “gift wrap”. Ridiculous, I know, but somehow I ended up with more gift wrap than I need {grin}!  It’s because I’ve had so many family member’s children, friend’s children and neighbor’s children selling gift wrap to support their schools!

Anyway, I have two plastic tubs that have “gift wrap” in them:  one holds Christmas bags and the other holds other gift bags and tissue paper.  Plus, I have one of those standing plastic gift wrap organizers meant to hold rolls of gift wrap.  And, I have a “gift wrap caddy” – a product sold through one of those home party companies that I thought was just nifty and it holds gift wrap, ribbon, bags, tags, etc. with all its different clever pockets.

Gift wrap overload {grin}!

Here’s your FREE printable checklist to add to your household inventory binder:  TS4T Checklist – 42 Storage Solutions in Your Home.

Tootles,

 

Related Posts:

(other lists of 42 household inventory items)

NOTE:  this list (below) is not all-inclusive.  For a complete list of household inventory lists so far, check our Archives – By Category.

• 42 Kitchen Basics for Your New Home
• 42 Must Have Kitchen Utensils
• 42 Things in Your Laundry Room
• 42 Things in Your Dining Room
• 42 Things in Your Master Bedroom
• 42 Things in Your Living Room, Family Room and/or Great Room
• 42 Things in Your Foyer, Mud Room and Hall Closet
• 42 Baking Essentials
• 42 Cooking Essentials for a Well-stocked Kitchen
• 42 Nice-to-Have Kitchen Gadgets