https://www.bin-store.com/blog

This past week, I tackled a huge DIY project, and painted my house. It was the first time I ever painted anything since I was a kid, and the first time I had to do it on my own. To say I was ill-prepared would be the understatement of the year.

Besides all the technique issues I ran into, there were several things I wasn’t ready for:

• The numerous supplies I would need
• Where I would store those supplies
• How I would clean up

Along with the paint itself, I had to purchase:

• Brushes, rollers, and sponges—more of them than I can count, since I went through so many
• Primer
• Paint thinner
• Sticks for stirring the paint
• Tape
• Gloves
• Steel wool and other clean-up items
• Plus quite a few other odds and ends I can’t think of off the top of my head

After I bought all these items, I realized I had a problem. I had nowhere to put them. True, a lot of people would just opt for their garage, but I live in at tiny house (literally), so that wasn’t an option. They needed to go outdoors or in my outdoor storage, but I couldn’t just stash them in a pile. After all, if the brushes or sponges got dirty, they wouldn’t be much use to me.

Thankfully I had a couple large plastic tubs which I had saved from some other project. I was able to put all the paints and primers in one of them, and the other was sufficient for holding most of my remaining supplies. A few still wound up in a plastic bag though.

One thing I didn’t have which would have also come in handy would have been a small paintbrush storage container. I wouldn’t have needed anything fancy—just a general purpose small plastic bin would have worked. Some of my brushes for detail work got damaged since I had them thrown in with larger supplies. A couple also got misplaced right when I needed them.

As for cleanup, it would have been great if I had a bin for my brushes and sponges as they were drying out (I hung some of the brushes, but there were a few that didn’t need to dry out that way). Instead, I just ended up setting them on a newspaper—not a great option.

Usually I am pretty well prepared for my projects, especially where bins are concerned, but this was an example of a time when I got in over my head with a project without really knowing what it was going to entail.

And what do you know? Of course one of the main things I was missing was a set of plastic storage containers. So I learned my lesson. If you are preparing for a DIY project and you know that you are bound to be under-stocked, you can pretty much wager on a few plastic totes coming in handy. Next time I’ll be better prepared.