Tip Dude writes his best tips on replacing those ghetto crates you’ve been using since you were in college. So now you’ve got an apartment and maybe even a home. You might even have furniture. But if you’re anything like Tip Dude, you’re moving every few years and you hate driving U-Haul trucks (and hate lugging furniture up and down stairs too). How do you upgrade your storage without adding to your collection of heirloom furniture?

• Wash the Milk Crates - If you’ve been using milk crates to store stuff, they’re probably dusty and smell like mold. Take everything out of them and hose them down. Give them a good clean. Milk crates are very very light and strong. You’ve stopped storing clothes in them, but you should probably continue using them to store old college textbooks that you didn’t toss, or to store tools. Consider lining them with a fabric if you intend to use them for shelves in your room, instead of just storage. Tip Dude doesn’t have any tips on how you can buy milk crates legally, but you might find them on eBay or your local community re-use list.
• Staple File Boxes - Yes, you can get cardboard boxes from grocery stores for free, but they are the wrong size and often have egg stains on them. So, spring for the multi-pack Staples cardboard archival file boxes. They’re about $8 for a pack of four, maybe even less on sale. Use them for papers, bills and books, but also for random stuff that you often need to keep together. Tip Dude has one of those file boxes full of CPUs (the collection), and another one that has in it all the bathroom supplies that he bought on sale.
• Sterilite Plastic Drawers - These are great. You get them at Target. They are very light, and very easy to move. When moving them, tape the drawers shut with packing tape. They’re good enough to pass for regular furniture in an apartment. Tip Dude has several that he uses to store shirts, underwear, computer parts and office supplies.
• Rubbermaid Storage Bins - Don’t get the cheap ones that might shatter when the weather is cold or when you are trying to move from one apartment to the next. When you buy them, try bending the plastic see if it is flexible. The flexible ones are better. When buying those, try to buy several of the same size, so they can be neatly stacked up. Usually these are not see-through. Tip Dude uses these to store out-of-season clothes and shoes. He also has one that he uses to keep snacks in the house, like a tuck-box.
• Stackable Hoppers - You’ll sometimes find these at the local dollar store. Tip Dude has a few on his desk for the annoying little things that seem to clutter up one’s desk, such as safety pins, receipts, paper clips, binder clips, scissors, nail clippers, cough drops and Tums. Don’t buy too many of these or your room would look like a Radio Shack or a workshop store.
• Wooden Wine Crates - You will often find these discarded by the liquor store. They’re usually actual wood, not fibreboard. That means they’re made out of better material than majority of furniture you’ll see in a discount furniture store. The trouble is that they are usually the size of twelve bottles of wine and may have nails in them. But if you’re creative, you can build a shelf system out of these crates in no time. You can also sand them down, stain and varnish them if you like. It’ll give your apartment a kind of cool industrial look. These crates are sturdy, and will support a good weight - but do not drop them; because they’re actual wood, they’ll splinter or shatter.
• Magazine Files - The ”in” tray is a dumb thing to have on your desk, because you just keep piling stuff in there and eventually it becomes a overflowing pile and falls all over the floor. Instead of an “in” tray, Tip Dude has a magazine file. When a bill comes in, it gets stashed vertically in the file, so that the most recent bill is always to the left of the box. Filing vertically also makes it easy to see at a glance where that medical bill from last month is sitting. Another great advantage is that the magazine file physically prevents you from adding more paper to it than it will hold: you have to either buy another magazine file, or you have to clean it out and start over.
• Hanging Behind-The-Door Hooks - Get these from Target also. They’re meant for dorm rooms, but that they’re indispensible in small apartments. Put one on your door to store coats and suits. Put one on the bathroom door for towels. Put one in the workshop for all kind of tools. Put one in the office for spare computer cables. Because you hang them on the door, it’s easy to move them from one apartment to the next. Don’t bother with the stick-on or screw-in varieties of hooks. They come off. And your landlord gets mad because of the huge chunk of plaster that will be missing after they come off.
• Hanging Hampers or Laundry Bags - Laundry bags are great for garment storage. Because they’re usually wire mesh, you can see what’s in it at a glance. You can use them for clothes, plush toys, handbags, towels, clean sheets and basically anything soft and not particularly perishable. Hanging hampers are also good, and if you hang them right you could also use them for shoes, pillows (not in the same hamper as shoes), dirty laundry, or just random clutter you really don’t want on your bed.
• 1Mason Jars - Those are great. Everyone seem to know what they are, but don’t know where to get them. But don’t despair, you can usually find them at yard sales or buy one from Daisy May’s BBQ USA on 45th St. and 11th Ave. in Manhattan, where they serve excellent sweet tea in a mason jar. Mason jars are great for storing coins, pens, and other random nic-nacs like glass beads, marbles, sea shells and sea pebbles you found on the New England shore. Just don’t drop them or they’ll shatter. Certainly don’t put them in a hanging basket!
• Bonus Easter Point. Easter Baskets or Hanging Baskets - These are usually cheap after Easter, on sale. The wire mesh ones and the weaved wicker ones aren’t bad. You can also get hanging pots meant for plants. The advantage of these is that you can create space in places that would otherwise be wasted space. For example, string several baskets on a heavy duty string across the corner of one room. You’ll instantly get several small pockets of space that you can use to store small items without wasting wall space or shelf space(and without having to install permanent shelves on the walls). Be careful though to anchor the hanging strings very securely to the wall. No, a screw-in hook even with plugs won’t cut it. You should either sink an anchor into the masonary wall, the window skirting, or you should loop it around a heavy piece of furniture such as a bedpost. Even so, you should not hang baskets directly over where people are generally sitting or sleeping.

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