A year ago I wrote a post about my kids playroom. At the time, we had just sold one of the largest items in the room and I felt like we were beginning to reclaim the floor. Sadly, it was a temporary victory. This room has been a sore spot for a while. Every time I looked at the mess, I began to feel a bit of a panic attack. The last time we sort of cleaned it up was because we were having a lot of family coming to stay for the weekend. Then, it immediately went back to having every square inch of the floor covered in toys. It was ridiculous to have toys well below any of my kids’ age level, especially when all they wanted to do was play video games. I finally grew so tired it, I decided I would have to take care of it myself. I had two main goals: get as much off the floor as possible, and remove anything that the kids have outgrown or lost interest in.I realized our first problem was how we all viewed the room. We had been referring to it as the “toy room” for almost 10 years when really it was a “family room“. I did my best to explain to the kids that we had a massive family room attached to the house that was being completely wasted by storing toys no one played with. I threatened to get rid of everything if they didn’t at least help a little. First, I had the kids put away the largest item; a reconfigurable tent that covered about a quarter of the room. Then, I got them to put away the hex bugs and magna-tiles. Once I had a bit of space to work with, I was able to dive in. One of the first things I noticed was that things weren’t consolidated. Puzzles over here on this shelf. More puzzles over there next to some games. But wait, there’s more games over here and here. I began pulling out toys that I thought we no longer needed and making a big pile in the kitchen. To sum it up, I’ve now been at it for almost two weeks but I’ve made a lot of progress. There is still a pile of toys in the kitchen that need to be sold or donated and a lot of the toys my kids outgrew are in the basement to be sorted further. Here are a few pictures of where I’m at. As overcrowded as it still looks, believe me when I say it was much worse before I started. In my recent post about exercise, I mentioned running a couple 5K races this summer. For each one, I made room in my dresser for a new t-shirt proudly proclaiming that I participated in the race. My kids also have acquired a few new shirts this summer for camps and sports they’ve participated in. This has been going on for a while. I’m reminded of it when I see my youngest wearing handed down t-shirts from things his brother went to 6 years ago. It seems the old saying “been there, done that, got a t-shirt” continues on.But what do you do with them all? Do you continue to stuff your dresser drawer with another and another? People don’t really keep all of them, do they? I’ve only done a couple of races so I can’t imagine what a serious competitor does with all of the t-shirts they collect. I also cringe when I’m at a baseball game with my family and they start shooting t-shirts into the stands. I always hope that one doesn’t come our way. Oddly enough, we did catch one not long ago. Of course, it was way too big for my daughter. The crazy thing is that someone actually stole it later as people were leaving the stadium. So what do you do if you’re drowning in free t-shirts that you never wear?Remember that just because you received a free shirt for something, you’re not obligated to wear it or keep it. At one time I owned a drawer full of t-shirts from my college fraternity that I never wore. I finally took them all out and piled them in my closet. I thought I would mail them to the fraternity house or something but never did. Eventually I donated them along with a bunch of other clothes and I haven’t missed them. There are companies who specialize in making quilts out of t-shirts. One I looked at online is called Project Repat and it seems to have good reviews. They can make a 16 shirt lap-quilt for about $75, up to a 64 shirt king size quilt costing about $240. Another is called Campus Quilt. They seemed a little more expensive, but claim to be faster than others and pointed out that they actually quilt their blankets, not just sew them around the edges. If you’re interested in this route, you may want to read a few reviews of each and see if that’s what you’re interested in. My recommendation is that if you go this route, you should actually plan on using the resulting quilt and not just store it in a closet. In that case, you might as well have just kept the shirts. How much is all that stuff worth that you have shoved in storage containers? Have you ever thought about how much the space in your home is worth? According to Realtor.com, the median price per square foot of homes in Michigan is $61. For desirable neighborhoods though, it can easily surpass $200 per square foot. Is that box of old magazines worth that much? Let’s keep the math simple and assume your house is 2000 square feet and cost $200,000, or $100 per square foot. When we talk about square footage for a house, we generally discount the basement and garage where people often store the most stuff. If we want to include these, let’s assume a 24 ft x 24 ft two car garage (576 sq ft) and a basement of 1000 square feet. That’s a total of 3,576 sq ft. I guess the math isn’t quite as easy now, but that comes to $56 per square foot. The storage container of choice in my house is these 18 gallon Rubbermaid Roughneck storage boxes. They are about 24 inches by 16 inches, or a little more than 2 1/2 square feet. By our cost per square foot calculation, whatever is inside that container should be worth about $140. Admittedly, ours are generally stacked about 3 totes high so let’s say each one should hold about $47 worth of stuff. We could get carried away and go into cost per year over how many years you store this stuff, depreciation, loss of use for that space, but that’s too much work. Incidentally, if you are looking to buy some storage containers, I can’t necessarily recommend the 18 gallon Rubber Maid ones. They are definitely sturdy and have held up well over the years, but unless you label the container, you will have no idea what’s in it later. Personally, I would recommend these Sterilite containers so you can see what’s inside. They’re made in the USA and about the same size as the Rubber Maid. How many people have a garage filled with stuff so that they have to park their car outside? I see it frequently. From our estimates above, a 12 ft x 24 ft space for your car (288 square feet) should be worth about $16,000. My own car is worth less than that. I don’t want to scrape ice off my windows in the winter and I hope I never have $16,000 worth of crap filling up my spot in the garage. The point of this little exercise was to get you to think about all that stuff you’re storing and its real value, given the amount of living space it occupies. Most of us don’t need a bigger house, we just need less stuff in the one we have. We’re all desperately trying to find more time in our day. We find it in different ways but usually something gets sacrificed in the process - whether its sleep, a healthy meal, time spent with family, time spent doing our jobs, or time for ourselves. Maybe all of the above? My family is far from perfect at managing our time and I never seem to get enough sleep, but we do have a few tricks that help us keep our sanity and still get to piano lessons more or less on time.
Like I said, we’re far from perfect but we almost never eat fast food and we manage to eat dinner together at the table most evenings while still having our kids involved in a couple activities each. I hope that something here will help you tame your schedule a little so that you can enjoy some family time together too. How did it happen that so many people have garages packed full of junk and end up parking their cars outside? I will admit that I used to park my truck outside all summer because a motorcycle (or two) filled half my garage. The bicycles and strollers added to the problem. I sold the last motorcycle nearly two years ago and we’re beyond the stroller stage at this house. Being able to park two cars in our two car garage is something I take pride in. However, bicycles seem to multiply like socks and hangers now and they only get bigger as the kids age. On a trip to the hardware store last fall, I discovered something that has really helped. I’ve seen the screw-in hooks for hanging bicycles and ladders before and I already had a few in my garage, but these rafter hangers are even better. I bought these Everbilt brand hooks at Home Depot but you can find similar ones at other hardware stores and on Amazon. The heavy duty Everbilt hooks support 50 pounds each. I couldn’t find the weight limit for these two hooks on Amazon but they look very similar.
I love these hooks because they’re cheap and I don’t have to drill holes in my garage rafters. Standing on a ladder drilling a hole above my head in a 95 degree garage is not something I enjoy. I can also move them around wherever I need them. If you have enough clearance you could hang one wheel from a hook but I prefer to use one for each wheel so that the bikes are up high enough to park our SUV under. I do have to watch my head though when I’m walking around in the garage. If the car isn’t there, I have forgotten that the bikes are low enough to hit my head on. I initially bought two pairs of hooks and recently picked up another for my ladder. Below are some pictures so you can see how they hold the bikes and ladder. As long as you’re strong enough to lift your bicycle upside down and get it on and off the hooks, these are a great option for storage. I’ve never understood how people can justify keeping a pile of stuff they never use in their garage while they park their expensive car in the driveway or on the street. Hopefully, things like these hooks can help. |
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