Using your attic for seasonal storage? It’s a great place for things you need infrequently. Does some of your best stuff come out just once a year? Or maybe you need it once a season. Holiday decorations. Seasonal clothing like winter coats and summer frocks. Attic storage is also great for “outgrown baby or kids’ stuff, to be used again when the next child is old enough,” writes Home Storage Solutions 101.
Sports equipment changes with the seasons. Attic storage is perfect for snow skis or snowboards (boots, poles, pants, helmet, etc.). In summer bring down the camping equipment. Use your attic for seasonal toys like snow sleds, bicycles and summer lawn toys. Protect your investment in summer porch and patio furniture by overwintering it in the attic. Store snow tires; you can stack all four on at once on a SpaceLift.
Rotating seasonal clothing using a SpaceLift attic storage lift and a portable wardrobe lets you nearly double your closet space. See our “Clone Your Closet” post.
Decorating for the holidays is something you want to look forward to. If it’s too much work to haul out the Christmas tree, decorating becomes a dreaded chore instead of a cherished tradition. Let alone Hanukah decorations, Easter baskets, Halloween pumpkins, and so on.
Organize Storage Items by Season
Group attic storage items by season or occasion. When you can, consolidate items into fewer, larger storage bins. This means fewer trips up and down from the attic. Big bins make it easier to find what you want. With an attic lift, you can use much bigger storage bins than you could carry on the ladder.
Label each container, bag or box so you can easily find them next year. Super organizers create a master list of the containers and items, sealed in a plastic bag and placed on top of the seasonal grouping because they know it is hard to remember what went where 12 months later. One organizing trick, especially for the attic, is to create signs on strings. Then hang them from the roof rafters to make it easy to spot your seasonal groupings.
Attic Storage for Infrequently Used Items
Attics are great for storing seasonal — or infrequently used — tools. Change your snow shovels for garden shovels. Or perhaps you own a valuable tool that you need only once in a while. Our customer Bill T. owns a portable table saw. He moved to The Villages Florida retirement community. His home has limited storage space and no basement. So he installed a SpaceLift attic storage lift for attic access. He’s getting older and wanted a better alternative than using the pull-down stairs to access his garage attic. And with the SpaceLift’s 200-pound per trip capacity, he discovered he could move his table saw to the attic too. Oh and he still uses his attic for seasonal storage, even in Florida. After all, he decorates for halloween and Christmas. Even in Florida, people have sweater collections to store. You can read his story here.
Claim More Living Space
A huge benefit of using your attic for seasonal storage is claiming more living space. Move seasonal items out of your living space and into a convenient storage space. This reduces clutter and frees up more space in your home. Wouldn’t it be nice to fit the car back in the garage or not have to navigate canyons of stacked storage bins?
Another organizing idea is to purge after each season or occasion. If you did not haul out a particular item this holiday, will you really want it next year? It’s just good clutter control.
Easy Access Key to Using Attic for Seasonal Storage
Attics are often underutilized. That’s largely because they can be a pain to access. Moving items in and out of the attic up and down rickety, narrow attic stairs, steep pull down steps or ladders is a real challenge. For one thing, you are really limited in how much you can carry in each trip. You also risk straining your back or even worse, falling. Your storage items can be damaged when carried or, heaven forbid, dropped.
Imagine lugging a full-size artificial Christmas tree box up the ladder. Yet, attic storage is perfect for holiday decorations: Christmas, Thanksgiving, Halloween, etc. Attic storage is great for seasonal sports equipment. Water skis and surf boards can overwinter. Meanwhile your snow skis and boards can swap places when winter turns to spring. Camping gear is perfect for attic storage. How about your garden tools? End lawn furniture abuse by overwintering it in your attic. Protect your investment.
This is exactly why SpaceLift™ Products created its attic lifts. Working in tandem with your attic stairs, the lift is like owning your own mini freight elevator; it’s a dumbwaiter for your stuff. A powerful motor carries up to 200 pounds and 24 cubic feet of storage items at a time. Its superior design is low profile with no vertical limit. So your Christmas tree box will stand up on the platform then lift into the attic with ease. Heavy items can easily slide off of the SpaceLift™ attic lift and onto your attic, home or garage floor. You get so much more use of your attic storage space when you can move items to and from it with ease. No more fear of injury or damaged items. No more hassle and struggle lugging stuff up and down that scary attic ladder.