Organized Basement Tour

Take a tour of our organized basement, packed full of brilliant organization ideas to help you organize your own storage spaces!

I am SO excited to share our organized basement tour with you today! This may not be the “prettiest” space I’ve ever created, but it was definitely one of the more challenging spots that I’ve ever organized.

Organized Basement Tour

The Basement Before

As storage spaces usually do, our basement had become a catch-all for all of the random things we didn’t have any other place for. Whenever I was working on another room in our house and came across something I didn’t know what to do with, I would throw it in the basement, which left us with a space that looked like this…

It was such a mess down there that I put off even starting the organization project for over a year because I was so intimidated by all there was to do! At the beginning of this year, though, I resolved to get the basement organized once and for all. And though it took much longer than I had planned, I am thrilled to say that it is finally finished!

Creating Zones

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Our basement is unfinished, and we don’t have any plans to finish it off in the near future. We have plenty of “hang out” space upstairs, and right now the basement is serving us well for three main purposes: storage, DIY projects, and sports/activities.

Since the basement has a fairly large footprint, we split it into zones to keep it organized and maximize the space for each of the purposes it fulfills.

The part of this project that ended up taking a long time was decluttering allllllllll of the many items that we didn’t need anymore. We made a conscious effort to donate or give away as much as we possibly could, and then we used a Bagster bag to get rid of the remaining items that we couldn’t find a home for.

Once we had gotten rid of everything we were no longer using, it was time to put the spaces back together and get organizing!

Basement Workshop and Tool Storage

When I posted about our organized garage, I had so many people say, “But where do you keep your tools?!”

“In the basement!” is the answer!

Having Donnie’s workshop in the basement has worked well for us because we can still park both of our cars in the garage, and he can have a place to work on projects all the time that he doesn’t have to tear down and set back up.

Since he is using a saw in the enclosed basement, he researched and invested in a dust collection system (He uses this and this.) so that he wasn’t getting sawdust everywhere every time he does a project.

We used Gladiator shelves to hold his toolboxes so he can easily find what he needs. Donnie did a detailed post on his favorite toolboxes and tool storage systems here.

Shop the Basement Workshop

Organizing DIY Supplies

On the other side of the steps, we have room for storing the rest of our DIY supplies. We do a lot of projects around here! 🙂

One of the projects we’re currently working on is framing in all of the windows in our house and changing out the trim work. We have a lot of trim waiting to be installed, so we are using these wall brackets to keep everything organized and the floor as clear as possible.

This section of the basement also holds our painting and tiling supplies, again on Gladiator shelving. I did a detailed post on organizing our painting and tiling supplies here.

Basically I separated everything by category and used simple plastic containers to corral like items.

Our entire house was stark builder white when we moved in, so we have been slowly working on painting each and every room– which is why we have so much paint! Once we’ve gotten everything painted, we’ll be able to pare down our paint stash.

We also have spots to store painting accessories like brushes, rollers, and painter’s tape.

We’ve always done our tiling projects ourselves and are planning one in the not-too-distant future, so we kept all of our grout and accessories on hand.

We had to work around a few pipes in this corner– they are rough-ins for a bathroom down here if we ever choose to add one at a later time. Thankfully our spare tiles from various areas of the house fit neatly around the most intrusive pipe!

Shop Our DIY Storage

Hockey Area

Our oldest son Connor is hockey obsessed, so we wanted to make sure he had an area where he could work on his shooting and stick handling no matter what the weather is like outside. (We have a lot of snowy and rainy days here in Pittsburgh, PA!)

Originally this area had insulation on all of the walls like the rest of the basement, but after a few too many run-ins with hockey pucks, it was sagging pretty badly…

We removed the damaged insulation– hopefully the concrete walls will be able to stand up to the abuse of hockey puck after hockey puck being pummeled at it!

This storage cart holds Connor’s stick handling accessories, spray for his hockey tiles, and pucks and balls in the big bin.

We are also holding on to some furniture that friends of ours may use in the near future, so it is lined up along the walls in this area as well.

Shop the Hockey Area

Ping Pong Area

Donnie and his dad love to play ping pong, but with our basement being such a mess, they haven’t had any room for the table, so they were glad to get their spot back!

This IKEA KALLAX unit ended up being the perfect storage spot for their ping pong balls and other accessories.

This area of the basement also includes a decent sized nook under the stairs. It will mainly be the storage spot for our luggage, but since it is still cold outside, we also currently have our deck furniture stored there. It is fit together like Tetris back in that little spot!

Storage Space for Seasonal Decor and Sentimental Items

Finally, the basement nook under our sunroom holds our bins of seasonal decor, hand-me-downs, and our sentimental items.

Since we were storing this dresser anyway, I thought it would be the perfect way to organize the boys’ hand-me-downs. I separated all of the clothes by size and used the filing method (aka the KonMari method) to maximize space in each drawer.

To store all of our bins of decor, we again went with the Gladiator shelving.

When I posted a picture of my Christmas bins in my Instagram stories, I think I offended some people with the number of bins I had! In my defense, though, I do Christmas home tours on the blog every year, and they would be pretty boring if they were always exactly the same, right?!

I basically have a set of traditional red and green Christmas decor and a set of neutral Christmas decor that I pull from each year, hence the number of bins. 🙂

Along with our Christmas bins and trees in bags, each member of our family has one bin that holds their sentimental items. I talked about decluttering our sentimental items in detail in this post.

I labeled all of our bins with labels I made using my Silhouette Cameo cutting machine and adhesive vinyl. You can get more details about my label-making process here.

Finally, one last shelf holds our spring and fall decor and some pieces we use for parties or get-togethers. I have a few wreath boxes on the top shelf, and I even have a completely empty bin up there, so we still have room to grow!

Shop our Basement Storage Area

So that’s our organized basement! It may have taken a while, but it feels great to finally have it done and be able to find what we need quickly and easily.

Let’s take a look at the “before and afters”:

If you missed any of the previous posts about our basement organization project, you can catch up here:

How to Start an Overwhelming Organizing Project

The KonMari Method: Organizing Sentimental Items

Top 10 Best Tool Storage Systems for Organizing Your Workshop

How to Organize Paint Supplies

[Psssttt… Get our top 100 tips for organizing every room of the house here!]

Have you ever had an organizing project that seemed to take forever? Tell me about it in the comments below!

Happy Organizing!

This post contains affiliate links. For more information, see my disclosures here.