Shed Shape-Up

This is one of those projects that just “happened”. Scott and I have a habit of working on something and then it suddenly leads into 3 other projects that really need to be done – thus taking up an entire day, when we set out to only spend 20 minutes in the yard. Since the weather has been so nice, we’ve been trying to focus on getting our yard into better shape. Thanks to sunshine and MiracleGro, we’re actually seeing some growth in some plants that have been so-so for the past 5 years.

Ahh, Spring. We had a landing at the bottom of our deck’s stairs that needed some addressing, so we purchased some 2x8s to re-build it and fill in with some new, larger gravel. This entailed getting the circular saw out of shed, which then led to this:

These are the contents of our tiny shed and the shocked/frustrated faces at how much crap was crammed into an unorganized space. This shed has always been a bone of contention in our household – no matter how well we organized it, stuff just ended up on the ground and it required taking everything out of the shed just to find one item. In terms of organization, this situation was not good. After completing our stoop project, we knew that we had to address this pile-o-crap once and for all, rather than just throwing everything on the floor again.

So, off to Home Depot we went, for the second time in one day. We talked to a very helpful salesperson who led us to some powder coated brackets and (3) 12×48 melamine shelves  - no cutting required.

We cleaned her out, gave her a good sweeping and got to work with drilling our brackets into some studs.

We decided to leave enough room under our bottom shelf for items that needed to go on the ground (cooler, pressure washer, etc.) and left around 20″ between each shelf to accommodate two paint cans stacked on top of one another. We also opted for 12″ deep shelves to give us enough room to actually walk into the shed (which has never possible before, I might add) and have some room to maneuver. We then excitedly put all of our items onto the shelves and off of the floor for the first time – ever. Oh, glorious organization.

I know these pictures aren’t the most exhilarating, but it’s amazing how much joy $34.00 and some elbow grease can bring to us. This whole project only took about 30 minutes and we’re so amazed that we hadn’t thought to do this before now.

We left about 18″ between the end of the shelves and the door for our longer yard tools (shovel, rake) and kayaking paddles. The other side of our shed now houses all of our large hooks to hang items that can actually be accessed since we have room to walk into the shed. Praise God.

This might be my most favorite organization endeavor yet. Here’s to no more bruised shins and cursed words every time I have to go into our shed!