Where do I keep it all

Well, this is not going to be a pretty post. And I certainly don't claim to be the most organized person, in fact I mostly feel one step ahead of chaos. But for what it's worth, here is where I store it all. Actually, here is some of the places I store it all, I have things tucked in everywhere, and that is very hard to photograph.

First off, the most obvious places, the china cabinets and side boards.

In this side board I have quite a bit of the smaller dishes in Petit Point and the large china platters are stored in each of the doors, as well as a few of the larger silver serving pieces.

In the other side board I store my Tranquillity china and most of my Richelieu in the doors at each end. In the drawers I have an assortment of odds and ends and in the bottom drawer I have linens. Mostly smaller tablecloths and some napkins.

After that, the bulk of my stuff is stored in totes and on shelves. There are recesses on each side of our fireplace (for wood) that holds a couple of totes each. At one end is my Vanborough and a tote full of linen tablecloths and at the other end is the Belmont and the Monteigne china.

The sets are the easiest to keep track of, the silver trays, bowls, candleholders, chafing dishes, cake stands, etc is much harder. I've recently devised a system, crude, but it seems to work. I put a sheet of paper with a letter on it in the end of the tote and then I write down what's in the tote on a piece of paper with the corresponding letter as the heading. I keep all the papers in one book and just need to look through my lists to see which tote the item I want is in. I used to have to pull out all the totes until I found what I wanted.

I guess I should actually show my china cabinets. lol 

I keep most of my set of Lavender Rose in a kitchen cupboard. It's the one we usually pull out for impromptu tablesettings.

The rest is on shelves in two different storage rooms. Unfortunately, we don't have a basement, only a four foot crawl space which is alright for seasonal items only. Some of the shelving is too hard to get a good picture of, but here's one to give an idea of what a mess they all are.

Well, that's pretty much my system, if it can be called a system. I hope it's of some help to someone, but I feel more like I'm needing help.
AT