Someone once said, "Organization isn't about perfection; it's about efficiency, reducing stress and clutter, saving time and money and improving your overall quality of life." This is exactly how I feel about being organized in my daily routines, storage of household items, clothing storage, etc. I LOVE to organize stuff. I have a hard time functioning if the things that I need are not in a specified place. I guess you would say that I am a little "OCD" or as an organized person would say it..."CDO". Ever since I can remember even as a little kid I am sure that my Mom has stories she would tell about how I would spend hours organizing my bedroom, school bags, my stuffed animals, etc. And I am sure my second grade teacher, at this moment her name has slipped from my memory, would tell you how I was the student who would ask for a desk clean out and organizing day. I know.. I am a little weird. I LOVE to organize.
In regards to our camping adventures in the many campers we have owned, as we get into using the camper I look for ways to organize our items that we need so that our "things" are just not sitting around on tables, ledges, counter tops, vanities or nooks and crannies. To me when our "things" are just sitting around and not in their "place" I feel like my space is always dirty, very small and almost claustrophobic like. With camping especially in our first TAB and our second TAB 400, aka Carl, I was able to utilize every itty bitty storage space. With our experiences hiking on the AT, we even learned to roll our clothing and that you don't need as many "things" as you think you need.
One of the items that we just added to our Lance 1985, aka Tex, are hanging storage bins in our clothing closets that are on each side of our luxurious walk around bed. Patrick found these hanging storage bins on Amazon. They are great! They have a velcro piece at the top that curls around our horizontal rod that came in this area for hanging clothes.
These storage areas are so deep that this allows for us to put the items that we need the most in those storage cubbies and then behind these hanging storage bins, Patrick and I have rubber coated metal shelves where we can put even more clothing such as rain gear, sweatshirts, shoes, my purse ....anything that we might need for our travels. I still roll my clothes especially my cotton and wick shirts and my wick shorts that I like to wear in the summer. I store them in small storage bins with lids under and behind this hanging storage bin. By just adding this hanging storage bin, we have opened up more space for clothes that we think we might need and more.
In our camper bathroom or as our friends Mark, Karen, Jim and Abe refer to now after our weekend excursion to Evergreen in Mt. Eton, Ohio...the "All Purpose Room". Patrick and I decided to move or food storage from one of our huge slide out drawers to the bathroom storage cabinet. We felt like the weight of canned goods, bags of rice and other heavier food items in the slide out drawers was probably too much weight for the slide out. So we switched the food items with lighter weight items that we were keeping in the bathroom cabinet such as our towels, hand towels and wash clothes. Tex has so many "LARGE" storage areas that this area in the bathroom gives us many ways to organize this space for our food items, paper products, our recyclable plastic bag storage sock and even any hanging clothes that we want to take on a trip.
We decided to try to utilize the "Up" space, so we bought from our local Menards store a set of metal storage cubes that can be connected together. With these "Connectable Cubes", we were able to put our large food storage bins that Patrick bought on Amazon in the bottom sections. The food storage bins are deep and they are great because they make it easy to see the food "things" that are in them, they slide in and out easily , they have sturdy sides that will not collapse and dump all of the items in the cabinet as we travel down the road and they help to keep the "Connectable Cubes" from sliding around during travel. We are then able to put lighter weight paper products and supplies in the top cubes. I think before we head out this summer, I will put some rubbery shelf liner underneath the "Connectable Cube" so that if it does move a little it will not scratch up the bottom and sides of the cabinet. The wood is too beautiful to not protect it.
In the kitchen we have found ways to keep our "kitchen items" organized. In the Lance one of the cool features in the kitchen area is a lower cabinet by the oven that when you open the door you have three slide out storage drawers. What is cool is that if these drawers need to be cleaned they can easily be removed and put back in because the sides fit into rails that hold them in place in this cabinet and allow the drawer to slide in and out easily. Within the drawer, instead of just throwing in all the untensils and when you need something you have to rummage through the drawer to find what you need, we bought these cute teal rubber storage containers from Wal Mart to store the small items such as our silverware, measuring spoons, cork screw, extra Command strips, small screw driver and whatever little item that we do not want flying around in these drawers.
We also got creative and found a rubber-lined oven mitt to store our cooking knives. We found out while on one of our first adventures in our TAB 400, Carl, that we needed to do something instead of just placing these very sharp knives in the silverware drawer. On a trip we noticed that one of the cooking knives had punctured through the end of the silverware tray....oopsy.
Patrick also decided to use storage bins up above the sink to store his coffee that way, again, those items are not flying around in this cabinet.
As you can see, I LOVE to keep my life and my "things" organized. I am always looking for ways to use every little space and my "Up" space in our cabin and in our camper. If you are interested in any of the "Organization items" that I mentioned from Amazon, you can click on the link on the homepage of our website to find them. As an Amazon affiliate we may earn a commission if you decide to purchase any of these items. What are the ways you store your items in your house or camper?