Running thru Life...More Space to Our Lives Part 1

I truly love our house!!

That being said there are a couple things that annoy me about our house.

The main one lately has been the lack of space- storage space.

Besides the two closets in our bedroom, and the closets in the guestroom, and a small closet in the basement-That is it!!! Which may sound like a lot but it is not!

Fortunately,  we did purchase a house that already had shelving installed in the garage. 

So the garage and the guest room is our storage area and this annoys me. 

I hate driving in and looking at it every day, or going to the guest room closets

and sorting thru everything because we have so much because we have limited storage. 

So I came up with a two part solution:

1) GET RID OF ALL THE JUNK!!!
Up to this point we give to salvation army twice a year but it is normally a small amount.
Not this time!
I already have 10 bags of stuff and will probably have another two by the time I am done.
Old books we have been keeping for no reason, extra electronics that we no longer use or are outdated, workout equipment that is out dated- it is going!!!
Why now- because my husband took this summer off and is able to help and also because of part 2.....

2) Installing a Crawl Space Door!

A couple of our neighbors have one of these and I am so jealous. 
Our closet in the basement goes right into the steps wall, so you could easy put a door in to open that area up and use for storage.  After looking at our neighbors we have decided it has to be done.
I got a couple quotes and decided to go with a contractor we have used before because
1) he was the most economical and
2) we know his work is good. 
This is not an expensive project at all!
Around $300

Current closet


After the installation of the crawl space door I will be reorganizing everything!!!

It is perfect time to de-clutter our life...

For example, I found that my husband had been hiding a "Walk Do't Walk Street Light" in our garage.  It weighs about 35 pounds and taking so much room.... it is gone!

Or the Zebra Poster that my husband has been hiding under the guest room bed... seriously!!- GONE

Or the majority of my Sorority painted pitchers and cups- GONE! (Except for two I had to keep).

My plans for the Crawl Space door is as follows

1) Move all the Christmas/Holiday Stuff into it.

Right now I have 5 boxes of Christmas stuff with 2 trees (one large and one small). 

The large one already has a storage place for now.  So the small one will definitely be going and my goal is to go thru the Christmas stuff and organize it to try to get it more compressed.  Joe put the Christmas stuff away last year and it is not how I would have organized it- but I given him made credit for trying.  Last year I had it down to 4 boxes and somehow this year an additional box was added which does not make any sense because the only thing new I purchased was our wreath which is not in a box.... hmmmmm

2) Move all the luggage.

We have 4 suitcases.  Which you might think is crazy and it is!  But that being said we travel alot. 

Considering this year along we have been to St Augustine, FL , New Orleans, Greece and plan on going to Jacksonville FL, Portland ME,  Clemson SC,  St Augustine FL again, and London. 

I am afraid to get rid of one or two of them and then have something happen to the others. 

Fortunately they do kind of fit in each other - at least two of them do.  So I think we can manage this.

3) Move the aerobed

The aerobed if used... will be used downstairs so this make sense to me.  We actually have not used this ourselves in our house because we have an extra room and also now a sleeper sofa but we have taken it on a couple trips with us. 

4) Move Joe Golf Clubs/ Sports Equipment

My husband has attachment to these and since I make he get rid of everything else =0)-  I am not going to even try.  But they hopefully will also be joining the craw space. 

5) Move our childhood bins.
Both Joe and I have one bin full of childhood stuff such as my old toys, bab clothes, etc. 
This is the perfect thing to go on the crawl space because they will not be used any time soon.

So they came yesterday to install the Craw Space ... Stay tuned for an update.