How to Start Organizing Overwhelming Spaces

Hi!! I need to start this post with a huge THANK YOU to all of you who reached out to me after my last post. My heart was overflowing with all of the support, comfort, and encouragement you all sent my way. I cannot tell you how much it means to me.

Although I have taken a couple weeks off from blogging, I assure you, I have not stopped organizing! I've tackled a basement {not mine, of course}, prepared for a second baby {not mine, of course}, address issues in our kitchen, as well as tested out a few new slow cooker-freezer meals. Of the seven meals that I prepared, we've had three successes. I planned to have a post ready for you on that this week, however I'm going to have to hold off until I have some really good recipes and more successful dinners to share with you. But I promise, it's coming! 

So instead of freezer meals, I'm going to share the recent basement organization. 
*Note: The pictures in this post are not the greatest. I blame a dimly lit basement and a distracted organizer for this. I got into a bit of a groove so I think I only took 15 pictures! 

I went home, to Ohio, for MLK weekend, and decided this was a perfect time to organize my parent's basement. I'm not so sure they agreed with the timing, but I think they've grown used to me coming in, creating chaos for a bit, and refreshing a space for them. 

Let me just paint a picture of our family basement. I am one of four siblings. Each of us attended school through college. Each of us participated in a least one sport through high school. My parents kept, what feels like, every accomplishment we ever made. All of these "accomplishments" were stored in the basement. Additionally, all holiday and seasonal decorations are stored down there, every stuffed animal/doll my sister and I owned (minus a few that were sold in a garage sale against our will in 1991. It was a traumatic event for a 6 and 9 year old.), and all of my parent's personal belongings that they have accumulated over the years. Let's just say, its was full. 

{I believe my brother-in-law compared it with an episode of Hoarders}

My mother is going to be very, very upset with me for posting this picture. BUT, can any of you relate to a basement, or garage, or attic, or closet, that is just overwhelming and potentially terrifying to look at? We all have our "spaces" that make us shudder, some may be bigger than others, but here are 5 ways that I choose to tackle these overwhelming projects to make them more manageable. 

1. Figure out how you want to use the space
If you have a basement, attic, garage, closet, etc. that is overwhelming you, before you begin tackling the space, figure out how you want to use it. For my parent's basement, we knew we wanted to get it back to it's original purpose, a space for storage, a ping pong battle ground, and a go to spot for an indoor workout. 

If you didn't notice in the picture above, that is a ping pong table in the center of the space. Off to the right there is a little workout area. Below is a view from the other direction. However, both of these spaces were being consumed with stuff. 

2. Start small
Take a look at the space and find a simple place to begin. Often times for me, this is the section that has things I can easily put in a place. For example, I started addressing all of the Christmas decorations that had recently been taken down. There was already a system in place for them, however it had started to collapse a with the chaos of the holidays. I purchase a few large organizing bins for under $5 each to help store items nicely. I got them at Meijer (pronounced meyer), in Middletown, OH, but Home Depot often sells their large storage bins for about the same price. 

{Organizer heaven}

The basement already had these amazing storage shelves, however small, odd shaped boxes lead to wasted storage space. 

I started to fill the new storage bins with all of the holiday and seasonal decorations. There is still one section that my mother promised to address, but all in all, a vast improvement. 

The left hand side of the storage shelves is where my dad keeps all of his tools and home repair supplies, they were left completely untouched. He says it's organized and if it works for him, there's no need to touch it. 

3. Label
As you can see in the image above, there were some labels already in place. For large storage spaces like this one, labeling can be the difference between organized sanity and organized confusion. 

{This is about halfway through the labeling process}

In addition to labeling the finished product, have designated piles for the items you're organizing. I always have a keep, donate, and throw away pile. If possible, have the donate and throw away piles outside of the room/space you're organizing. Continuing to look at items you've already sorted through can be discouraging and make you feel like you haven't made as much progress.  

I wish I would have taken a picture of the trash and donation piles for this project. Just envision a mountain of stuff creating a fire hazard at the basement entrance. I'm pretty sure my dad made 30 trips to the garbage bins while we were working. 

4. Make it make sense to YOU
This is the easiest/hardest part about organizing. It has to work. Otherwise you'll find yourself right back to where you started. If a commonly used item is a pain to access, it doesn't work. Make it easy on yourself. 

Prior to this basement intervention, school books, art projects, and sport memorabilia, were stored under the ping pong table. That made sense because the items were not commonly accessed and they were out of the way. But it wasn't exactly functional for the space. Ping pong balls would get lost in boxes of elementary school memories, and the space ended up looking more cluttered than necessary. 

{Just an example of the modern art that I was creating as a 6 year old... at least I hope I was no older than 6}

We moved all of our childhood accomplishments into large storage bins and tucked them under the stairs. I stacked them in order of birth, my sister's stack {the oldest child} is about 3 bins higher than my youngest brother's 1 one bin. I guess my parents got less impressed as each of us came along. 

5. Take timed breaks
I cannot express enough importance of a break. While I highly encourage people to continue to organize until finished, short breaks can be necessary, especially in larger spaces like this. Thank goodness we had the distraction of the Green Bay vs. Seahawks game on to allow us to take short breaks throughout. It's amazing how much work can be accomplished between plays and commercial breaks. 

{Halfway through the area next to the door}

If you're not into the distraction of sports, there is also an awesome app I've been using recently. It's like a timed to-do list. It's called 30/30 and it allows you to set a timer for a task, then move onto the next task once the timer is done. For example, organize for 1 hour, break for 15 minutes, then organize again. It's often very easy for me to become distracted while organizing, I'll see something, like a childhood journal, get distracted reading it, and before I know it I've wasted 30 minutes. I get really motivated and competitive with this app. It's like a race to see how much I can accomplish within the set time. 

Whether it's an attic, basement, closet or room, these tips can help you to tackle the chaos without pulling your hair out. Here are a few after shots of the space.

It's not a perfect fix, there are still some smaller items to address, better storage for old pictures and frames, moving the treadmill back to the workout space, and eventually, addressing the smiley face on the wall and cleaning the floor. But for now, it's a drastic improvement, and my brothers were playing ping pong just minutes after this shot. 

Some people may have walked into this, picked their jaw up from the floor and back away slowly, vowing to never open the door again. But I am here to tell you, it doesn't have to be that way. Just take a deep breath and follow the 5 steps. 

What is the space in your home that makes you shudder? Did you resolve to take back control this year? 

*Employment update: Since some of you have been asking how things are going with the job lately so I just wanted to provide you all with a brief update. In short, the entire agency is shutting down, previously it was just my division. While it is a very sad time, I have finally reached the "acceptance" level of the grief process. I have no clue where our lives will be in the next few months, I've adopted a go with the flow attitude and am feeling pretty darn good about. Thank you so much again for your concern and your support. It means to much! 

Thanks for visiting!