The Easiest (and Cheapest) Ways to Turn Your Attic Into Useful Storage Space

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If you own a home with an unfinished attic, you’ve probably thought about all that precious space and how you might make it more useful. Your attic already serves an important purpose in temperature and moisture regulation in the house, of course, but that doesn’t mean it can’t do more. If you’ve got the budget, you can transform an attic into a bedroom or office space, or a crisp, well-lit storage option.

If you don’t have the budget to really build out your attic, though, you can still make it into a more useful space, even if it’s small or slightly scary. With just a few modest purchases (and possibly some sweat equity), you can make your attic an ideal storage space.

Install easy, modular flooring on the attic's floor

Your first step towards making your attic useful is to make it safe to walk around. Even if your attic is shallow and standing up straight is impossible, having a stable surface will reduce your chances of falling through the ceiling.

Putting down plywood or oriented strand board (OSB) is a cheap and relatively easy option, but it’s also labor-intensive and pretty permanent. If you want a faster solution, floor panels like these from Attic Dek are sized to fit most standard joist spacings and are designed to just snap together, allowing you to quickly drop a floor into place without needing to cut them. They come with screws, and it’s a good idea to secure them in place, but if you just need a temporary floor that can bear weight (up to 250 pounds) you can just click them into place and bolt them down later.

Add no-wiring lights to the attic's ceiling

If your attic isn’t wired up or lacks light fixtures, you don’t need to hire an electrician and spend a mountain of cash. Just pick up one or two of these rechargeable ceiling lights and stick them to the ceiling or overhead joist (literally—you place a magnetic sticker on the ceiling and that holds the light in place—no screws required). It’s motion-activated, so every time you haul yourself up into the attic, the light will come on and save you from stumbling about in the dark.

Install adjustable storage that fits the space

Once you have a sturdy, safe floor in your attic, you can start installing storage options. You could, of course, just pile up some boxes or bins and call it a day, but you can do a lot better than that without breaking the bank:

• Installing some hanging rods designed for slanted surfaces (like an attic ceiling or rafters) will give you the option of hanging clothing or storage bags without cluttering up the floor.

• A few cheap, adjustable shelving units like this one can add all the shelf space you need to keep bins of stuff organized and off the floor, making it easy to store or retrieve items.

• If your attic is tight and trusses make it difficult to store anything, you can install some truss-friendly shelving. This can be a relatively easy DIY job involving screwing some support brackets into the trusses (as seen here). If you don’t have a floor in your attic, you have to avoid placing heavy storage boxes or bins directly on insulation—compressed insulation isn’t very effective. You can purchase some truss brackets that support plastic bins or other storage boxes off the floor.

Install a way to transport your stuff into the attic

Once you’ve got storage, you need a way to get stuff up into the attic, which can be more challenging than you expect. Carrying awkward, heavy boxes up flimsy, pull-down attic stairs is a recipe for accidents, so consider rigging up some mechanical assistance. You can spend a fair amount of money on a fancy lift system that will make bringing stuff up to your attic pretty easy, but if that’s too rich for your blood, you could opt for a simpler winch system that will allow you to haul up to 440lbs of stuff up there at a time. If that’s still a little too much, you could also opt for a classic pulley system, using good old-fashioned mechanical advantage to get your stuff up into the attic.

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