Carport Clutter
Getting the carport clutter organized and contained.
“Only entropy comes easy.” — Anton Chekhov
Yeah, I feel that. My carport shelf was intended to make things neat, but it did the exact opposite… it became a magnet for clutter coated with pollen and grime.
Even the most organized pile of junk is still a pile of junk.
The first step in any worthwhile cleaning project is to turn a mess into an even bigger mess.
Okay, I take it back. The first step is actually online shopping. However, problems arise when you discover half-way through the project that the purchased item is defective, and you then have to look at this pile of junk in your parking space for a few weeks while a replacement arrives.
Garbage enclosure assembled! Just one catch: my existing garbage bin is too big by about half an inch. Luckily I have a neighbor willing to trade their square-footprint bin for my rectangle-footprint bin.
Crisis averted.
With storage units assembled, the next step is to install shelves. No one shelf can hold too much, since the L-bracket supports are screwed into pretty thin plastic. But it’s plenty strong to hold what I need it to hold.
Nice and tidy!
Basement Storage
My basement came with a storage closet in the corner that is also home to numerous plumbing pipes and my hot water heater. There was some minor shelving, but nothing that would accommodate my storage needs. There is also a small counter with a pass-through opening through a set of louvered bi-fold window shutters… the only thing I can imagine is that this had been intended to be the bar for some sort of basement lounge space. Or a strange addiction to louvered EVERTHING.
The thin shelving on the right side came out easily. I cut down the bar-like counter on the left to make room for more shelves on that side too.
Then came the storage bins. Not giant, too-heavy-to-manage totes, but matching 25- and 50-quart Sterilite ShelfTotes designed to stack neatly into the new 5-shelf storage rack.
Storage Closet Organization
Labeled bins make stuff easy to find and retrieve.
I can't stand big plastic storage bins that grow in heft until they can't easily be lifted. Even worse is when they get stacked up so you need to move four awkwardly heavy bins in order to get at the contents of the fifth.
Sterilite makes a shelf-and-bin system that solves this issue... 25-quart and 50-quart bins. I like that they stack tightly, efficiently using all available space.
