Loving The Space Bag

We have these two mats that we bought last time we lived here so that when people came to visit they would have something to put on the tatami mats to sleep on. They are about twin bed sized but thinner and fold into thirds. Normally in a Japanese style house the tatami room has a big closet in it that the mats and bedding go in everyday after everyone gets up. Because this house doesn't really have a separate tatami room (it is just off the living room but not really separate, we don't have that big closet and finding a place to store these mats where they won't get dusty or buggy has been an issue for me.

I found the Original Space Bag at the store and thought I would give it a try. The jumbo size looked like it might fit one of these mats in it so I bought two of them to try it out. Since it was a combo package, each one came with an large one as well so I figured I could use those ones for our sleeping bags.

Back story: this house actually has quite a bit of storage space, but the issue is the biggest areas are 1. the storage area in the open garage (which locks but is subject to humidity and heat and is not air tight to bugs or mold) and 2. the laundry room area off the back of the house (which is also very hot and humid but seems to have less of a bug issue). So the stuff in the storage area outside has to be able to handle the weather and can't be anything that we are worried about bugs or anything. So far, we have yard equipement, empty boxes that we have to keep, and some camp chairs, or pop up shade tent and our golf clubs out there. The laundry room has our bikes, our dive stuff, some sports stuff, tools that won't rust or don't have electric parts, all the boxes of stuff that I am donating or selling at the swap meet, and the laundry stuff. I would like to be able to store more out there but I won't be able to until we get some of the donation stuff out of there. Anyhow, I didn't want to put any clothes, mats or sleeping bags out in either area without having a way to keep them from molding or getting bugs. So this limits quite a bit what can go where and finding places in the house for all the stuff we have to store has been fun. End of back story.

So anyhow, I decided we could put the mats under the guest bed in the office. Thing is that the cat is in that room and I didn't want them to get dusty or too much infected with kitty germs (haha). So these bag things work great in that aspect. Now the kicker on these bags is that you vacuum out the air and it makes the mats super small (I can actually stack both of them on top of each other under the guest bed (which has the smallest clearance of the two beds)). They won't get dustmites or allergens or even mold because there is no air in there. We put the sleeping bags in the other two bags and sucked the air out of them and now they are so small I can put them both in one tote and store them in the closet.

I might end up finding some more of those bags and putting lots of other stuff in them. I am thinking I could probably reduce my 3 totes of winter clothes down to one...it would be heavy but it would only be one....we'll see.

Anyhow, I just wanted to tell you that even though I felt like I was stepping back to the seventies with these things, they work awesome and if you are cramped for space, and/or have weather issues that make storage tricky....these things are the bomb!!!