True story -- Mice had invaded my home. Now I've admitted it - it's there on the page for everyone to see. A number of errors on my part caused things to ultimately fall apart, but the most crucial one of them all was my lack of organization. What number of people do you know personally who can't park in their garage at home? It could be that you are one of them -- just like I was. The large number of items in my garage became animal homes.

We'll get back to that story in a little while, but suffice it to say I was a little lost at that point, and needed to find my way. I was in the library looking up how to deal with rat infestations when it struck me how the library had organized everything by using movable shelving units -- The kind with levers on the edge that make the shelves rotate if you crank them. I knew that a similar tactic could be used in my situation. Matter of fact, this was how it -- my quest for shelving -- got started.

I started thinking about my van with shelving -- something like those commercials you see about van bins shelving. It got me thinking that I could put those in my own van.

At this point my garage was filled with a mountain of wood. I had to tackle that one first. To do so, I found out that the best thing was some heavy-duty steel shelving. Looking back, this was probably one of my better decisions. Those racks held up under a LOT of load. As opposed to before where the wood was scattered everywhere, the wood would now have a place.

Organizational problems were showing up in our home office, so I looked into a number of home shelving systems like shelving by design. This brand was exactly what I was looking for. What pleased me the most was that aside from having all of my records and files together, they were also visually attractive.

Also, I was able to get some great wire shelving units for our hall and bedroom closets. I managed to get some of the shelves up in very little time and still had room for all the clothes, like coats and shirts, that I needed to hang up.

The new shelves meant I could keep articles like belts, hats and shoes off the floor.

We had to get assistance for the creatures in our garage. Initially, we completely emptied out our garage. We did actually keep some things, but the majority of stuff was discarded. I kid you not! Our pictures were even ruined. Well a lot of them anyway. It was easy to put stuff back in the garage in an organized manner since we already had the shelving set up ahead of time. Lastly, we found out that one of the triggers was an open bag of dog food.