DIY paint supply storage

I think that it’s easy to believe that once you create a home you love, you can sit back and relax. Because you are done.

But in our experience, the best solutions for our home are constantly evolving and changing. What works for us right now may not work for us in a year, or five years or 10 years.  Heck – it may not work next week.

The truth is – it’s important to create a home that works for you now. So that means being open to re-evaluation.

Which is exactly what we’ve been working on doing in the barn.

Particularly the storage area of the barn garage that we organized within an inch of its live back in 2014. As DIYers, we have a LOT of stuff. And that stuff has to find a home in an organized way. And while the space worked well for us three years ago, it was no longer functioning well.

Because we were focused on other things – living in a tiny space, building a house, moving and settling into the new house – the organization at the barn had been long since forgotten. And the piles of junk with no other home were making us both crazy.

So, the barn project became a matter of necessity. Because we needed to have our tools, garden supplies, paint and other projects accessible.

Right now we are in the middle of this project – and it didn’t take long to see the light at the end of the tunnel. One long day of going through every single thing in the barn (again), purging all the junk that shouldn’t have ended up there anyway, and a truckload to Goodwill was a great way to make the barn feel like it could actually work for us again.

I wish we would have done this ages ago. I wish we would have stayed laser focused on staying organized. But that’s not what we do.

And as we started to put things back in place, we realized we really needed a new solution for paint.

It was out of control. There are no before pictures, because it would cause nightmares.

We are still using the squeeze bottles for paint – but we had a lot of other paint supplies to store. Full gallons of paint, brushes, spray paint, stains and oils – everything needed a home. As we reassessed the barn organization, we realized we could easily build a simple storage unit for everything in the room that formerly stored our washer and dryer. (The washer and drier were moved to the new house in the summer so it’s just been empty since.)

This gave us lots of vertical space. Vertical space is perfect for this, because you can store more and you can actually see everything. Plus, the room is heated/cooled – which means that the paint should be happy there.

Since we didn’t really didn’t want to spend any money, Ryan rustled up a simple storage shelf using scraps of wood and plywood that we had around the barn. Some of the shelves were actually repurposed from Henry’s toddler bed. (Yep. We took it apart since he’s no longer using it.)

Ryan secured the shelf to the wall for stability and then we loaded it up.

I was even able to repurpose the rolling laundry cart into a spray paint cart.

This isn’t one of those perfectly coiffed spaces and it still has plenty of dust (sorry, not sorry). But it’s also a super practical space that actually works for us. Now.

And I’m perfectly fine with that. I can actually find what I need, so I’m happy.

And who knows? This space may need to be reimagined in a few years anyhow. So let’s just enjoy it while we can.

Do you regularly re-evaluate spaces in your home?