I have come to a conclusion regarding storage. The best storage available for well over 90% of whatever it is you want to store is a garbage bag set on the curb at the end of your driveway (or put in a dumpster, or brought to the dump, or ejected into outer space). So many things look so very useful when you have them in your hands and they almost always end up usefully collecting dust on a shelf or in a corner or in a closet.
I’m not being one of these de-clutter people you come across on tv or the internet. I’m not talking about simplifying your life by reducing the amount of stuff you have. Frankly, that would just be an excuse. And, also, some people just need to have their toys taken away or they can’t go to bed. Or at least it seems that way. What I’m really talking about is reducing the amount of useless junk that occupies your space.

I have recently been renovating half of my basement. It has, up to this point, been a repository for all things not currently being used by the members of my household. I recall how vast and open the space looked when I first saw this house. It was impressive (unlike the main floor of the house, about which I then said should have been demolished and rebuilt because it was so bad). After moving in, the basement was supposed to be set up as a “rec-room” for the kids. Instead, it became home to boxes.
You know how it goes. You are moving from one place to another and the single worst thing about doing that is packing. You have to get everything out of everywhere and load in all into boxes that can be carried (unlike the best solution: loading it into a dumpster that a truck carts away). If you are “smart”, you label the boxes so you can get the essential items after the move.
The essential items, as it turns out, happened to be the things that people carried in their personal luggage and the items in boxes marked “kitchen”. Almost everything else stayed in its box for a long time.

My renovation down there was to make a storage room and an extra bedroom. I first needed to clear the space and that’s when I encountered so much stuff that had been packed up years ago. And, as I looked through it, I recognized a lot of it as things I had once decided should be kept in case they became useful. Such things tend to be of no real monetary value. They probably can’t even be sold on eBay. And you can sell anything on eBay.
This has lead me to derive a good way to determine whether or not you need something. Take all of your potentially useful stuff and throw it into a big room. Let half a year go by. Then dispose of everything that’s left in that room. Chances are, if you ever do need one of those things, you can borrow it from someone.

Oddly enough, I found no caulking guns amongst all the stuff I have been sifting through. I did find a coping saw, though. Actually, I found two coping saws. Turns out they are twice as useless as they seem.
I have successfully managed to finish the storage room down there. It’s not very big, just five feet wide and eleven feet long. My idea is that it should have shelves along each wall and that anything that can’t fit in there should just go away.
But I think the key to successful storage in such a room is periodically examining what’s in there. If you’ve been storing your Perry Como records for eighteen years, maybe you should try to sell them. I’m not sure anyone will buy them, but you can try.

I know that people like to keep track of themselves through this succession of accumulated junk. Memories are tied to things. But you can take a picture and put that in a box. That is, if you can find your camera, which quite likely is itself hidden away somewhere.