With unexpected weather circling as it does in spring, preparing your backyard for humidity, pollen, and surprise storms is essential. From finding the perfect protective grill covers to adorning your prized adirondack with a properly fitted chair cover, there are many precautions you can take in the most uncertain season of the year – especially when it comes to convenient and versatile storage solutions.
Size it Up
Outdoor covers come in all shapes and sizes. From the large dimensions of tarps to the more precise measurements of sectional covers, size and shape matter when dealing with storage.
A relaxing day on your patio can turn on its head in an instant when unexpected weather arrives quickly, leaving outdoor furniture unprotected if covers are not readily available. In such instances, it’s crucial to have your covers handy – or else run the risk of ruining your outdoor possessions. That means covered loosely in the garage or tied up in tarps won’t do the trick.
Properly storing your covers requires a receptacle that’s easy to tuck away and grab at the drop of a hat. Storage bags are ideal for keeping your covers safe when they’re not needed and pulling them out when the bottom falls out – no matter the size of the cover.
Storage bags can also give fixed dimension to outdoor objects that might not otherwise fit in a perfectly proportioned space. Gardening tools, loose leaf hose pipes, and other accessories will find a fixed size conducive to proper storage.
For this storage system to function, you have to lay the groundwork for success. In this case, giving objects a fixed size acts as the building blocks for a successful system of organization. And with human error notwithstanding, systems of organization create happier, more efficient spaces to enjoy.
Color and Conquer
Color coordination is another proven method for keeping organizational systems efficient, especially as you develop a concise method for keeping outdoor living clutter in order. Different colored designated storage bags are perfect for keeping track of what’s what, allowing you to easily identify what each bag contains.
Designating a color for each category is the easy part. The only challenge? Identifying what the categories should be. Outdoor living areas contain a diverse myriad of things that don’t always mix. In dividing them into categories with a designated color, you have the ability to conquer the clutter.
Divide your outdoor living area into a set of categories. You can make your own, but these are a great place to start:
- Patio/Deck/Porch – These three areas go together in being the central locale for your outdoor living – making them apt to be grouped together as one designation in your storage bag color scheme. Store items such as chair cover sets, curved sofa covers, and other outdoor furniture covers in beige storage bags.
- Barbecue utensils, accent decor, accessories, and more in coffee storage bags.
- Garden/Lawn – Green is the perfect nature-inspired color for a storage bag that holds all your spring gardening tools, from watering cans to hand trowels.
- Your backyard pool can be designated by the color of the cool water. Blue is great for storing any aquatic utilities, like custom pool tarps, so that you may find them at a moment’s notice.
- Backyards are full of wildcards. Things that might not easily fit in any of the aforementioned categories can easily become their own by way of the color gray.
Label Envy
Labeling is your best friend in creating an organizational system with storage bags. Labeling helps to break your organization down further, creating a system not randomized but exact in its purpose.
Of course you can label your storage bags yourself. In doing that, however, you run the risk of having that label smudge off over time, compromising your organization system’s function. Many storage bags offer the option of personalization, allowing you to print exactly what will go inside the storage bag directly on the bag itself so that it can be easily identified.
Additionally, you might consider graphics as a way to easily recognize the bag when grouped in with an array of similar bags. A graphic printed cleanly onto the storage bag makes it easily distinguishable.
Systematic Automatic
As your system comes together, you might find a few kinks that need to be worked out. Many of these will find resolution over time, while others will require you to go back to the drawing board and rethink the process.
One common issue might arise in deviation of categories. You might find that your miscellaneous bags are taking over your designated storage area. In such a case, you might consider refining the criteria it takes to be included in that category and create a new category with a new color altogether.
In other cases, if storage bags are sparse, you can always condense the number of categories by trimming back how you are sorting your items. In doing this, your storage effort becomes more streamlined – creating a system that is more efficient and concise.
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