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The Official No Basement Thread--Support & Idea Sharing Group

1K views 21 replies 13 participants last post by  onlyzombiecat 
#1 ·
I hope you don't mind, I didn't see anything like this in this forum.

Since we've moved to an area with no basements (aka swamp LOL) we've had some unique challenges. I'd love it if I could have a place for those of us with this same 'mutual experience' to share ideas on creative storage, decluttering and prioritizing to keep our homes managable.

I definitely can use some pointers, something besides 'use your garage' because frankly we park our cars in the garage. And, when you have a large family and a not so large house you need to start getting creative.
 
#2 ·
We live in an old apartment block with no basements, lofts and certainly no garage. We do however have a "cupboard of shame" as we call it. It is a closet 4ft x 7ft and 13ft high where in the old days a bed would be placed behind a solid door. We have shelved it all the way up to the celilng and put our "stuff" there untill the door doesn't shut anymore and then I know it is time to declutter again
.
Other than that we just don't get stuff we have no space for, it is quite possible to live without a basement, don't worry.
 
#3 ·
Okay, I live in Australia. Houses here almost exclusively dont have basements or attics. Well, some actually have attics, but it is just a crawl space with spiders living in it. The only access is a manhole and it would be rare to go up there unless you were having insulation put in or a creature got stuck up there.
The best you can hope for here is a shed or a really large garage. Most people use one bedroom as a 'spare room'. And the older style houses (like mine) dont even have any cupboards/wardrobes whatsoever.

So its pretty challenging here to say the least. On the plus side, you just dont hang onto stuff because its easy to put into a box and shove into another part of the house. There is NOWHERE to put things except out in clear view in rooms you access every day. So it definitely helps in the simplifying. God knows when I will actually find a place for everything that I am happy with so I can just stop rearranging/reorganizing for once though!
 
#4 ·
we have no basement and use our garage also... I really don't miss it as far as storage goes (although I've only ever lived in homes with no basement and where the garage was for cars, so I guess I just don't know any better!), but I definitely have pangs of jealousy when I see photos of these spaces used as play areas... I would love, love to have a large open area to do physical activities in during hot days and wet days, which are almost all days here (I was spoiled with perfect weather all year round growing up!)

we did get a small shed to store bikes, lawnmower, outdoor toys -it's definitely tight in there! we would definitely have more if we had more room, I try to see the positives in that, but sometimes it is hard... I really love to go all out for halloween decor for example, but I just don't have room to store seasonal stuff. We do have shelves up high along the walls in the garage, but I have to back the car out and get out the step stool to access those and they don't add up to very much space anyways.
 
#5 ·
No basement, no garage, no usable attic...

We have exactly one storage closet inside the house and it is rather small and definitely awkward. It is attached to a small room (less than 10x10) on the main floor of our townhome. The way the doorway is, this closet is like an L with the doorway on the short side of the L kind of making it almost like a flipped over Z. Did I mention the short side of the L has a normal ceiling height and the rest (majority) has a 4 foot ceiling tapering down to nothing since it is under the stairs?

I can tell you IF we had a garage, attic, or basement, we would turn this - ah, unique - closet into a play space for DD. She LOVES to play in it whenever we empty it for whatever reason.

Meanwhile, we use it as a miniscule garage.
The regular part of the closet is roughly 30 inches square (maybe 24-28, I forget right now). It is just wider than the door and the door is narrower than a standard bedroom door. Anyway, we added two wire shelves above the regular rod & shelf. One shelf is above the existing shelf and the other is perpendicular to those and in between them height-wise. Below the shelving, we installed pegboard and hang most of our tools up. Then in the 4-foot (and lower) section, we took apart an old metal garage shelving unit and turned it into two shorter units. One is immediately off the tall ceiling area just under the 4-foot ceiling with easy access from the doorway for the first foot or so. That holds the rest of our tools on top and home improvement and house stuff below. The other unit is harder to get to, but holds 90% of our camping gear. We put all of our Christmas ornaments and decorations in a rolling cart with drawers and it rolls in front of the camping gear unit. Then, my two large tubs of fabric go in the leftover "hole". Everything has to be moved in order to go camping, but we generally go twice in the summer fairly close together and just leave things out in between. The Christmas cart only comes out once and it is the next most difficult to access. The rest is used fairly frequently.

It works and just took a little getting used to. You'll figure your space out, too. Best wishes!!!
 
#6 ·
Yeah, well the 'use your garage' thing is out. DH most definitely is against it as well! That's what it seems like everybody does...yuck. We park our cars in the garage.

Though even our neighbor, who is one person in a house our size (we have 6-7 depending on if Grandma is here) uses HALF her garage. The other half is piled with stuff. Sigh.

The thing that is tough is there is no place for bikes, and other play equipment and stuff. DH used to have the lawnmower in the garage until he ran over the edge of a wheel (nice $80 repair). Now, it's in our small lanai (screened in porch--not pretty either). The kids don't have any bikes because we have no place to put them.
 
#7 ·
We are in the same position. I grew up in homes on the east coast that ALL had basements, so when I moved to CA and there were no basements it was very strange to me.

My DP sounds just like your DH. She gets really annoyed with people that use their garage for storage instead of cars. One of her huge pet peeves is driving through a neighborhood and seeing tons of cars lined up on the street.

We live in a 1960's 1600 sq. ft. home (2 adults/3 kids) with a 3 car tandem garage that is 690 feet (it's huge!). The garage also has our washer and dryer. We park our Honda Odyssey in there 100% of the time and sometimes clutter takes over the other "bay" (tricycles, scooters, basketball hoops, etc. mainly) and DP will park her car in the driveway in the evenings. We have a very small, beautifully landscaped backyard, but what I really want is a small storage shed to put in the utility area where we keep our trashcans. Luckily, it would accommodate a small shed quite nicely.

What are you trying to store? We have 2 tricycles, a wagon, a Big Wheel, a push car thingie, two 12" bicycles, a 2 child trailer, and my mountain bike. All of that fits in the garage along with 3 very large dog crates. You can get bike hooks to store your bikes on the wall or from the rafters for about .25 cents each. That helps to free up a lot of space. Right now our garage is horribly disorganized and all of our "stuff" is stored in boxes along the walls of the garage. DP and I both used to work in the music industry and one of the huge things we need to tackle is our CD collection. I think between both of us we have about 5,000 CD's in our garage alone! And that, quite possibly, is a huge understatement! That doesn't include the several hundred that is on our bookcase in the office. Uggghh.. We also have family photo albums, a huge football card collection, and just of ton of stuff that we never look at out there. A few boxes of toys from my childhood, tools, shop vac, etc. We also store our bottled water (and beer!
) out there.

A 10x10 storage shed would work miracles for us, so have you ever considered that? We got rid of the lawn mower and re-hired a gardener after our first child was born


Someday I want my garage to have these:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mboydst...24278/sizes/l/
 
#8 ·
We have our three bicycles outside. They are locked together and they fit easily between the front of our home and a row of bushes. They are under the deep eaves and don't receive much rain or direct sun. The bushes are just high enough that one has to really be looking in order to see the bicycles from the sidewalk until you get up close to our front door, then you just have to turn your head. From inside looking out, they are not an eyesore, either.
 
#9 ·
Ummm... use your garage.

Our garage is 22'x22', and we park two cars in it every day (here in North Dakota, it's prudent). But there is still a TON of usable space for storage. Here are some of the places I've built shelves in our garage:

This is the back wall:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4.../garage1-1.jpg

And obviously this is above the door:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4.../garage2-1.jpg

I don't have a photo, but the wall to the left of the overhead door has a set of plywood shelves that are 2 feet deep; the opposite wall (which has a window) has more metal shelving up high. As you see, we keep tubs of things out there: Christmas decorations, clothes that we only use for hunting season, kids' toys that I want to keep, spare blankets and pillows - stuff that takes up a lot of space, but I don't need to access very often.

Our bikes hang on the wall, out of the way.

We just bought a rooftop cargo box for our van, and I will be rigging up a cradle system to suspend that from the ceiling. I might do the same thing with the kayak that my DH thought we had to have (don't get me started on that one...)
 
#10 ·
Quote:

Originally Posted by nd_deadhead View Post
Ummm... use your garage.

Our garage is 22'x22', and we park two cars in it every day (here in North Dakota, it's prudent). But there is still a TON of usable space for storage. Here are some of the places I've built shelves in our garage:

This is the back wall:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4.../garage1-1.jpg

And obviously this is above the door:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4.../garage2-1.jpg

I don't have a photo, but the wall to the left of the overhead door has a set of plywood shelves that are 2 feet deep; the opposite wall (which has a window) has more metal shelving up high. As you see, we keep tubs of things out there: Christmas decorations, clothes that we only use for hunting season, kids' toys that I want to keep, spare blankets and pillows - stuff that takes up a lot of space, but I don't need to access very often.
Well, you know how builders like to save on space...you just don't want to know how small our two car garage is. DH has a honda accord, and we weren't sure we could fit a minivan in there. We had to go on a test drive with the car we wanted to see if it fit. And, it barely fits. In fact, when I was pregnant I had to have my DH pull the car into the driveway so I could make it around to the drivers side. It's that small. There are actually people in our subdivision who want to use their garage but can't because their cars don't fit in it. I wish I were kidding...

We do have some shelves in there right now, but it's holding all gardening supplies, planting, older paint and automobile supplies.
 
#11 ·
Quote:

Originally Posted by BCFD View Post

A 10x10 storage shed would work miracles for us, so have you ever considered that? We got rid of the lawn mower and re-hired a gardener after our first child was born


We have deed restictions against sheds like that. There are limitations on sheds that 'cannot be seen from the street' So, anything too big is pretty much out.


Will write more later baby needs me...
 
#12 ·
I live in Mexico, and as far as I know, no one has a basement here (they didn't when I was in San Diego, either. We're in earthquake territory, and most Mexican homes also have a pila under the house - basically a cistern to store extra water in case of an outage). We also don't have a garage. We have an outdoor service/laundry room (contains the pump for the pila, washer and dryer, and a laudry sink with washboard). There's extra room in there, as well as a big cupboard in the kitchen under the stairs and we use both of those for extra storage. So, in bad weather the bikes stay in the laundry room - otherwise, they're out in the back yard.
 
#13 ·
Quote:

Originally Posted by phatchristy View Post
The thing that is tough is there is no place for bikes, and other play equipment and stuff. DH used to have the lawnmower in the garage until he ran over the edge of a wheel (nice $80 repair). Now, it's in our small lanai (screened in porch--not pretty either). The kids don't have any bikes because we have no place to put them.
I hang stuff in our garage. Bikes, wet weather gear. Not a lawnmower. Do you have space along the side where the car doesn't go? You could hang stuff there or have wall/ceiling mounted shelves so the car can't hit them.

Like this
http://cn1.kaboodle.com/hi/img/a/0/0...AAAAAArd_g.jpg
http://images.builderssquare.com/Buy...ge_Ceiling.jpg

But there's no way two cars could fit in our garage, although it's supposed to be a two car garage.
 
#14 ·
Quote:

Originally Posted by Delicateflower View Post
I hang stuff in our garage. Bikes, wet weather gear. Not a lawnmower. Do you have space along the side where the car doesn't go? You could hang stuff there or have wall/ceiling mounted shelves so the car can't hit them.

Like this
http://cn1.kaboodle.com/hi/img/a/0/0...AAAAAArd_g.jpg
http://images.builderssquare.com/Buy...ge_Ceiling.jpg

But there's no way two cars could fit in our garage, although it's supposed to be a two car garage.
We basically have only maybe a foot/foot and a half around the cars. We do have a little bir more space on DH's car's side (since his car is shorter than our minvan). However, right now we have a shopvac, a ladder, some gardening equipment there. They of course had to put the a/c unit and our hot water heater in there as well, which cuts out a lot of space.

Your garage sounds like ours LOL. We are maybe one of a few who use our garage for two cars. In fact I don't know another family in our subdivision that uses theirs for cars.
:
 
#16 ·
we have restrictions also so we just have a large plastic box basically... only my husband can get the bikes in and out of it, during mowing season he just leaves them out because they have to come out to get the mower out. We tried hanging the bikes on the wall of the garage once we started having just one car parked in the garage (it's supposedly a two car garage, but we had to have one car parked completely against the wall so you could only get in and out one side and it could only be driven out after the other car was moved and it was still a very tight squeeze getting in the other car and only possible on both sides using a sliding door and for skinny people -I don't know who came up with these dimensions to define as a 'two car' garage but I think they must've meant it's the width of two cars), but there still isn't room for all of them and we ended up with more than a few accidents trying to get in and out of the car. Above the car we hang the kiddie pool.

We've gone through a couple of bins outdoors, this year we finally invested in an outdoor box that doubles as a bench seat to store balls/skates/summer outdoor stuff.
 
#17 ·
Where did you get that outdoor 'bench' thing. I've been thinking about getting something like that from our lanai.

I need to double check with the deed restriction what actually is allowed. I only know a full size shed is not because of what a neighbor went through with the association after he put one up and they demanded that he got rid of it (he spent thousands and was NOT happy about that!).

I used to LOVE living without a basement. That was before we had kids. We had such a minimalist/uncluttered home back then. It was like that up until the third kid. That seemed to be sort of the border of when we started having space issues.
 
#19 ·
Quote:

Originally Posted by phatchristy View Post
Where did you get that outdoor 'bench' thing. I've been thinking about getting something like that from our lanai.
The outdoor bench and the shed we got at costco... the sheds they have now are much bigger, so I don't know if they would work in our situation (with regards to the HOA... pretty much if it can't be seen it's okay, and since it's plastic with a floor it can be moved anyways, so it isn't treated the same as a metal or wood shed that is more like a permanent structure), we have a fence and the shed height is below that (6ft). The bench is similar to this, although I've seen them all over for a lot less than this: http://www.amazon.com/Suncast-DB9750...5788418&sr=8-9 ...I've seen wood ones also, like this: http://www.amazon.com/HOME-Home-Deck...5788535&sr=1-1

Yes, storage is definitely an issue... we don't even have strollers, and had to give up our bike trailer just because we have no place to keep those items. We are much more computer oriented and much less crafty purely because of space issues.
 
#20 ·
That is a GREAT idea...! We'd have to go with plastic since we'd keep it outdoors, however if we could combine it as a "bench" and use it for seating and perhaps put a table with it in our lanai I think it would work great. The only thing is I think we'd have to find one that locked for safety issues (and the kids wanting to get into it and empty the contents factor! LOL).
 
#21 ·
We have bicycle and car storage in the parkade of our complex, but no attic, basement, garage, shed, or outdoor space. The 4 of us live in a 1000 sf apartment and we're currently renting a storage locker
. I feel bad about it, but then I think: why should we have to cohabit with all the stuff that others shove into their "bonus" spaces? We probably need a larger home but we live in a wonderful community so that's how I justify paying $90/mo for the storage locker. We could easily live without the storage locker if dh didn't have business inventory, we didn't have clutter, we didn't have space-consuming hobbies like camping, I didn't have business equipment, etc. I'm hoping for improvement, but right now my priority is to make our everyday spaces functional and beautiful and mood-lifting
. My feng-shui book doesn't encourage using a storage locker, but says that it's better than living with your clutter.

BTW - I can't imagine my kids not having bikes. Even though we live in a rainy climate we store their bikes outside for convenience.

Also, if I had a garage I would try to get as much storage (for "outdoor items") from it as possible
.
 
#22 ·
Quote:

Originally Posted by phatchristy View Post
Yeah, well the 'use your garage' thing is out. DH most definitely is against it as well! That's what it seems like everybody does...yuck. We park our cars in the garage.

Though even our neighbor, who is one person in a house our size (we have 6-7 depending on if Grandma is here) uses HALF her garage. The other half is piled with stuff. Sigh.

The thing that is tough is there is no place for bikes, and other play equipment and stuff. DH used to have the lawnmower in the garage until he ran over the edge of a wheel (nice $80 repair). Now, it's in our small lanai (screened in porch--not pretty either). The kids don't have any bikes because we have no place to put them.
We have a basement but I consider it unusable for storage because of water issues.
Dh's bike is in the garage. Dd's bike is on the porch.
There is room for our one car but it is pretty cramped for anything else by now.

I like the idea of a wall or ceiling mount bike rack.
http://www.bikerackshops.com/groupga...FRPyDAodC0etCw

My parents have a large Rubbermaid deck box for outdoor storage.
 
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