Go read the Disclaimer again. I am not a doctor. This is not medical advice. Seriously.
I used to keep the stuff-in-storage to a bare minimum. Having Teddy changed that in a hurry. Clothes-too-big, toys-too-old as well as clothes-too-small-for-next-kid, toys-for-visiting-kids-and-future-siblings, maternity clothes, post-partum sizes, etc. are all things I don't feel like buying a second time when I'm hoping to need them in a year or few. Baby hammock, car seat carrier -- the list seems endless. It is, in a way. Some of these things I'll save to give to Teddy when he's grown up and has children of his own.
People who store stuff rather than get rid of it often associate storage with end-of-life. This is a handicap. Also, all that stuff takes up space that you could be using for other purposes. Like storing stuff you intend to use again, just not until next ski season.
People who feel bad about throwing away something that has useful life in it (even if they will never personally make use of it again) have instincts working to the benefit of our biosphere. But those instincts can be redirected. Used book stores, thrift stores, freecyclers (including craigslist), sidewalks (in cities where people pick stuff up left on sidewalks and bring it home to use), swap meets and eBay are just a few of the obvious ways to pass things along, some of which might bring you cash or like items that are useful to you.
I think in terms of months-at-a-time (out of seasons clothes and gear, prepregnancy clothes, clothing that doesn't yet fit Teddy, toys too old for Teddy, toys and clothing too small/young for Teddy being saved for future children, old tax paperwork), weeks-at-a-time (canned tomatoes, unread books I might pick up in a little while, CDs I might listen to, wine glasses company might drink out of, this year's brokerage statements) and current use (the books I'm in the middle of, the clothes I typically wear, mail I haven't answered yet, this month's credit card and ATM slips). There isn't really any problem with storing current use stuff on the kitchen counter, dining room table and so forth. But storing months-at-a-time stuff there is going to drive you to look for new, bigger housing. The geographic cure works about as well for this problem as it does for alcoholics.
If you don't have children (yet), you may be able to do the Big Clean Up and Get Organized. Once kids are in the picture, even if you hire help, or have organized friends and relatives descend upon you en masse with free labor, a rented dumpster and a solid plan, you probably will have to be satisfied with forward progress, rather than fixing your life and place all at once.
There are two major components to making forward progress. One is having storage locations (like closets, walls, basements, attics, etc., that are relatively temperature stable, dry and pest-free) and storage furniture (which includes plastic bins, but also armoires, dressers, shelving, etc.). The other is knowing where to pass things along to (which includes your garbage and recycling, but also thrift stores, charities, etc.). If you have places to store stuff and you know how to get rid of stuff, whenever you have a moment, you can take something that shouldn't be lying around, and either store it or put it with your stack of stuff to get rid of. If you make a habit of this, over time your life will have somewhat less clutter in it (than it otherwise would have). I'm not promising this will declutter your life. Anyone who promises a new parent a decluttered life is a lying sack of something-you-won't-say-in-front-of-your-toddler.
While it would be nice if your storage locations and furniture were neatly labelled, and everything was stored with like items, and the stuff you'll need sooner was closer to the front, etc., in practice if you can find what you stored faster than buying it new, you will probably dig it out of storage rather than buy a duplicate. And babies and toddlers slow the buying-it-new process down enough that your odds of reusing (or going without) are actually vastly improved. Babies and toddlers can also cut your finances back, which is also a motivator to track down wherever it was you put it, which is why I'm emphasizing dry, pest-free and temperature stable, rather than neatly organized.
There are books on this subject. I used to read them compulsively. For a while, I was a big fan of Julie Morgenstern. I'm a lot less idealistic about storage and orderliness now.
A lot of people already do some amount of months-at-a-time storage, especially if they engage in season-specific activities (ski equipment gets hauled out in late fall and put away in the spring, to be swapped for the camping gear, etc.). Women who cycle through clothing sizes sometimes have boxes stashed of larger and smaller sizes. Organizing books tell women to get rid of these boxes, to encourage them to maintain their new, lower weight, or to encourage them to love their current body, or whatever. I've packed away the prepregnancy clothes, however, and intend to keep everything that isn't worn out that I wear between now and when my last kid weans, because I know I'm going to cycle sizes, and clothing shopping (especially for technical gear) is time consuming.
Before we had Teddy, I had the sense to know that getting clothes in larger than appropriate sizes was A Good Thing. When friends handed me boxes of 24 or 2T or whatever, I went, woohoo! I bought toys I knew were too old for him (still do) because eventually he'll wear all those clothes and play with those toys -- or someone will. But in the meantime, they need to be stored. As do the clothes he used to wear, which he so rapidly grew into and out of during his first year of life.
Car seats are a lot like clothes, especially if you buy a baby bucket first, and then a convertible. Strollers can be like clothes, if you buy a car seat carrier, then get a jogging stroller and a folding stroller. Baby carriers are clothes. All of these things wind up stored after they are used, until given away or used for a younger sibling. Changing tables, cribs, playpens, baby hammocks, moses baskets, bassinets. . .
When I was a small child, my father built shelving in the garage (we didn't have a basement). One half wall of the garage, floor to ceiling, was shelving with wooden boxes. I don't think plastic bins were common or cheap in the early 1970s. He made the shelves and boxes himself. They were nailed together, not dovetailed, but they were imperishable. There was a clipboard on nail at the end of the shelving. On each box was a tag with a number, and the clipboard had a sheet of paper with numbers down the side, where one could enter what was in a box, or cross out what had been taken out of a box. I remember the seasonal change of clothing, until my father built the upstairs on our house around 1977, taking it from about 1200 square feet to 2000, at which point there was enough closet space (and winters had become mild enough) for all of our clothes to be stored in our bedrooms, and there was a huge room upstairs for all our toys and books. Until then, we had been a family of six in a three bedroom house. When I run into singles or couples with three or four bedrooms, and 2000 square feet, who are sure they need more space in order to have a family, I wonder what the hell is going on.
When we moved back to Brookline, and were integrating his pre-marriage stuff, the stuff we'd acquired together in Seattle, and the limited selection I'd brought along from before our marriage (including about 1500 books at this point), it seemed we'd never get everything unpacked. But Roland kept going to Costco and buying shelving, setting it up in the (now reliably dry) basement, going to County Stores and buying bins, taking stuff from the closets upstairs (sleeping bags, out-of-season clothing), putting it in the bins and putting the bins on the shelves. And he just kept at this until we actually had enough space to do things in the house proper. The bins were clear plastic, so you could more or less see what was in them, even if they weren't labelled. By the time he had a half dozen of these big shelving units up, I was thinking we didn't need to do a remodel. Ever. The basement floor itself was relatively clear, and was starting to look like a great place to engage in messy projects.
We have a number of containers in the mudroom that we toss recycling into, and also packaging materials that might get reused. We've started keeping a paper recycling bin in the dining room where we sort mail. We also are using a couple of other containers in that room to put stuff that we know we need to put away, but aren't quite sure where it goes yet. This relieves some of the pressure from the dining room table. It isn't pretty, but we don't lose much.
If you are moving because your current place is too small to store all of your stuff, take a step back and think hard about this. If you can afford to hire someone to pack, move and unpack all of your stuff, and you can afford a bigger place, moving might be easier. Otherwise, the process of moving will just disorder your world even further. It'll be worth it if your place is too small for the number of people in your family. When my father built an upstairs on the house I grew up in, we needed the space. We had been a family of 6 in about 1200 square feet. Moving is not cheap in time, money or energy. You might be better served by staying put and getting rid of some things and storing others. Especially if a lot of the stuff isn't or won't be safe to have out around your anticipated (or newly arrived) family members.
A General Discussion of Moving
Home: the Physical Locus of the Family
Copyright 2006 by Rebecca Allen.
Created November 12, 2006 Updated February 22, 2007