Hi All,

I have a household problem I hope you can help me with.

My 3 kids are becoming teeneagers and the 2 youngest (girls) wanted there own rooms, so this resulted in the oldest (boy) being moved out of his room (we did it while he was away at camp last summer) and the plan is that he will occupy my outdoor equipment room in the basement.

The problem is; "Where do I store all my great stuff, that it has taken me years to collect and I access daily"? I am not talking about the PSK's, FAK's, BOB's, emergency food, etc; I mean all the normal stuff that prepared people who also enjoy outdoor recreation accumulate.

At present I have most of it stored in solid colour Rubbermaid containers (I think they are about 60 L capacity). Because we moved around a lot throughout the 90's we now have about 75 of these containers. See-thru containers would help show what the contents are.

Even if you label the containers it is hard to know what all is in them (especially small stuff) and the item you want always seems to be on the bottom. Stacking them is a problem to get to the bottom bin so I have built 2x4 shelving to put these bins on (2 on bottom floor, 1 on middle row, 1 on top row).

My DW and I are also packrats and have a problem parting with functional items, even if we use them infrequently (this is surely the root cause of our lack of storage space). Big yard sale next spring already planned (I promise).

Before I start a major basement renovation project this winter I was hoping that someone on the forum had faced a similar problem before and found the "perfect outdoor equipment storage technique".

Please feel free to share you ideas,

Mike