Need an Extra Attic?

The other day I passed a place called Extra Attic Personal Storage. What a clever name! But it also got me to thinking...Peter Walsh states, "Self-storage is often supposed to be temporary-...but it's a fifteen-billion-dollar industry. There are more than forty thousand self-storage facilities in this country..." I know that where I live there seems to be facilities on about every street corner.

It occurs to me that "temporary" and "extra attic" are mutally exclusive. An attic is a permanent part of a house, not something temporary. So I think about the attics that I often see. They are a hodge-podge of unknown boxes and bags with little rhyme or reason as to the contents. Often people only venture to their attic to deposit more stuff rather than to retrieve an item. In childhood, attics are associated with ghosts or monsters.

I think it is time to take back the attic! To make it an organized retrieval place! I am fortunate to have a walk-up attic. Before my moving van even arrived, I put up lots of pop-together plastic shelving (and this was before I was a professional organizer). I created different departments in my attic: supplies from when I was a teacher, holiday items, travel items, books (not the best place for them, but these are ones I don't need very often), archived papers (old tax records), etc. Absolutely no photos, LPs, or anything else that needs to live where people live. If you want more information about creating departments when you organize, please visit our companion stuff-flow site.

You will save money when you take back your attic because you won't have to pay for a storage space and you won't have to purchase items that you already own. You will also decrease the "dread" of going to the attic in search of an item. And just think about how much easier it will be to retrieve your holiday decorations! What is your first step in taking back your attic? By the way, these same principles hold true for the basement as well:-)