Where are you keeping all of this crap?

SteelCity44 · January 2012

I doubt that I'm the only loser... I mean person on here who lives in a small apartment or home. The clothes that I can no longer wear are piling up, and I feel like it's almost easier just to put all of those in a tub and keep only the maternity stuff out. Well, my closet only fits one season's worth of clothes (spring/summer lives there while it's fall/winter; fall/winter lives there while it's spring/summer).

I'm trying to fit all of that and the crap that we've started to accumulate for the baby into my tiny 2 bedroom apartment while simultaneously trying to de-clutter my home for baby's arrival. The second bedroom will not be a nursery, since we want to have a place for my mom to stay after the baby comes home, and we have NO place to put an entire bedroom worth of furniture. We're hoping to move in June when our lease is up, but seriously... where are you guys keeping all of your crap?

We're about to go to my parent's house to dump all of our holiday tubs to make a little more room, but I still feel like stuff is oozing out of closets and corners!

mkwt · January 2012

Honey I have a 3 bedroom house and I am having a hard time finding a place for everything!

What I did was just buy rubbermaid totes and that is what I currently have all my maternity clothes in, that way the day after I deliver my baby I am closing those totes up and putting them away for a HUGE garage sale! As for the baby stuff, I am slowly cleaning out her room, her stuff has finally made it to her closet, beforee that it was all sitting in the floor our bedroom. UGH, it drove me insane. Luckily for me we have an attic that is now where a bunch of stuff that was stored in the baby to be room is now located! I really really really should of had a garage sale back in the fall! Good luck to you!

mommy~to~mj · January 2012

God just wait until the baby actually comes and you have 10X the stuff. We bought a house that should be perfectly fine for us but between our clothes, and all of the clothes and toys and equipment that the family buys for DD1 we are quickly running out of room for everything.

KFCupcake · January 2012

We are moving in April (yes I know, we're nuts), but we are seriously getting cramped! We have a rubbermaid full of clothes, blankets, stuffed animals, etc. PNP is under the bed. Our bassinet is up and holding other stuff, our stroller, swing, and walker are being stored in IL's storage unit, which is probably where the rest of the stuff is going to end up for now.

dubs3 · January 2012

Ohhh how I feel your pain...we live in a tiny 1 br apt, and won't be able to move till June also. Today is our day where we're moving all of our crap around, to make room for the new baby crap that will soon flood our place! I'm totally with you- I've been boxing up all my pre-preg clothes, and my BIL and SIL are letting us keep the stuff in their basement until we need it again. The only clothes I'm keeping here will be maternity clothes, and some stretchy summer dresses I might need in case the spring is exceptionally warm. We're fitting our crib into our room, and purging the place of anything else that we think we won't need...even with all that, I know we're gonna be squished for the first few months....GL!

starshollow · January 2012

Any clothes that I put on that are currently too small go into a rubbermaid container. As the containers fill up, they are being piled in our guest room until H can take them to the basement. Same goes for baby stuff. Until the room is ready, everything is going into a rubbermaid.

AshleyC0117 · January 2012

I live in a small NYC apt and I'm definitely having this problem. Right now the dresser in the nursery is full of MY clothes.... eek.

vtwd40 · January 2012

We've been decluttering for days now. Taking stuff out of dressers and putting it in rubbermaids (which, in case you didn't know, are on sale at most places right now...Lowes, Home Depot, Target) We bought 6 and I'm seriously goin back for more. You can never have too many of those puppies!! Right now the nursery , which we were trying to clean, is full of tons of crap from the closet that needs to go to the attic. I hate the fact that cleaning makes things messier until it actually gets clean. All I know is that I head back to work on Friday, and it all needs to be clean by then or I'll lose it!!

katieh1017 · January 2012

We have 3bedrooms for just us two and we still have every drawer, closet, cabinet and shelf full! I have my clothes in every closet, including Lillian's room. Right now all the clothes she has is being stored on the guest room bed. I like nothing out so I shove everything away.

shmoos · January 2012

Our out of season clothes go in rubbermaid containers and are stored under the bed. You can get risers for the bed for extra space if necessary. We also have a few really high shelves in our closets. They are too high to be convenient, but perfect for storing out of season items.

Somethings are easier for us to store in multiple small containers, rather than 1 large one, so we bought a bunch of boxes with lids and labels like these https://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/40185841/#/30153242 and have them on the bottom shelves of a bookcase. To allow space for the boxes, we installed a shelf in our dining area for my cookbooks like this. This is much more convenient than going into the living room for cookbooks anyway.

We have a narrow little space in the bathroom between the sink and the wall, so we got a a 5 shelf thing like the link below, and put some baskets containing toiletries and our towels on it, so we now have extra space in our linen closet that can be used for baby gear.

https://www.bedbathandbeyond.com/product.asp?SKU=18146991

jkfranklin · January 2012

Space Bags! They don't work exactly like they do on TV but they make the stuff take up less space than putting it in a tote.

Monkeybabe · January 2012

We live in a small house and storage space can be tight. We do have a basement, luckily, so I went through literally everything down there and made a trip to Goodwill to make room for baby stuff. The nursery is currently our roommate's office, so all furniture and everything else baby related has to go in the basement.

lilpucknut08 · January 2012

I have been working on finding space (that doesn't exist) in this house all weekend. I did go through all of my clothes and put away anything that I can't wear now. This cleared up a lot of space both in closets and in drawers. I put clothes into Space bags and stored them under the bed. Also put all the baby bedding and soft items into space bags and it all fits under the bed very nicely. I actually put a lot of DH's clothes way too, he'll never notice they're gone but he would throw a fit if he knew I did it.

BetterTogether1023 · January 2012

I put all of my clothes that are not maternity friendly in totes in the basement when I started wearing maternity. We have a small condo and I figured this would be easier to deal with as we get ready for LO's arrival. I am SO glad I did this when I did!

BetterTogether1023 · January 2012

I put all of my clothes that are not maternity friendly in totes in the basement when I started wearing maternity. We have a small condo and I figured this would be easier to deal with as we get ready for LO's arrival. I am SO glad I did this when I did!

ETA: I will do the same thing with the maternity clothes, too. As for the furniture, DH and I have been freecycling the larger pieces from the extra bedroom (now nursery) and tossing the items that no one else would want. We just don't have the room to store large pieces of furniture.

sweetdreams2000 · January 2012

Have you tried space saver bags? They are awesome for out of season clothes. I live in a pretty small house - so here's what I've done:

For my clothes - I've always done this since I have small closets in a really old house:
- sort by seasons, and by apparel. So for example, I put tops in one space saver bag, dress pants in another, etc. I put some of the space saver bags after I've shrunk them under the bed, and some I put into clear plastic tubs I got at the container store (they are smaller, and fit above my top shelf in the closet). I do have dedicated shelf space in the closet for tank tops and workout clothes since I wear those year round. When I started having to wear maternity, I basically went through all my clothes and tried on which ones fit and/or I thought would fit most of pregnancy, along with my maternity clothes, and pulled non-fitting clothes out and put them into the storage bags. I do leave most of my skirts and dresses hanging in the closet year round.

For the baby's room - I have been collecting her stuff and putting it into plastic tubs to keep it organized. We're going to try and leave a bed in the room with the crib for now - so we're pushing the bed against the wall and turning it into a daybed. For furniture, we'll have the bed, 1 crib, 1 dresser (the top will have a changing pad), a rocking chair, and a lamp. We will have cube storage and another old dresser in that closet (its one of those sliding door closets).

SeattleCP · January 2012

I second Shmoos's IKEA suggestion. We're in a two bedroom apt, as well, and have been completely reliant on IKEA's space saving ideas and products for years. Our second bedroom has to function as a place for guests to sleep, as well as (eventually) a place for the baby crib, etc. It really sucks now trying to figure out how to best use the space, but overall the apt excuse has been convenient with our families constantly pressing us to buy every dumb plastic thing on the market. We already live pretty lean, but we've been selling some stuff on craigslist (buh-bye desk, desktop computer, filing cabinet, bookshelf) and making regular Goodwill runs. I scanned almost everything in the filing cabinet and uploaded it to a server, and donated a bunch of books after going digital with the e-book thing. That helped, but our problem is paper clutter/furniture more than clothes. I emptied a drawer in my dresser and have been putting the baby clothes in there until we can assemble the baby's bureau.

I kind of like being forced to keep it simple. We're not ready to move into the suburbs anytime soon.

Tiffy75 · January 2012

We're in the same boat - DH and I rent a TINY 2 bedroom house - like seriously TINY. Needless to say we're in the same boat. Here's what we've done so far:

*Bed Lifts - they have them at BB&B and they lift your bed so you can put storage underneath

*Vacuum Seal - cloth items in storage bags

TotallyLoCo · January 2012

I'm in a two bedroom apartment, and planning to move when the baby's a few months old if we can find a house we like. For now we are treating the spare bedroom/office as a dumping ground and I've been slowly cleaning out old junk and tossing it away to make room for the baby items. When I got maternity clothes I cleaned out my closet of old stuff to be donated to make room for it.

Like you, I'm not using the spare room as a nursery. I'm not going to order the baby furniture until we are close to moving, so we can just have it delivered to the new house. Baby will sleep in a PNP in our room until then. If we end up needing to move him to a crib before we move we will buy one and just set it up in our room and take out the PNP - fortunately our bedrooms are big. Then I can order dressers when we're ready to move.

UsafWifey09 · January 2012

I have a house but we have armoire, no closets AT ALL. So I have to put my clothes away too. I just put alll my summer clothes in a huge space saver bag and put it under the bed.

https://www.amazon.com/Space-Bag-14-Saver-Set/dp/B004N80WV2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1325545963&sr=8-1

Mamasaurus · January 2012

I have about half of my non-preg clothes in tubs that slide under my bed. We are stacking a lot of the baby items, still in their boxes, in a closet for now until I can reorganize some other spaces.

Maybe look into things like closet organizing systems, corner-fitting shelves, and storage that goes under other furniture (under the bed, under the couch, under a sink). Also, there are those things with the French name that go around a toilet...? They can offer a lot more storage for your bathroom and give you place to put all of LO's linens and toiletries.

countdowntolockdown · January 2012

So glad I'm not alone in this. THE ENTIRE weekend was devoted to making room. We decluttered our closets, after having done it this fall. I made more tough decisions and parted with even more clothes.

1/4 of my husband's closet is empty for the baby. We bought the baby a dresser from Ikea, and yes today we bought 'Space Saver' bags at Bed, Bath & Beyond. Love those 20% off coupons!

I'm in SERIOUS nesting mode because we too live in a fairly small 1 bedroom apartment. The only good thing is that it has two levels and 1.5 bathrooms. The baby's crib is in a nook under the stairs that, until this weekend, held my DH's office and desktop. We also scored a bigger storage unit because somebody moved out. This has helped tremendously! Our lease is up in April (perfect timing) so we are not moving any time soon.

shannm · January 2012

We had to start renting a storage unit when we were in a smaller house and welcoming DS into the family. We had absolutely no place for storage.

Now we have an attic ridiculously full of plastic storage tubs. I get so anxious even thinking about having to sort it back out for this new LO.

Browneyedhunni85 · January 2012

We have a 3 bedroom ranch style house. Right now all of his baby items are in the spare room. We are buying paint friday and hopefully can get the nursery painted sometime next week and the furniture ordered. Hopefully by Feb. we can start getting the nursery together so we can have our spare room back. We have to make sure my mother and MIL can have some place to sleep whenever they are over to help with baby. Luckily for us we have a lot of outdoor storage for saving things for future children and storing rubbermaid bins.

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