New-found Basement Space

The new freezer and resulting basement rearrangement got us thinking about other ways we can reorganize the basement. We had to move the laundry shelf over near the furnace, to make room for the chest freezer. We wondered what other areas could use some shelving.

Answer - the empty space near the utility sink, under the wood shelf unit that was attached to the wall. It's behind our cat litter boxes, but as long as we put things there we don't need regularly, it was a lot of valuable space. So we went to (of course) Ikea and found OMAR, which was a near perfect match, size-wise, to the space we had.

The idea was that we could move the paint cans there, since we were keeping paint supplies up above it anyway, and that would clear out the space where the paint was currently residing, giving D a place to put all of his bike tools, which had taken over the whole floor. Plus the plastic shelves weren't really equipped to hold so much weight and they were starting to flex a little.

So last Sunday we got to work moving things back and forth. We had company, of course:

(Yes, we finally are posting a picture of our baby).

In the end, we got all the paint moved to the back corner of the basement, and even sorted it by type on each shelf (primer, ceiling paint, colors).

The other side isn't exactly neat, but it's a big improvement - I can see the floor again!

It definitely pays to reevaluate a space every few years. We thought we had no more free space in the basement but we have managed to put in a chest freezer and new shelves just by giving up the extra expandable drying rack (that can get set up in the middle of the floor or in the finished part of the basement, if necessary).