On Friday I spent hours preparing for a big community tag sale on Saturday.
And then I went ahead and tackled this space: our under-the-stairs storage closet.
It had been stuffed full of boxes and tall items like extra trim and Don’s and L’s golf club bags when we moved into the Blue Cottage, and I had just closed the door and not looked at it since then.
Okay, once or twice I opened it to try to find something.
It was time to tackle that mess.
I emptied out the closet, vacuumed it, and started to work on utilizing this spaces more efficiently.
The stairs go up between the living room and the kitchen, and are across from the closet with our washer and dryer. So this closet will get used a lot.
Since there is no light in the closet and the storage wraps around all the way, you couldn’t really see that part under the stairs.
My solution: installing an InstaBulp I had bought months ago but not installed yet because I couldn’t even get back there with all the boxes blocking my way.
Those batteries, by the way? A thrifty find at Mrs. Greens, eco-friendly and on sale for 99 cents. You bet ya I stocked up.
After adding the batteries and pressing the glue strip to the wall, I had this: instant light. Super easy.
Now you can see what I store in the lowest spot — all the extra paint that was left over from finishing this house.
We don’t have a basement or a shed, and I’m not dragging paint buckets up to the attic, so this is the only spot to store them in the Blue Cottage.
When the carpet guys installed the carpet on the stairs I had them leave the leftover, and it came in handy: I cut a piece for the under-the-stairs closet to avoid banging up the wood floor in there.
Next: I put together a chrome wire storage unit I had bought years ago and never used, and shoved that to the back of the closet.
So much better.
I cleaned that stain on the wall and now it looks like this:
I still want more shallow shelves on one side of this closet but am already so much happier with it.
And this was my next project. If you follow me on Instagram you saw it make an appearance at the tag sale.
Do you have odd places you store things in in your house?
