An attic can be an ideal storage space, but if it’s not organized, it can turn into a total mess. If you’ve lived in your house for several years, chances are your attic has gotten cluttered and could use some organizing.

Get Help
If the job is too big for you to handle yourself, ask family or friends to help. Talk about what you want to keep and what you want to get rid of and discuss ways to organize the space. You’ll need to make more decisions as you go through the cleaning process, but setting guidelines at the beginning will help you avoid misunderstandings and arguments.

Decide What Stays and What Goes
As you go through items, sort things you want to keep into piles. You can put clothing in one area, sports equipment in another, photo albums in another, etc. You can further separate items by person, season, or any other category that makes sense.

Attics tend to accumulate a lot of junk. You may find things that you have no need for, that you intended to fix but never did, or that you forgot you owned in the first place. Be prepared to get rid of things. Items that are in good shape can be sold or donated. Others can go in a dumpster.

Its fine to hold onto something that has sentimental value, but if you havent thought about a particular item in years, you might want to discard it. If you come across something that has no value to you, but might have sentimental value to someone else, ask the person if it’s okay to get rid of it before you do.

Get Organized
The items you decide to keep will need to be organized and stored appropriately. Things that need to be protected from extreme temperatures and moisture, such as photo albums and documents, should be placed in sealed boxes or plastic containers. They should be labeled with a description of what’s inside and the name of the owner. Put labels on the sides of containers so they’ll be visible when the boxes or bins are stacked. Clothing can be stored in containers or hung on poles. If you have items that are too large to fit in boxes, or that would be difficult to store because they have irregular shapes, you can put up shelves to organize them.

You’ll Thank Yourself Later
An attic can be an excellent place to store items that have intrinsic or sentimental value, but it often becomes a place where things are put and forgotten. If your attic is cluttered and crowded, set aside some time to go through everything, weed out the junk and organize the things you want to keep. Get help from others to make the process less overwhelming. It might take several weekends to get it done, but you’ll be pleased with an organized storage space where things are easy to find.

Published with permission from RISMedia.