Blue i Style

Creating an Organized & Pretty, Happy Home

Five Minute Friday· Organizing

Quick Family Room Storage Tip

Our basement family room is one hard working space – playroom for the kids, movie theater for the family, party space for family and friends {especially during football season}, mom and dad’s quiet escape and tv binge-watching space after bedtime, and sometimes even dining room {shhhh… don’t tell the kids, because they aren’t allowed to eat down there}. 
One space that serves so many functions is bound to have storage challenges, and I’ve been trying to tackle them one at a time. 
Family Room Storage Tip

Our basement family room has a comfy turn couch and a fireplace in the corner. Between the couch and the fireplace, I used to stack a couple of soft and shaggy floor pillows, and a couple of blankets. Nothing fancy, but simple and convenient. It was good while it lasted…

Family Room Blankets

But as the kids got older, the pile of blankets got taller and taller. The boys have lots of special blankets and quilts that their grandmas has made for them that they love to use when watching movies, but we needed to find a better way to store them all. 
What to do with piles of blankets in the family room
In addition, my mom also made the boys their own sleeping bags, which they adore! We were storing them on the floor of the toy closet in the basement, but that meant that I was constantly moving them out of the way so that we could open the drawers or step in to reach toys on the higher shelves.
Sleeping bag storage tip
After brainstorming how to store these bulky blankets and sleeping bags, I realized that we could be taking advantage of the space on either side of our basement bar. I’ve always found it a bit odd the way our bar just floats on the wall, rather than spanning from side to side, but since we have that extra space, we might as well put it to work.
Basement bar with extra space on sides

I made note of the measurements and went in search of baskets large enough to contain the pillows and sleeping bags. It proved challenging to find big baskets that weren’t way too expensive, but I finally realized that I might have better luck looking at laundry hampers rather than generic storage baskets. BINGO! I found grey laundry hampers {affiliate link} that were just the right size and had the added benefit of lids.

Use hampers to store blankets and pillows in the family room

The two sleeping bags fit perfectly into one of the hampers, and the entire stack of blankets fit nicely in the other. The baskets fit perfectly on either side of the bar, and blend in nicely with the gray walls.

Laundry baskets to store blankets and pillows in family room
The hampers are just steps away from the couch where we watch tv and movies as a family, so it’s very convenient to grab blankets when we need them, without having them out all the time. I love a quick and easy storage solution, don’t you?!
Next up on the family room to do list is hanging my collection of film reels on that bright orange wall!

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