Getting to the Bottom of the Storage Story

basement (Photo credit: mobob)

   
      Over the past several weeks we've been all over the place in the story of where we keep our stuff.  Many of us in the United States and elsewhere can hardly contain everything we own under one roof.  In my series we've looked at closets, drawers, and attics.  One place we have not set foot in yet is the basement.

       Many houses do not have a basement.  Some have a sort of a bottom floor they might call their basement.  This sort of partially subterranean room is often another room in the house used as a family room, an extra bedroom, or even a garage.   In other cases the basement--or cellar as it might be called--is an underground dungeon-like place of darkness and dampness.  Some of these basements may have rough stone walls and concrete or even dirt floors.  These latter types of basements are more the type that might be used for storage.

       The more utilitarian basement is often the place where the homeowner will keep tools, garden equipment, and seasonal items.   It's not uncommon to find boxes and bins of stored items getting relegated to the confines of the space under the main living quarters.  If the basement is not typically seen by visitors to the home, the area may begin to look much like a warehouse with stacks of storage containers and old furniture.  Those basements are visited when something is needed, but left to gather dust in the darkness for most of the year.  If care is not taken, those basements also become the living quarters for unwanted creatures that can cause quite a scare when happened upon.

       Most of the houses I've lived in have not had basements.  A duplex in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where my family lived when I was in second grade had a sort of basement area that was actually a garage under the house.  My parents didn't have much stuff back then so not much was in the basement other than their car.  In some strange moment of inspiration, my father purchased a number of colors of paint and painted the individual cinder blocks of the walls with alternating colors, giving the basement garage a sort of patchwork quilt appearance.   It was all very festive and quite random.  We moved to San Diego after only living there for less than a year.   I have wondered if those walls are still painted as my father left them.

       The next house we lived in that had a basement was the one in Maryville, Tennessee where we moved when I was in high school.  That house had a half submerged basement that was essentially finished with a fireplace, wall heaters, and a laundry room that also had a toilet in it.  This basement made for a nice family room.  During my college years our family basement became a hangout for me and my friends.  Many of my records and books still have a musty basement smell.  After I moved from home my parents added a pool table and bar.  My mother has it fixed quite nicely now.  There are some items stored there, but they are mostly in closets or neatly set in places around the room.

        The most intriguing basement of my life was that in my maternal grandparents house in Morgantown, West Virginia.  They lived in a grand old house that had been built in 1909.   The basement of that house was a dark dingy place with one bulb to light the area.  I did not go down there much when I was a child so I do not recall what was stored in the dark recesses of their basement.  The one thing I do distinctly remember was the old white wringer washer that my grandmother had to use to do her laundry.  After the clothes were clean she'd haul them up the stairs to hang out to dry on a line in the small back yard.  Some things from back then are not missed.

       Do you have a basement?   Is it used for storage or has it been finished for other use?   What is the most memorable basement in your years?    Do you know anyone who has a bomb shelter?

     

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Stories in the Attic

attic treasures (Photo credit: GWSA)

        Where the role of closet space in modern home has become more important, the attic has become the neglected place where builders commonly install ductwork, ventilation, heating/AC units, and insulation.  A few of you might have attics that are still used as storage areas, but owners of the typical modern home rarely if ever see their attics.

        Some homes have attic space converted into extra rooms, but those homes typically set out to make that accommodation by design.  Many attics are difficult to get into, requiring a ladder and the agility to shimmy into a hole in the ceiling.  These attics are usually uninviting areas of exposed rafters and unfloored with wooden beams and insulation material.  Sometimes if you step in the wrong place you can fall through the ceiling of the room below.

         Once the attic was a valued space for storage in many larger homes.  We often see these types of attics in old films.  These are the attic spaces filled with steamer trunks, unused furniture, dressmaker mannequins, boxes, and many other accumulated treasures.  The attic of films is the place for hiding, mystery, exploratory adventure, and scary occurrences.

          Currently I live in a newer house with the unoccupied inhospitable attic where only termite inspectors and air conditioner repairmen have ever ventured.  I've poked my head through the opening thinking that I might use the area for storage, but quickly determined that our attic was not functional in its current state as a place for storage.

         The houses I grew up in were a little more useful for storing things like Christmas decorations or other things that didn't need to be accessed often.  I can't ever recall us having an attic you could go into and walk around, but they at least had flooring at the openings where you could put a few boxes.

          The big attics of old are the ones the can hold the real treasures.  I have a friend who told me that sometimes he'd go up to an old house with an offer.  He would clean out their attic and haul off anything they no longer wanted.   Now and then he would get a taker on his offer.  A few hours of dusty, often hot, work and he'd haul off the goods to the dump, keeping whatever he thought he could use or sell.  He actually went into business reselling toys that he had found in attics or elsewhere. I don't think he inspired the Aerosmith song "Toys in the Attic", but who knows?

         Maybe you are fortunate enough to have a big old house with an attic filled with treasures, or maybe have some relatives or friends with such a place.  If you've never taken the time to explore these old attics then maybe now's the time that you should.  With the cooler weather the attic shouldn't be as hot.  Dig through the archives of material accumulation to see what you  might find.

          Do you have an attic in your house?    Have you ever explored an old attic filled with things?   What are some treasures that you keep in your attic?   What are some of the treasures you have found in attics?

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Closets: What's In Yours?

A wall closet in a residential house in the United States. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Picture of inside a closet by Matthew Paul Argall  (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

         The houses I lived in when I was growing up didn't have very big closets.  Older houses as a rule have smaller sized closets.  At least that's the way it is with the closets in the older houses I've seen.

         My maternal grandparents didn't even have closets in the bedrooms of their large house that was built in 1909.  My mother says that there was a closet in the hallway where she hung up clothes.  I don't recall ever seeing that closet, but then again I guess I wasn't looking for a closet when I would visit there.

        A Nolo Law site article offers that older homes did not have many closets because houses were taxed according to the number of rooms and closets were considered to be rooms.  Other sources dispute this idea, but I think it seems like a rather reasonable explanation.   This is also probably why the large pieces of furniture known as armoires or wardrobes were used instead.  Of course these large pieces of furniture date back many centuries.

        The concept of built in closets may have also presented construction problems in some of the palaces and mansions prior to 18th century.  An ornate piece of furniture would have been more of an attractive storage solution than a door in the wall leading to a dark little alcove.  Rooms were larger in those homes of the elite and wealthy and they could easily accommodate a large wardrobe cabinet.

       Closets are certainly more practical in an age of electrically lit rooms where the inner recesses are more well illuminated.   A closet in a small room lit by candle or gaslight could be a gloomy little place where things might be difficult to find.   When we take into consideration the greater mobility of modern families we can see the problem of moving an armoire from one house to another.  Most people who had a big house didn't move as much in earlier times as people do in our age.

       There is also the suggestion that closets were not as necessary for most people in earlier times because they didn't own as many things.  Clothing wasn't as easy to obtain back in those days since they didn't have big department stores or clothing produced on the massive scale as it is now.   A few standard items and a couple of special occasion outfits were probably the norm back then.  Fashions didn't change as rapidly either for most regular folk.

       Even when I was growing up our family didn't seem to have as much as people have nowadays.   The hanging clothes for each of my family members easily fit into a small closet with room to spare for other items.  In each successive house that my parents moved to, the master bedroom seemed to have a larger closet, whereas the closets in my bedrooms were always the single door leading into a mini-room storage space.

         I can remember sitting on the floor of my bedroom closet playing with toys or just hiding in retreat.  As I grew older I would sometimes sit in the closet to work on my stamp collection since that is where I kept it stored.   When I got bigger in my pre and early teens I might sit on the floor just outside my closet having dragged out my stamp collection or model building supplies.  The closet always seemed to be my base of operations.  I kept my closet neat and orderly with everything in labeled boxes.

         My closet was my domain even though I shared a bedroom with my younger brother.   I'm not sure where my brother's stuff was kept, but he didn't get any closet space in our room until we moved to our house in Tennessee when I was in high school.  By that time sharing the closet didn't matter too much since I was now too big to be inside the closet and I no longer did the activities that I had previously done sitting on the floor.  But the closet was still the only place I had for storing my things and I continued to keep things neat and labeled so there was no mistaking what belonged to whom.  Even after I moved away from home I had possessions stored in that closet for several years until I had somewhere to keep them.

        Compared to the ones in the houses where I grew up, the closets in the house that my wife and I moved into sixteen years ago are very large closets.  Our house was new when we bought it and like most houses of comparable size built since the early eighties the bedroom closets have double sliding doors and considerable space for hanging clothes and a sizeable shelf at the top.  The closet in our master bedroom is of the walk-in style, but nowhere as big as the walk-in closet in my sister's house.  Her closet has hanging racks on each wall, drawers, shelves, and enough room for a dresser.  This is a walk-in closet that can be considered an extra room!

      Even with all of our kids gone from the nest, our four giant closets are jammed full of clothes and an array of other stored items.   In the bedroom that I now use as an office, the closet is filled from top to bottom with boxes containing office supplies, books, my stamp collection, and all sorts of items of personal memories.  I've been trying to tackle this one to get rid of things.  But it's also one of my treasure troves which I'll have to investigate eventually to decide what I need to do with the contents.

      Our closets have gone way past the storage of clothing and accessories.   We have everything except skeletons in them.  If I did have any skeletons to store they'd go in our garage or attic I suppose.  But we'll talk about those storage places in future posts.

       Do you have enough closet space in your home?   What do you keep in your closets?  Do you have any interesting closet memories or good closet stories to tell?

       

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Junk Drawers: Another Treasure Trove of Memories

Mundaneum, Mons, Belgium en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mundaneum (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

       What normal house doesn't have at least one junk drawer?   You are undoubtedly familiar with what I'm talking about--that catchall place for the quick deposit of those things that linger between the trashcan and the destination of organized usefulness.  It's the convenient drawer where you can just toss things temporarily until you can figure out what to do with them later.

        When I was growing up, the main junk drawer in our house was in the kitchen.  Opening that drawer was sometimes like opening one of those joke nut cans that have the spring-loaded snakes that jump out. The drawer was often stuffed with an array of things my mother would shove in there to hide them away until she was ready to reorganize the drawer in order to start anew.  That organization job seemed to be a chore that was always put on delay until necessity deemed it to be done.

       This is where the ingenuity of being a kid came into play along with my mother's sly trick of making delegated housework pay off for me while giving me something to keep me occupied.   When I was old enough to start caring about such things, I became aware that the kitchen junk drawer held things of value like loose change.  That money was a bonanza for a kid like me who was getting a twenty-five cent a week allowance.  Periodically when that drawer got so stuffed that there it was difficult to open or close, I would make a deal with my mother.   I'd clean and organize the drawer if I could keep all the change.   This deal always worked for me unless my sister happened to beat me to it.  She rarely did.

        Organizing the junk drawer was actually a multiplicitous activity of which the main part was separating the trading stamps and putting them in their appropriate books.  Anyone who lived prior to the 1970's undoubtedly remembers the ubiquitous trading stamps that businesses gave away when customers made purchases from them.  There were the S & H Green, Top Value, Blue Chip, and other trading stamps.  It was a sort of early version of the loyalty programs that many businesses have today or the points given by credit cards.   The customer could accumulate the stamps into books and then redeem the filled books for merchandise offered at the trading stamp outlet stores.

      The stamps were like money and well worth keeping. It meant a lot of work licking and sticking these things in the books.  That became my job since I was more than willing to do it.   And since I was playing such a vital role in the savings stamp enterprise, my mother always let me peruse the catalogs to help decide what products to acquire when redeeming the stamps.   Good kid that I was I usually suggested items that would be useful for the household, but a few times my mother encouraged me to pick out something for myself.   I never had an argument with that.

     The stamps were the major items that created the explosive overflow of the drawers. Once those were dealt with the rest of the drawer was a matter of putting things in their place.  Unneeded receipts, coupons, and other papers would be thrown in the trash.  I was very careful about what I threw away, and I became quite discerning about what was not needed.  Once all the paper items were discarded, neatly stacked, or given to my mother for her to put in a more suitable place, the volume of substance in the drawer had been greatly reduced.

     The drawer also contained an assortment of odds and ends such as small tools (screwdrivers and pliers), hardware (nails, tacks, screws, and such), the occasional small toy, and almost always there were a few birthday candles.  All of these things would either be put in more appropriate places or merely placed more neatly in the drawer.  What was left?  The loose change of course!  I would gather up my found bounty and count my take for the day.  Usually it was over a dollar.   Not bad for a kid back in the 60's.

      I was able to do this job once every couple of months or so.  The money supplemented my other income rather nicely and I felt a sense of satisfaction in helping my mother to make our house a little neater.  There were other junk drawers that I would sometimes tackle even though those rarely contained loose change.  Organizing was something I enjoyed doing so I didn't mind the job.  And I would sometimes find very interesting things that would preoccupy my mind for a few minutes at least.

      Then there were the other personal junk drawers each family member had in their bedrooms.  My parents had theirs in nightstands beside their bed.  Those were supposed to be off limits to me and my sister, but now and then curiosity would lure us to sneak a peek.  My sister had her own drawer in her dresser.   And I had my junk drawer--or should I say treasure drawer--in my dresser.

       These days my wife and I have our own junk drawers throughout the house.   Accumulating small things has become easier in our times.  Those plastic storage drawers and bins are in many places in our home.  The options for storage available to consumers in our age make it easier to create a semblance--or should I say illusion--of order and organization.  But they are still junk drawers.   Now we just have more of them and I guess that usually means more junk or whatever you want to call it.

        Do you have catchall temporary storage drawers in your home?   Where do you normally stash stuff when you're in too big of a hurry to officially organize it?   Did your family collect and cash in trading stamps?  Who was the official junk drawer organizer in your parents' house when you were growing up?  

     

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There's No Stuff Like Home Stuff

Austell, GA, September 30, 2009 -- Household possessions and debris are placed at the curb of this flood affected home following the September severe storms and flooding. George Armstrong/FEMA (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A house is just a pile of stuff with a cover on it.
~~George Carlin

       My posts over the past month have taken a look at material possessions and those collections we amass over the years. George Carlin humorously calls these things "stuff" and I think this how most of us often think of the possessions we accumulate. It's a bunch of things to which we have attached some sort of significance. Sometimes we remember why we kept things and at other times we may look at something only to think to ourselves, "Why did I keep this?".

       A house is a cozy place that provides us shelter for our families and a place to keep our possessions until we figure out exactly what we are going to do with them. And more often than not those things stay where we tucked them away until they get shuffled around to another part of our house. Or perhaps to another house that we move to. Downsizing can be a lot of work that can tax us mentally and emotionally.

      However, that being said, the stuff in our houses can provide as much comfort as meatloaf and mashed potatoes or whatever food it is that makes you feel safe and warm inside. The words "mine" and "ours" give us a sense of identity and security. Even homeless people are often seen pushing carts of stuff or toting burdens of material goods on their backs. They too want the security of ownership, but they lack a house in which to put their property. Those of us with houses can have more stuff. The bigger the house the more potential stuff we can own.

     The beauty of habitating in some sort of dwelling is that we can find many places to put our aggregations of life. Or is that the ugly side that shows a certain sense of greed and love of materialism. Whatever the case may be, at least we have options of putting our things into rooms, closets, cubby spaces, or stuff-holding components disguised as furniture. These things may be neatly placed with organized intent, tossed in randomly, or a combination of the two storage styles.

     The place we call home is the place where our stuff is. To lose one's home through fire or natural disaster must be devastating for most people to whom this happens. On the other hand maybe it's a feeling of release--liberation from the possessions that hold us hostage, keep us prisoner. I don't want to ever know the feeling of having my material life wrested from me. I want to keep the stuff that helps make my house my home.  Or at least keep it until I decide what I'm going to do with all of it.

     Do you ever feel like a captive of the things you own? Does ownership of material goods help you to feel better about yourself and provide you a sense of comfort? Do you tend to have more things if you have more places to put them? Have you ever experienced a tragic loss of possessions? What happened and how did you feel in the aftermath?

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Now Where Did I Put That?

That's all your house is:  a place to keep your stuff.   If you didn't have so much stuff, you wouldn't need a house.  You could just walk around all the time.
~~George Carlin

Julius Brooks, miner, in his four room house for which he pays $10 monthly, no closets or storage space is provided.... - NARA - 540740 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

         Have you ever found yourself looking for something that you're sure you once had, but just can't remember where it is when you want to find it?   When you have too much stuff, you end up filling closets, garages, drawers, cupboards, attics, and every other available nook and cranny.  How often do we actually organize stuff?

         Oh sure, there are some neat freaks out there who have things carefully categorized into specific places.  Going to a house like that is like visiting a library or a museum or something.  Or at least it seems neat and organized.    A place for everything and everything in its place.  But I'm not talking about you neatniks out there.  I'm referring to the folks like me in our houses surrounded by piles of stuff.

         Don't get me wrong here.  I haven't reached the bizarro amassing of material goods like you might see in an episode of one of those television shows about serious hoarders.  I can still move easily around my house without threat of being crushed by some toppling pile of who knows what.  Things are still in check with me in that respect.  Still I have more than I need and more than I ever look at or hold in my hands on a regular basis.  Some of my possessions haven't seen light in years.  They remain stored away in the places I put them way back in some time when I thought those things were worth saving.

        If my stuff is stored in my house that's not too bad.  When my stuff starts getting stored at other people's houses then that's when I need to start figuring out a plan of future action.  I suppose if I don't have something under my own roof then I apparently haven't put too much value on it.   Certain things that are mine are still stored at my mother's house--they've been there for 30 or 40 years or more.  I feel a certain sense of security in those things being there.  My mother hasn't complained about this, but still I know that someday I need to retrieve these things or accept the fact that I've given them up.

       Aside from other things that I've loaned to people and never gotten back (and that's another story in which the assumed outcome is that I'll never see these things again), the only place I can think of where a few of my ex-possessions might be are at my ex-inlaws house.   Those too are things I can write off as relinquished out of my control.   There are times when we must accept that some things we once owned are things we will no longer see.

        My biggest mistake in trying to hang on to things was renting a storage facility because I had nowhere else to put those things.  What a waste of money that was.  When my second wife and I decided to go on the road full time, we decided to put our furniture and everything else we couldn't tote on the road with us into storage.  Keep in mind we didn't have furniture or household items that were especially worth keeping, but we kept them nonetheless.   We paid ninety dollars a month to do this.  After two years we no longer cared about this stuff and went back during one of our breaks to get the stuff we wanted and then we got rid of the rest.

       Two thousand dollars was spent for a lesson in stuff.  If you've got the stuff and have no place to keep it then maybe you've got too much.  If you have stuff stored in different places around the country you probably have too much stuff.  And if you start having a hard time finding things you do have or remembering whether or not you actually still have those things, this may be a good indicator that you have too much stuff.

       I like having things, but it's scary if the things start to own me.  If it costs me more than something is worth to keep it, then it's rarely worth keeping.  Most things are easily replaceable if you really need them again later.  Less clutter means being able to find things more easily and being able to move more easily if that time ever comes.

         And if it comes to a point where you are trying to figure out if that thing you are looking for is in your house, a rented storage facility, or, God forbid, someone elses house, then you should reassess whose stuff is really whose.

        Have you ever wasted money to rent a storage locker to keep something that you eventually got rid of?  Do you have any possessions stored at someone elses house?  How do you keep your material possessions in check so they are easy to locate when you need them?

     

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Letting Go of Stuff

Gramophone / Phonograph / Record Player - Engines in Enginuity, Coalbrookdale (Photo credit: ell brown)

   
      We've been talking about the material accumulations of our past.  In the last post the topic was magazines.  I've had to get rid of so many magazines over the years and have many more that now I must decide upon.  Most of us just don't have the room to keep everything we've ever owned, nor do we need to keep much of the stuff of our past.

           Let's face it.  Most stuff is just that--stuff.   Our amassed stowages are often of little real value.  Our perceived treasure is another man's trash.  Deciding what to keep and what goes out the door can sometimes be a dilemma, but sometimes those difficult decisions have to be made.  What things are the things you should keep?

           Some of the things to keep are obvious.  Things of true monetary value, irreplaceable heirlooms that will be treasured by future generations, or items of potential historical importance are probably worth hanging onto.  But what about the sentimental keepsakes?   Or the things that we can attach to specific eras of our lives?

          The many thousands of books, cassettes, videos, vinyl records, CD's, and DVD's that I own are something that I've started taking into strong consideration in recent years.  If I were to move they would be just something else I'd have to pack and carry with me.  If my wife and I ever downsize our living space, keeping these items would most likely be out of the question.  Would I miss them?  I probably would at times, but these are the sorts of losses that I can live with.  After all I can't take my stuff with me when I leave this world.  And will anybody want these relics of outdated technology when I've departed?

           I can remember when I got rid of all of my models and model kits when I was in college.  This was the passion of my early teen years and represented so many hours of pleasure.  Years later I sometimes regret having gotten rid of those things.  For one thing there could be some monetary value in them.   Maybe.  The fact is though that I couldn't hang onto those boxes of things and my parents wanted the boxes moved out of their house.  I can understand that.  Too much of anything requires downsizing.

         Then there was my American Flyer electric train set that I sold for $100 back in 1977.  That was an extensive set that my parents had added to every Christmas starting in 1956.  When I sold it I needed the money more than I needed the train set and the boxes were taking up space in a storage area at my parents house.  The train set wasn't being used anymore so what was the point of keeping it.  Now I've seen some of the individual train cars online selling for more than the price I sold the whole set for.  I might be making a fortune selling the set off now, but that would have meant keeping all of it for many years.  If I had only known, but sometimes we just don't think of those things.

      What do I get rid of next?  My stamp collection?  A lot of good memories there, but my research tells me that you don't get much out of stamp collections.  My collection is taking up the equivalent of about five medium size storage boxes in my closet.  I haven't looked at any of that collection in years.  Most of it I probably haven't seen in decades.  I'll have to think about that one.

        Are you a collector?   What things do you like to save?   Do you plan on leaving anything to anyone after you die?    What have you gotten rid of that you wish you had kept? 

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