If you’ve got a lot of stuff stashed away in storage racking and shelving units you’re already halfway to being able to find everything you need quickly and easily. Piles of cardboard boxes are a nightmare to search through if you’re not sure which box the item you’re after is in. Anyone who has spent a long day moving house and then gone to the new kitchen for a well-earned cup of tea only to realise that the mugs could be at the bottom of any one of a dozen boxes will agree with that wholeheartedly.

Having an organisational system for your shelving space goes one step further than simply making things much tidier and more accessible. It can be as simple or as complex as you need it to be. If you’ve got a lot of things in storage, you might want to keep fairly detailed records of what was put where. If not, just having an idea where you put the DIY tools and where you put the recipe books could be enough.

Either way, it’s good practice to label boxes and shelving units. It won’t take very long if you do it when you store the items in the first place and it could save you a lot of time and frustration in the long run. For most of us, just labelling boxes or individual storage space spaces ‘Fishing Gear’ or ‘Paints and Paint Brushes’ is a very good idea. It’ll help you find things and also make it easier for other people to put stuff back in the right places.