One Organized Attic

Giddy is me! I'm very sore but excited to reveal our clean and organized attic. I have spent the past two days cleaning and reorganizing our attic and man was it a workout! Guess it was all the kneeling, squatting, crawling and lifting that did it to me. It was a project that was a looooooong time coming and now that it's done and I am so pleased with it! There is actually floor space and room to move around in there! High five to all! Booyah! Hah if you saw the BEFORE pictures you might be a tad impressed because it was, eh um - atrocious!  I was too embarrassed to share the filth and chaos before I started. 

To give you an idea; you could step into the attic but you couldn't move anywhere. These rubbbermaid boxes were unlabeled, tossed and stacked and there was junk everywhere. There was just no rhyme or reason to the organization whatsoever. We moved into this house when I was nine months pregnant with the first child (several years ago) and ever since we've lived here it feels like we have been trying to just get by. Little by little we're getting there.

Don't you just love the neat and organized Rubbermaid tubs?!?! I do. These are the types of things that give me great feelings of accomplishment! This room was a total disaster and I slowly and very carefully found a place for each item we decided to keep. I started prepping for this overwhelming undertaking a week ago by going through kid's closets to sort and weed through their clothes to update their closets by size and season. Thank heavens for my mother who helped me do that. It's hard to get much done with munchkins who want to "help" Mommy do everything. The dining room table is currently covered with clothes and misc items to sell in a garage sale. 

Night before last I went to town organizing. I pulled all cardboard boxes out of the attic that we didn't need and made a pile to take to the recycling center. I can mark that off my list because I visited recycling today!

I really tried to work with the space, feel the space and move things around to make better sense of how it's used for storage. I thought it might work to pull all the Rubbermaid tubs out and line them up one by one that way there would be no lifting and moving them around. I labeled each storage container on the lid and on the side exposed so you can make out what the contents is in each box.  

Pretty sweet! I grouped all objects and items and put them in the best possible locations as far as size and room. I flipped up my large scale paintings so they took less room. The luggage is near the door for easy access. I tried to organize things in the attic where they made the most sense.

As for the countless bins I used my label maker and put two labels on each bin, one on top and one on the side so they're easy to find. Half the bins hold children's clothing so I grouped the bins by size and put the nearest closest to the door so I can locate better.

It feels like a weight has been lifted now that the attic is organized and clean. I even took the broom to it this time! A big YAY! What does your attic look like? How do you organize yours? It's the one room you don't see in most people's homes but man does it drive me crazy in our house, well not anymore. ;)