apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

is it just me, or is anyone else disturbed that the woman in the first photo doesn't seem to have any feet?

I was thinking the same thing!

That Domino image is the classic case of good photography turning a sow's ear into a silk purse.

lol patrick..

cold case files in my home? creepy.

Why do so many of these posts about organization try to make things so difficult?

"We love the mystery of each box not having a label but instead just a simple, stenciled number that can correspond to an organizing system."

I don't want to consult a list to find the Christmas lights or remember that all the 300 series corresponds to grad school info. Please, let's think about how this all works. Don't most pro organizers suggest the see-through box?

A nice little typed label works fine or you can get all Etsy with something cute, if you must.

A wall of Cardboard Bankers boxes? really?...yeah, can't wait to show it off to all my friends at my next cocktail party...feet optional-of course.

As a professional organizer I tend to agree with Palmetto. For off-site storage facilities (which I don't heartily encourage), an inventory list is a fabulous solution to knowing what's in your unit. But for on-site storage, like the example above, it is often easier to label what is in the box with a simple label or neat hand-writing. For disorganized people, updating the contents of the box and then finding the list and updating that as well can be quite daunting.

Palmetto, as a professional organizer, I would recommend either a see-through box OR a good easy-to-read label; either one can work fine.

And as j-girl says, while inventory lists have their places, I'm generally looking for the easiest possible answer, and that usually means labeling the container with the contents, not with a number. (But there are always exceptions.)

I don't think a list would be such a problem if you were storing items that you don't regularly access. You obviously wouldn't want a solution like this to organize clothes that you regularly wear. But it would certainly work for Christmas lights and holiday items and long term, rarely accessed storage items.

The ONLY reason this setup is seen as visually organized and acceptable is because the boxes are all exactly uniform, down to the numbers and the spacing of the boxes. If you started sticking labels on the boxes, it would look like a jumble of ugly cardboard boxes again. And if you could see the contents, it would look like a big disjointed mess.

It looks organized because everything is visually identical.

Well, that's why I don't consider my storage containers a design element. And nicely done labels don't have to look ugly. No uglier than banker's boxes.

I know--let's wrap them like Christmas or birthday packages with big bows! Who cares if you need to get what's inside!

There is really nothing you can make a "compelling graphic" enough to hide the fact these are cardboard boxes. It's like putting chapstick on a pig.

It's also hardly normal for a home to require so much divided storage out in the open. Either you have it in a closet/basement/attic, or if you don't have adequate storage, you don't care what it looks like, or you have less and you put it in nicer containers.

The cardboard boxes on open shelves would not seem out of place if you have a room you rather consider an office or a studio because you actually work there and need file/material storage, not because you are storing your Christmas lights and 29 other boxes worth of household crap. If you actually have that much crap that you infrequently use, and boxes on open shelves is your only option, you have too much crap. Have a yard sale or something, bring it to goodwill, rent a storage unit, or move somewhere with a lot of closets. Numbering your boxes or labeling them will not save you.

or she could just suspend a beautiful white curtain in front of the boxes and pull it aside when she needs to get something.

She has the curtains wrapped around her ankles.

Johnny P. thanks for making me laugh.

I'm a giant fan of boxes. Was always the stacking/clutter type person until I discovered the greatness of wicker baskets. Then I got Ikea square shaped shelving and it was boxes galore. Now everything is in boxes and let me tell you, it makes moving easy as a snap.