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If you have an unfinished basement, you know what an unusual organizational challenge it presents. An unfinished basement may in some ways be just like any other room of your house—but in others it can feel more like your garage. You may have exposed beams in your walls and ceilings, and you may or may not have carpet. Basements often have support poles and other unusual obstacles, and may be oddly shaped. But it can really pay off to take time to organize your unfinished basement. Just because the basement is unfinished, that doesn’t mean it can’t be a pleasant and neat place to be. Rooms like these work great as workshops or home gyms.

Plus, you may not realize it, but you can take advantage of some of the unfinished features of your basement when you are asking yourself how to organize your basement storage room. Those exposed beams in your ceiling and on your walls can actually be helpful. How? These beams are often just what you need to support specialized shelving. You can also hang hooks and racks on your walls and ceiling for tools and more. This is a great space-saving technique, and actually gives you much more flexibility than you would have if you were trying to organize a finished basement.

For the rest, make sure you tackle all the items on this checklist:

• Start going through your clutter and creating two piles along the way: donate and keep. Things you are going to keep will then need to be categorized again so that they will be organized when you put them back. Things you are going to donate can be packed away in plastic bags and taken to your nearest thrift shop.

• Categorize everything you are keeping. Make a pile for books, another for games, another for sporting equipment, and so on.

• Buy some plastic storage boxes. Tempted to just use cardboard? It may seem like a great idea at first, but they will bend as you use them and eventually they will fall apart. Worse, they do nothing to protect your possessions from dampness and mold. Plastic containers are not only sturdier, but provide some protection from humidity, and basements are often humid environments. Many come with handles too, making them easier to lift up to place on high shelves or bring back down! You can also color code them to make everything easy to find.

• Label everything. Put labels on those plastic storage bins, and consider labeling items inside as well. While you are doing this, make sure you draft up a list of everything in storage in your basement, possibly with a map telling you where it all is. You will be glad you did this later!

Tackling any basement organization project is a big chore, but you will be glad when you are done. Even an unfinished basement can be a great place to hang out; once you get all of your clutter out of the way, you may very well feel ready to convert yours into a home workout center, a den, or a workshop.