One of the first tasks I had to undertake in my ongoing basement remodeling project was an organizational one: in essence I had to organize all the junk and boxes in my basement simply to reclaim enough space to be able to work on the remodeling. There are lots of basement organization guides and tips online, but I found that most of them were unrealistic or too simple in their approach to tacking a large basement or garage clean up.

Here’s a shot of the piles and piles of junk in my basement before I started cleaning it out.

It’s important to remember that basements, attics, garages and other storage areas that holding things that you once used, once thought to be important, once purchased or were given to you. The “things” in a basement, attic and garage had some sort of value to someone at one point. The cleaning and organizing of a basement is sometimes as much an emotional cleansing and organization as it is a physical cleaning out.

Basement Organization Step 1: Identify and Categorize

This is the most basic part of organizing any room of your house, including the basement. You’ll want to assess how much stuff you have, what kind of stuff it is and, generally, what you want to do with it. You’re not worried about where it’s going to ultimately end up or how you’re going to store it at this point. You’re simply going to identify it and place it into a loose category.

Most basement organizational articles suggest three categories (Throw away, Donate, Keep) but I think that’s being overly simplistic. When I cleaned out my basement I ended up with five piles:

Throw Away: Pretty self-explanatory, this is where you put things that have no real value and are bound for the trash. This includes things that can’t be used or repaired, things with little sentimental value, things you don’t recognize (it happens!) and things that are too difficult to deal with in any other way. For me it included some stained clothing, some broken particleboard furniture and plenty of “paper” things like old gift bags, old newspaper that had been used to wrap glasses when I moved and lots of empty boxes. Yes, I kept a lot of empty boxes in my basement for some reason.

Donate: My donation pile was actually broken into several smaller piles because I some of the charities in my area only accept certain things. So old bed sheets and pet items when to the local Humane Society while old textbooks and novels were bound for the local library (which ended up not taking half of them). Some other things were bound for the local Goodwill store (mostly kitchen items). Depending on where you live, you might be able to find an organization that picks up donations from your curb. Places like The Salvation Army, the Lupus Foundation and some Veteran’s organizations all offer donation pickups in some areas.

Sell: If you’re going to clean out your basement, why not get paid for it? If you’re in a hurry, fine, skip this step and donate everything you aren’t keeping or throwing away. If you have some time then I strongly suggest you make a little extra cash by holding a yard sale or taking your items to the flea market or even trying to sell your items on eBay.

If you’re going to use a yard sale as part of your basement organization project then I suggest you set a deadline and actually schedule a yard sale for a month or two in advance. Buy an advertisement for your yard sale in your local paper so you can’t back down from the date. That will keep you on deadline and force you to keep on schedule and have plenty of items for sale. Ebay is best used for small collectibles and things that are easy to ship. It’s important to remember that not every single item that “looks” collectible really is and has any value.

I ended up selling some old comic books and a few little toys and other things on eBay and so far I’ve made about $100 from selling my basement junk! My wife has an entire box of old racing memorabilia that she’s hoping to sell as well.

Pending/Hold: Okay, I know the whole idea of cleaning out your basement is not to just “hang on” to stuff forever, but in some cases you simply can’t make an informed decision. Instead of completely freezing up and getting frustrated, move your items into a “pending” pile and then keep going. When I was cleaning out my basement I would sometimes come across a box of items that belonged to my wife long before she met me. I also came across some old leather bound books I’d picked up a yard sale years ago. I put them in the “Pending” pile until I had a chance to look up their value online. Their value? Just about nothing… I donated them.

Keep: Obviously, there are things in your basement that you want to keep or use in the future. To make sure everything doesn’t end up in this pile, here are some questions you can ask to determine what you should do with that stuff in your basement:

Do I absolutely need this?
Do I absolutely want this?
Am I going to use or display this in the next
Would this be one of my top items to rescue in a fire? (If it’s in the basement, it might not be)
Could this be useful to someone else in need?
Is this replaceable for a small amount of money? (like my empty boxes…)
Even if it looks collectible, are people actually paying money for it on eBay?

Your answers to some of those questions should help you determine which category to move your items into. Your ultimate success with this first basement organizational step is to be realistic. Don’t keep that old “Ship In A Bottle” model kit if you haven’t touched it in 10 years. Sure, you really like that old shirt twenty years ago, but it’s out-dated, probably doesn’t fit and it’s too worn for anyone else to really wear, isn’t it? A big part of almost any basement organization project is learning how to let go!

Avoiding Organizing Burn Out

Okay, so you’ve started going through your basement identifying and categorizing things, but you’re quickly getting tired of the process. That’s good. Take a break. In fact, stop for the day. I’ve found that a big task like organizing and cleaning out an entire room will sometimes take more than just a few days. I’m a big believer in breaking large projects into a series of smaller tasks. So each day or night plan to just go through a few box or move a few feet further into the piles of stuff. I know, I’ve been there.

It looks me about a month to actually get my basement mostly organized and cleaned out. Almost every night I would put on my iPod and go down to the basement for an hour or two, going through a few boxes or a pile or two of items each night. Sometimes my wife would help me and go through her own stuff, sometimes we’d go through things together. We even took one afternoon on the weekend to blaze through a particular large pile of items, load the car up with trash and take it all to the dump. It was physically and emotionally tiring. But then we were done for the day and we didn’t even go back down into the basement until the next day.

Basement Organization Step 2: Storage Tips and Tricks

As you go through your basement and put things into different categories you’re going to start having some pretty large piles or stacks of items. Items bound for the trash you obviously throw away as you can and it’s a good idea to move everything else into areas away from where you plan to put the items you want to keep.

Shelving Options

About half way through my basement organization I realized that I was running out of space, so I had to get a more efficient system for storing items. One basement storage option that a lot of people forget about is simply stacking things. If you’re going to stack boxes on top of one another, make sure you have the heaviest and largest boxes on the bottom and work your way up with smaller and lighter boxes almost as though you’re building pyramid towers.

I built some temporary shelves using some old doors (yes, they will go to the trash when I’m done with them) and simply stacked my boxes on them for now. I plan to move to a much better shelving solution: heavy plastic shelves. By using heavy plastic (not cheap plastic) shelves I’m able to have strong and adjustable shelves that I can adjust or even move around relatively easily.

This wheeled garment rack is easy to move in a basement and doesn’t take up much space!

The heavy duty plastic won’t rust even if there is some moisture and they will hold a heck of a lot of weight. Avoid anything tagged as a “decorator” plastic shelf and go for the “heavy duty” plastic shelves. It’s the easiest and most affordable way to quickly increase your storage space in a basement. If moisture isn’t a problem and you have a lot of heavy items then metal might be a slightly safer bet. Of course, you could always take some scrap wood and build your own, but then you may fall into the trap of spending so much time planning and building shelves that you don’t

There are lot of shelving options, and you can find a wide variety of shelving options online even if your local stores only have a few limited options.

Another idea I’m still considering for organizing my basement actually came from when I set up my garage. In my garage I used a few old kitchen cabinets to build a workbench and put in some simple storage space. I’ve been thinking about picking up some very cheap (and probably ugly) cabinets from someone’s kitchen renovation project and using them in my basement. You can often find people selling old kitchen cabinets in your local newspaper’s classified section or even Craigslist.com.

If you don’t have any cabinet, but you do have some extra furniture in your basement consider using your furniture as a storage solution! I have a few end tables that we don’t want to part with yet, so we stacked the end tables and now we’re putting boxes between them, effectively using the tables as shelves!

Using Bins and Plastic Boxes

An even better solution is to invest in a number of plastic bins with tops. Plastic bins are great for keeping things dry in case your basement has some moisture problems and most plastic bins are stackable. I purposely choose plastic bins that can be stacked inside of one another when they’re empty just so I don’t take up a bunch of room with empty containers.

I personally like the clear bins so I can see what’s in them without opening them, but I also have a few solid colored bins for keeping paper that is sensitive to light.

And when you’re putting things into bins and boxes be sure to keep like things together. So use a few bins and boxes for all your holiday items but obviously keep everything from the same holiday together so you only need to pull out one or two boxes per holiday instead of rooting through three or four different containers each time. I actually keep my plastic containers that I know I’m going to use frequently (holiday bins) in a different part of my basement than the things I’m not going to use frequently (old books).

I’ve also made a pretty good efford to label what’s in each bin, even if it’s clear. I don’t list every item in the bin, but I do try to put things together by category. For example, I’ve labelled one bin “High School - Year Books and Documents” and another bin “Comic Books and Graphic Novels.” Yes, I’m a bit of a nerd.

Making Your Basement Organization Easier

Basements and garages and attics and rooms dedicated to storage in most homes are not always the most pleasant to spend a lot of time in. And since you’ll be spending lots of time organizing and cleaning them out, you can try to make the job more approachable in a couple different ways.

Here’s a clever basement lighting idea: LED lights that you can also plug in.

First, try to make sure you have plenty of light in your basement. One solution I’ve used in my home is installing a bunch of battery powered light fixtures in dark places. If you want to put up some permanent lighting in your basement, you might want to consider the battery powered lights that can later be plugged in as one money-saving option.

If you have to, bring in a lamp with a cord from another room. If your storage area doesn’t have a permanent light and have a little extra money you may want to consider having an electrician put one in just for safety’s sake. A more affordable option is using a battery powered light fixture like the one pictured above. Going into dark rooms filled with all sorts of junk is not the safest thing you can do.

Along those same lines, you might want to also make sure you have some fresh air with a fan or open door, just to keep yourself safe with musty smells and other surprising odors you might find in a disorganized basement.

Basement Organization Step 3: Maintaining Order

Congratulations if you’ve gotten to the point of having a fairly organized basement with some of these tips and tricks. Now the real trick is maintaining an organized basement while still making sure you always have some extra storage space available.

I’m almost done organizing my basement. This is the “pending” pile that’s left. I freed up enough room to put down a stack of sheetrock and have a temporary workspace for the rest of my basement remodeling project!

I still have about 10 empty plastic bins stacked on a shelf and out of the way for the days when I need to go through and store more things. In the few months since I first cleaned out my basement I’ve actually gone back into the stuff that kept and taken out a few things here. I initially saved a lot of jackets and coats, but I then cleaned out my coat closet and found even more coats and sweatshirts that I’d forgotten about. I ended up consolidating all my winter and fall coats into one section of my coat closet, I donated to two jackets that were still in good condition and threw away two that were torn and stained.

That’s the key to keeping your basement (or any room) organized: revisiting your stuff every so often and reevaluating its worth and value to you. You can plan to do it every year or so or you can take a more relaxed approach to keeping your basement organized by simply going into a box or two whenever you put something new in storage.

Now that basement is relatively organized I have much more room to move around and work on my basement remodeling project. Based on my month long basement organizing project I’ve also decided to change my plans slightly and purposely keep an entire area of my basement dedicated just to storage. I also have to admit that I had no idea how big my basement really was until I got rid of all the junk that was down there. It’s like I’ve added a whole new room onto my home!