storage area condensed

This is one of my sources of frustration, everytime I look in this area I just think to myself there is too much stuff over there and I don't even know what half of it is. 

So I started by emptying out the space completely

Then comes the hard part, condensing it down and putting it back in a neat organized way. One thing I know after emptying this space is... never buy those 30 gallon storage containers because you will just keep putting stuff in them until they fill up (it's like I felt obligated to fill them up and make use of them) but that's a bad idea because you end up with some of everything in one container and you lose track of what's in there. From now on I will stick to small ones that I can have more control of and label them.

Okay this is much, much better but I will call this phase one because I want to get rid of those huge containers. I actually have 2 of each, I emptied one and put one inside the other for now. This was supposed to be a 2 hour project but it was more like 3 hours because I had to take the last hour to take all the papers to the recycle bin, pack up all the donations in a bag and gather all the trash and throw it away.  It also forced me to pull some papers out of these containers and keep them in plain view so I can get rid of more stuff but I didn't have time today so in plain view I will be forced to deal with them soon.