I was visiting my friend in her new house last week and helping her with storing a lot of things that turned up during her family’s move. If you’ve ever moved your household you know that there are a lot of unexpected discoveries—things you thought you had lost, old family knick knacks or photos, papers from your own school days that your mom saved, or a precious family quilt made by your grandmother that you thought was lost years ago.

This was the situation with my friend Amy. She and Ron had lived in their house for decades, raised their children there, and were downsizing now that the nest was empty. The attic yielded several surprises, and one of the closets offered up her grandmother’s quilt in a gold quilted garment bag. Luckily, the quilt had been protected from heat and cold by being stored in an inside closet and there was no sign of moth damage. We tucked it inside its own Spedalon Vacuum Storage Bag to give Amy peace of mind, knowing it would be protected between uses.

One of the problems with downsizing is that there is limited storage space. Moving from a 4 bedroom house to a two bedroom house is a huge change and calls for creative storage solutions! Amy had given away, donated, or disposed of practically an entire household of goods but she had a lot of things she needed to store and limited space. Two of her four children had left bedding and clothing at home while they were in college so she was actually storing possessions for 4 rather than 2.

Amy’s biggest problem was that she no longer had a room-sized walk-in closet equipped with drawers and shelves of various sizes. The closets in her new house would be great for a family of 2 or 3 but there was little room for the remnants of a family of 6! So we began by carefully sorting and folding the bedding and clothing then sealing them in Spedalon Vacuum Storage Bags.

Once they were compressed and safely sealed, we had to find a place for them. All of Amy’s shelf space was filled except for a narrow alcove about 18” wide, 24” deep and 26” high. We had stored the equivalent of two seasons’ bedding and clothing in several bags, most of which were too wide for that space. But…since we are both avid readers we immediately thought of stacking the bags as if they were books. That solved most of the problem and the rest of the bags were propped up along the back of the closet. Ta-da! Storage problems solved!

I had never thought of that particular way of stacking storage bags but it worked beautifully. Spedalon Vacuum Storage Bags proved to be perfect for all of Amy’s needs!