Or your garage, box room or outbuilding? What’s under the stairs or in the loft?

I ask this question because I’ve recently discovered that I’ve been using my attic to hide clutter.

While my rooms looked clear and my cupboards were tidy, I had been secretly stowing stuff above my ceiling.

This wasn’t intentional. It just happened.

“What shall we do with the air bed?” Stick it in the attic.

“Where on earth is this Christmas tree going to live?” There’s space in the loft.

“Do you need this lampshade anymore?” Maybe one day… I know where we can put it in the meantime.

It turns out that, without realising it, I’d filled every square inch of space in my attic with ‘just in case’ items, some ‘it might come in handy’ bits and all our seasonal decor stash.

To be clear, I didn’t realise the attic was so full because I never go up there – things are put away and forgotten about… until the next Christmas when we need to pull out some decorations.

Then I always think to myself that the attic could be better organised; it could be boarded out, shelved, or a loft ladder installed for easier access.

The closest I’ve come to organising the attic is buying lots of matching large storage bags that I’d carefully labelled. BUT, the clutter was still being stashed – just in a neater fashion.

Your version of my attic might be the cupboard under the stairs, a tiny box room, the entryway closet, the utility room, the mezzanine space or your garage. Wherever it is, if you’ve got spare space, you’ll probably store stuff there.

An issue arose this January when I was packing away my beloved festive adornments. They were stowed away as usual, but about a week later, we needed to get something important out of the attic.

Where is it? I know it’s up there somewhere.

It turns out that the item I was looking for could just about be seen from the attic hatch, but couldn’t be reached. It was in the far recesses of the eaves.

Everything else would need to come out of the attic before I could get to the one item I needed.

How frustrating.

As we hauled down bag after bag, box after box, it occurred to me just how much stuff we had been ‘tidying away’ in the attic. Things that might not have seen the light of day since they were first put there over 8 years ago

Looking at the piles of (albeit neatly stored) belongings, my husband and I agreed; we didn’t want to put them back in the attic. We were going to clear out the items we haven’t used and find storage within the house for the rest.

It turns out that so many ‘just in case’ items had been hiding up there; things that I’d since replaced, not realising that I already had one. The whole aim of keeping the item in the attic was to avoid having to buy it again. Oops.

Instead, keeping items for ‘one day’ then forgetting about them actually turned out to be both a waste of space and a waste of money.

There were duplicates: pillows, sheets, duvets, air beds. I have all of these in the guest room, so why did I need more? Plus, empty boxes. Has anyone else kept the box their laptop was delivered in? I’ve owned the device for 5 years, I’m probably not going to return it now.

And my Christmas decorations stash was out of hand. No one needs more tinsel than they can physically fit on the tree, right? Many of my decorations don’t even make it into the house at Christmas because there’s nowhere left to hang or display them.

It was time to be brutal with my collection of decs and let go of the ones I didn’t use this year (or last year, for that matter) and those I know I won’t use next year. And the fairy lights that I know are broken. (I’d actually looked up the replacement bulbs in November, and they’re no longer made, but that didn’t stop me from putting the lights back into the attic, hoping they could be fixed one day.)

After a quick clear out of the boxes and bags, deciding what to keep rather than what to get rid of, we only had about a third of those forgotten items in the ‘keep’ pile. These could be stored in drawers and cupboards in the house, where we could actually access them easily.

And now I no longer feel the weight of the bags and boxes above me, both physically and metaphorically. It’s wonderful to feel back in control of the things I have chosen to keep, compared to the shock of all the stuff we’d secretly stowed in that attic.

Do you know what’s in your attic? Could you cut down on duplicates or ditch some seasonal stuff?

While clearing a whole attic space (or garage or box room) might feel daunting, it can be quite satisfying to tackle it all in one hit. Getting rid of those ‘just in case’ items and empty boxes is an easy win.

It’ll spur you on to keep decluttering, only putting back the items that you truly couldn’t be without. And if they’re that important, why not have them in your home rather than stored out of sight?

Good luck as you venture into your storage space and start sorting your stuff.