As we were finishing up the permit set one thousand years ago (or in 2014, but who’s counting?) We realized that we had just eliminated our major cache of storage space by designing a new first floor out of our funky old basement. Where would all that stuff live? We scrapped together a quick drawing with our good buddy Thomas (of SHED Architects) and Barbara got it on the permit set before it was finally approved. (Barbara is one of my besties and also our dedicated designer, you can find more of her work at Allied8.com. How lucky are we to be resourced with all this talent?)

In the sequence of this build, you might think that the last thing on the permit set would also be the last thing we do to complete the project, but again- where does all that stuff live?

It originally went into every cranny we could find. We purged hard, burning piles of sentimental scraps and donating, selling, trashing whatever we could. If it was replaceable, we didn’t think it would be worth paying to store it so we only kept what we could stash on-site. The attic space above Morgan’s Shop was stuffed. We opted to use the attic of the house as well, despite the loose insulation and awkward access. Things that went up rarely came down. The yard absorbed a lot of it, and we did our best to keep it tidy.

When we did the new roof in 2021, all the stuff we had in the house attic had to come down. By this time the old kitchen space could catch it, so there it has been for the past couple of years, along with my bike, a late 2020 acquisition that I LOVE, and that cannot live outside tempting thieves and enduring the weather. In order to do that last big piece of the inside of the house we had to create the Shed. THAT is where the stuff lives!

A month or so ago the Shed became waterproof and lockable, which meant we could finally drag all the stuff out and decide what to do with it.

We did a deep clean of the Shop attic, starting (at my insistence) with ALL empty containers coming down, even if they were “holding space” for something. We dug stuff out from the closet under the stairs, went through the piles and stacks in the old kitchen, tidying up those spaces we already use and figuring in that process we’d see what wanted or needed to move.

There are a few items that have to be in the shed- the bike, *large tools and heavy sports gear that just aren’t safe to lug up and down a ladder. There are a lot of things that might be great in the shed- Morgan has to climb that ladder a lot to access his work stuff, and his life would be a lot easier if there were more of it on the ground level. Camping gear in season, yard tools, coolers… we have a lot of stuff!

In the end, most of it fit neatly back into the spaces we had already been using, leaving a LOT of room for what we want to access instead of what we need to access. This is such a good feeling. I couldn’t stop Morgan from putting a few big empty containers on the shelves of the Shed closet, but at least we know they are empty and they can be filled when it’s time.

So now we have a tidy Shop attic, a pile of things to be donated or sold (Garage Sale, coming soon!) in the old kitchen, plenty of shelf room to use in the new Shed, and lots of space in the Shop to work. (*The Shop, until this lockable space was created, was CRAMMED with large tools and toolboxes, making it very difficult to use. I wish I had thought to take a “before” photo, but I didn’t.) It feels great to know where things are and where things go, at long last.