…necessarily.

I went to my storage room and brought back the empty containers for my backyard garden stuff because I’ll be putting all that away for the winter soon. While I was there I re-sorted and re-packed the storage unit such that all the stuff I am unlikely to need on a regular basis is in the back and the seasonal stuff is in the front where it’s easier to get at. After Halloween is over I’ll put the Halloween stuff back and take up and pack the garden stuff and put that away too, but it the very front of the storage room. Next spring it’ll be easy to get to then. Probably, if I’m smart, when I put the empty containers back in storage, I’ll put them behind the Halloween containers so they’re easy to get to next Halloween.

I used to think storage rooms were a symptom of excess unless you were living in a small apartment. Which I’ve been. Once I bought the house I figured if I needed a storage room too then I had too much stuff. But seasonal things like garden lights, Halloween and Christmas decorations take up space most of the year when they’re not deployed outside. Eventually they take up space you’d rather be using to live in. I suppose this is why people who have garages don’t have any space in them for their cars.

I tried using the space under my backyard deck as a storage space, but it isn’t weatherproof…I’ve tried several ways to make it weatherproof and could not…and the plastic Rubbermaid storage bins I bought are only water tight for a while. If you leave them to the weather the plastic hardens and cracks and rain gets into them and ruins what’s inside. So I gave in and rented a small storage unit near where I live. And now as I’ve been moving seasonal stuff in and out of it I see the usefulness of having one.

You like making your neighborhood bright and cheerful, and that means decorating your lawn and garden. I have a nice solar light display I put out in the backyard every spring that my neighbors love, and I try to add one little thing to it every season. This week I’m working on my Halloween display. In December it’ll be the Christmas one. I’m not trying to win any prizes with any of this, I just like sprucing things up around the house when I can and doing something to brighten my world a little. That stuff doesn’t need to take up space in your house when it’s not deployed outside. Especially if your house is a little Baltimore rowhouse. I need every square foot of that space to live in.

Oddly enough having said all this, the Christmas stuff stays in the basement, but it’s in a corner between the dryer and the freezer that I really can’t use for anything but storage. I also use space under the basement staircase for storing stuff that isn’t seasonal and I might want to get my hands on right away. Last major power outage we had all my big coolers where in the storage unit and I couldn’t get them out because of the power outage everywhere in the neighborhood. So I lost a lot of food in the fridge that I could maybe have kept on ice in the coolers. Now the coolers stay in the house, under the basement stairs.