This fall, after much dreaming and less planning, my husband and I moved from a one-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn to a much larger space in New Jersey, which I truly believe is the loveliest state in the Union, in no small part because my area of Jersey is filled with actually-good thrift stores, estate sales, and antique shops. I can hardly walk down the street without running into something I want to buy—a vase shaped like corn, a pair of ceramic mallards, an Irish wool sweater.

In my life as a city girl, all of these things would have been shoved to the back of an overstuffed closet, or left in the space we called a foyer but was really just part of the living room. Here, though, I have a bedroom closet, a guest-bedroom closet, a coat closet, a linen closet—it’s a lot of closets! Attached to our apartment is a storage space the size of our old Brooklyn bedroom—not a fully finished interior space, but clean and dry, and easily accessible. I am determined, in 2025, to turn it into a neatly organized, thoughtfully used extension of my home and a repository for Facebook Marketplace treasures I want to swap out seasonally.

I think the plan will be to get and build several sturdy sets of shelves, ideally made out of resin or steel, at the local hardware store and invest in matching, heavy-duty plastic bins I can pack evenly and label. From there, I’m going to sketch out a floor plan, turning each set of shelves into its own zone: one set will be devoted to clothes, so that I don’t find myself, as I have been for the last too-many years, overwhelmed by piles of sweaters when I’m trying to find a bathing suit and vice versa. Another will hold holiday decor (I live in a town that goes big for Halloween and Christmas, and I want to hold my own), and another can be for stuff my husband swears he’s going to finally clear out of his parents’ basement.

Tools, specialty cleaning supplies, furniture I want to have recovered, paper towels from Costco—it’s all going to have a home in the storage unit. If I get really ambitious, I’m going to buy a ladder, climb up onto said ladder and mount storage racks from the ceiling, to hold cords and car-related items.

Could I simply be…not the kind of person who acquires so much stuff? Sure! But I’ve spent most of my adult life watching Antiques Roadshow and really believing I’m going to be the person who finds a $500,000 table at a yard sale, if only I had a place to put it while I figure out how to get in touch with those blonde twins who know everything about furniture.

Now, I do.

Top photo courtesy Getty Images

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