I struggled with this choice and went to google and pinterest for direction on how to do this properly.  I left my research with no clear answer LOL so I had to make a choice and hope for the best.  Now I can say that hope to only have the stuff in storage in general through August or September.  Regardless of the status of our home at that time, we will begin to need our winter items around September/October so we will have to swap some things out either way.  So we are talking about 5 - 6 months of storage.  

I decided to go with a 30 gallon plastic bin that I found at wal-mart for $7.97.  You can choose whichever you want, and honestly you could probably catch them on sale if you go after Christmas or around the time when they put those on sale but I didn't have that option due to our timeline.  I chose this particular bin mainly because of its size and price.  I wasn't trying to go broke buying bins and I knew it was going to the storage facility so it didn't need to be "pretty".  I also purchased some cedar disks to place in the bins to help preserve the items inside and finally I purchased a package of tissue paper.  Now this made me a little sad because I was hoping my stash at the house would be enough but all of that tissue paper was colored and I didn't want to risk it bleeding onto our clothes.

We commenced to packing our clothes.  Each of us got a bin for our clothes.  I packed all my "pre-pregnancy" clothes in one since I know I won't need them until mid-August.  I then used another bin to pack winter clothes.  My husband packed jeans in one (yes he has a LOT of jeans) and then his winter stuff in another.  I have to admit I ended up using the remaining space in his jean bean to pack my suit coats.  So we ended up with five bins of clothes in storage.  Can you believe it!!!!!   And before you ask, yes we decluttered items we could no longer wear or that we no longer wanted to give to goodwill.  It is just amazing how much we had crammed into our two closets and dresser drawers.  Unfortunately, I didn't take a before picture of the closets but here is an after view of them.  

The sad thing is they still aren't all that empty!!!  But these are the items we feel we still will need to wear in the coming months.  Understanding we are in the middle of two seasons and at the end of that time we will be in the mid of another season so we have a few warm things mixed in with our summer items.

What did I do with the tissue paper you ask?  Well, in the bins where I packed dresses, dress pants and suit coats, I placed tissue paper in between the items to help not wrinkle them and just because one of the blogs I read suggested it.  It's just like when you pack clothes for stores, they always place paper in with the clothes.  I also added a piece on top of each bin and placed the cedar disks on the paper so they weren't directly placed on clothing.

Finally, I placed a label on the side of the bin to identify what type of clothes was in each bin.  This will prevent us from having to open each one to find something.  One trick I learned was to adhere a shipping label envelope (plastic sleeves used by UPS/Fedex) big side only (not the label side) and that way you can insert a sheet of paper that tells you what is in each bin and if for some reason the contents changes you can easily swap out the paper without having to remove a label.  I have to give a lady at work props for sharing that tip with me.  She was packing some items at our office for storage and I saw her doing this...I was wondering what she was doing and when I saw the end result I was of course in awe LOL.

Happy Decluttering!!!!

