We’ve never had a detailed storage plan for Calypso. The boat is small enough that general categories seem to work reasonably well, particularly in the main salon. I do think a storage plan is a good idea though. In classes at Cruisers University, I’ve encouraged my students to at least do a rough sketch of the storage areas available to them on their boats and figure out what goes where.

While general categories are super helpful as an overview, dialing in specifics can be incredibly time-saving. It’s one thing to know that any canned goods we use on a regular basis are in the starboard aft settee locker; it’s another level of usefulness entirely to know that I’ve got 4 cans of diced tomatoes, 2 of crushed, and 1 of stewed. And really, knowing that tools are in one of 2 lockers isn’t as much help as knowing that the screwdrivers are in the quarterberth aft end and the drill bits for the electric drill (including bits to serve as an electric screwdriver) are in the port side aft settee locker.

To this end, we’ve gotten almost everything back off of Calypso for the winter work. Perfect time to make up a detailed storage plan AND inventory it all. It’s a 3-part process.

Step 1 is this storage plan above. Each colored box represents a storage space on board. The water tanks are about the only thing not shown on here! It took a little bit of time to identify each spot and then diagram it; the spaces are sort of scale size.

Step 2 is to assign general categories. While some are well-established, others are in flux. The light blue boxes in the main salon have traditionally been all food storage. The “gfrigo” and “gstove” house the pots and pans. Dark green in the forepeak is the clothes locker. Figuring out the specifics for tools, toys, and spare parts is a work in progress. We’ve got a Google sheet that identifies what goes with which space, meaning we can know at a glance that LS2 is where we’ve stashed the engine oil change kit complete with extra oil and filters.

Then comes the inventory. I’ve been using an app on the phone called Ship’s Stores (both Apple and Android) which my friend Joy Barranis made. It does take a bit of set up, creating each of your storage locations and then adding in the goods. The search function is really robust, which I very much appreciate. I can tell at a glance that I’ve got 2 jars of Trader Joe’s Bruschetta in the deep pantry (PD) and another 2 in the starboard forward locker (SSL3). Yeah, it’s only as good as I am with keeping it updated - so this is a goal for myself. I’m practicing in the house this winter as we try to eat down all the pantry goods that came off the boat!

We’re in the early stages of this level of organization. Right now, we’re using it as a guide to go through things in storage and put them in boxes corresponding to storage areas (the screen porch is an interesting place right now). I think it will be very very handy to know what’s going where when we move back aboard - and it will be REALLY handy to be able to find things easily when we’re sailing.

That’s the theory anyway. Any guesses as to how we’ll do?