A lot of the storage and organizing hacks I write about are geared toward those living in a small space, but before I moved to New York City and began inhabiting miniature apartments, I was living comfortably in the Midwest, where houses are cheap and big—but hard to declutter and organize in their own way.
My parents’ house had a room called the storage room, which I never realized I would one day consider a nostalgic luxury. That room held seasonal decorations, old furniture, mementos, and a big freezer full of extra food in case we got snowed in. (That’s part of the reason it’s so cheap to live out there, by the way.) My parents kept this thing in tip-top organizational shape, making it a super-useful space, but if it had fallen into disorder it would have become a major burden instead.
Whether you have a dedicated storage room, …