One of the features I loved about the house we had when we lived in Nashville had nothing to do with the main living areas but where we stored everything else. Our walk-in attic was located right off the second floor bonus room, and any time I needed to put something away or go retrieve something, I looked forward to it. I LOVED that room! Everything was so neat and easy to organize. It just made my inner organizing nerd very happy.

A previous homeowner had floored at least half of the room which was enormous for an attic space, and ran the length of the house. There were even built-in shelves, a perfect place to keep our extra dish sets. Changing out regular dishes for Christmas ones was a snap! I never had trouble finding something, or storing things, like seasonal clothing.

Then we moved to Louisiana, and while our house here also has features we love (like my husband’s stand-alone “shop” where he does his wood-working, or the attached extra-large utility room we converted into my office), the attic is not the walk-in attic we left behind. It’s small and can be accessed only by the typical pull-down stairs that come down from the ceiling. Getting Christmas decorations down a few years ago when my husband was deployed to Afghanistan was a PAIN, and I admit it didn’t help my already Grinch-leaning bah-humbug attitude about the holiday.

In early spring, I read my friend Karen Ehman’s book The Complete Guide to Getting and Staying Organized and she shared an idea I absolutely fell in love with (almost as much as I loved our walk-in attic) and had to share with you:  numbering your attic boxes! I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before, but we’ve moved enough times in the last several years that what I DO know is I’m tired of the cardboard box/sharpie marker label scratched out with another label scenario.

If you’re going to implement this idea, I suggest using it as motivation to organize and declutter what you’ve been storing and holding onto, and set at least a few days aside to do this – or be willing to overlook your living room or other rooms looking like a yard sale or small temporary version of Hoarders for a while. If you still haven’t quite moved Christmas back yet from the holidays, this may also be the best time to organize it all at once (and probably a lot cooler than if you wait to do it in the summer).

What you’ll need:

• Trash bags for those things you want to discard (that can’t be repurposed or sold in a yard sale)
• A spare bin or several trash bags for those items you can sell in your next yard sale (or donated to your local thrift store)
• Plastic sealable storage bags of various sizes (gallon, quart, snack)
• Label maker (optional)
• Storage bins with lids
• Printed numbers for every box (see my free printable below)

What you’ll do:

Bring down everything from your attic.

Because of our busy schedules, my husband only brought down about 6 boxes at a time over a period of a couple of days. This was actually a blessing in disguise because I could focus on just a few boxes at a time, and I didn’t get as overwhelmed as I could have with the sudden clutter. So if you have a lot to go through, you may want to start with a few at a time. Or bite the bullet and face it all at once!

Look through each box, one at a time.

Sort out what you want to keep, what’s broken or damaged and probably needs discarding, and what can be donated or put in a yard sale. This is where a little objective perspective may be needed over a sentimental one.

For example, I pulled out a doll wearing a gorgeous handmade crocheted wedding gown made for me by a family friend after I got engaged over 18 years ago. The gown looked brand new. The doll? Like she had a fatal disease. Her hair had completely disintegrated and fallen out, with the remains now all over the rest of the box’s contents. I kept the dress. I chunked the doll. I’ll look for a new doll in the near future, preferably one with non-shedding hair.

Keep similar items together.

As you sort through each box, you may find certain things have gotten mixed over the years of packing and repacking. Put photos together (and consider finding a place in the house for them instead of the attic); collect wedding mementos, each child’s baby books and scrapbooks and clothing or small toys, high school memories, or college-related items in their own respective piles or areas. Once you’re finished sorting through all of the boxes, you’ll have a better idea of what’s going in each box.

When it comes to school artwork and papers, be EXTRA selective. 

My son is starting his freshman year in high school next year, and though middle school has been drastically different in terms of how much I’ve saved from each school year (algebra homework and reading tests don’t seem nearly as sweet and endearing as popsicle Christmas trees and fingerpainted masterpieces), I still had a few dead trees worth of artwork and school work to go through from his younger days. This wasn’t helped by the fact that my organizing system during his first few years of elementary school consisted of the following:  see papers, see box, throw papers in box. Put up in attic.

After digging through three large and very full storage bins and looking at every card with a set of small hands on it, printed worksheets with 2-year-old crayon scribbles and endless spelling and math worksheets, I was able to narrow it down to two much lighter bins – one mainly filled with school yearbooks, favorite pieces of school artwork and written work, childhood mementos (including his bright orange signed cast from when he broke his arm on the school monkeybars when he was 6), and the other with many of his baby things, including a one-year calendar I completely forgot I kept that has dates for all of his special firsts (and redeems myself in my own mind for feeling bad that I could never remember how old he was when he finally started sleeping through the night. 3 months.)

If you’re like me and have trouble deciding what to keep and what not to keep, here are some helpful guidelines I used that may also help you:

1. KEEP their words (scrawled handwritten misspelled cuteness answering questions like “What’s your favorite subject? Recess” or “Where do you want to work when you grow up? Taco Bell.”
2. DISCARD what’s common. Toss anything that could be mistaken for another chid’s common work. Math problems. Spelling words written ten times each. Unless you’re hoping to prove your child is a genius or mensa candidate and feel by saving every scrap of work they’ve ever done, you’ll be able to do that.
3. KEEP a few special pieces of art work. Maybe that book report in 1st grade that included a full size paper Thomas Edison or that sweet family portrait of stick figures including the dog and goldfish. The “All About Me” or “Star Student” poster collages. Art work that’s clearly not just busy work disguised as creative learning time.
4. DISCARD the rest. Unless you love abstract drawings and paintings, if you can’t make out the scribble, chances are your child (many years later) can’t either. This doesn’t make you a bad mom. This makes you an intentional mom who understands what’s meaningful. Same goes with fingerpainting. Chunk it unless it includes a good representation of your child’s hands or feet in it, or incorporates a cute polaroid or computer-printed photo of your child taken by an extra-ambitious kindergarten or elementary teacher (God bless those teachers, say all the working moms especially).

Repack your storage boxes. 

Once you’ve decided on what you’re keeping, what you’re throwing away and what you’re giving away or saving for a yard sale, repack your boxes, keeping as many like items to one box as possible (but also be sure to consider the weight of your boxes too).

Label your boxes with numbers. 

Once every box is repacked and ready to go back up in the attic, it’s time to label each one with a number (click here to download a PDF or a Word doc for a quick printout of numbers, 1-20). I used 2 copies of each number – one for the lid, and one for the side of the bin, using packing tape to tape them on. For Christmas boxes, I used the letter ‘C’ with numbers and for Fall decorations, I used the letter ‘F’ with numbers to make it even simpler to access.

If you want to make them cuter, you could use scrapbooking paper or colored cardstock. I just went with plain white copy paper since my office flooded the week before I began the attic organizing  and everything in my office was stuffed in a spare guest room along with yard sale items I’d moved in as well. At the time, having everything clean and orderly was a lot more important to me than whether it was cute.

FREE PRINTABLE – DOWNLOAD A PDF OF NUMBERS 1-20 – DOWNLOAD CUSTOMIZEABLE WORD DOC

Create your inventory list. 

Since I’m a big fan of Evernote, I created my inventory list in my Evernote account, as you can see below. But if you’re someone who loves binders, or you prefer Excel or even Word, you could use those instead.  I actually have several empty boxes in my list right now, thanks to my purging and combining! I still labeled them with numbers and included them in the inventory, though; this way, when I do have additional items I want stored, I know exactly which box to grab (ahem, which box to ask my husband to grab) and it will take very little time to add a list of the contents.

By the way, you can also use Evernote to take and store pictures of all of those masterpieces your kids bring home – I saw a tip the other day of how one mom keeps an Evernote notebook just for that purpose –  her kids love looking at it almost as much as she does! Great idea!

Also, if you want to know how it can pay off to finally have your attic organized, here’s a true story: several months after we completed the attic organizing, my husband was about to go to a high school band reunion and twenty minutes before he needed to leave (why do men wait till the last minute for things like this?!), I caught him pulling down the attic stairs and climbing up, and I knew exactly what he was on the hunt for.

Me: (yelling from downstairs)HONEY, ARE YOU LOOKING FOR YOUR HIGH SCHOOL BAND LETTERMAN JACKET?

Him: (yelling from the attic) YEAH! DO YOU KNOW WHERE IT IS?

I pulled out my phone, opened my Evernote app, and searched for “Attic Inventory List”.

Me: IT’S IN BOX 7!

30 seconds later, my husband emerged, jacket in hand and a big smile on his face.

I couldn’t help but smile too. It may fit slightly different than it did when he was our son’s age, but I still think he’s adorable!

Hope these tips are helpful for your own attempt at attic organizing! What other tips have worked for you? I’d love to hear, so please share in the comments!

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