You’ve heard that it’s better to work smarter, but what does that mean? When it comes to home storage, it means making the most out of the space you have. Don’t get frustrated. Get more creative.
Hide Baskets Under the Bed
There’s plenty of dead space under your bed, but there are dust and germs under there too. Buy several small baskets and use them to store shoes, shirts, pants, etc. Since clothing may collect dust under there, lay a small piece of cloth over the top.
Hang an Organizer Over the Door
Like dead space, vertical space offers plenty more room for storage. Purchase an organizer that hangs over the door. You’ll find more space for your makeup, socks, shirts, etc. Even better, you won’t have to shuffle through drawers to find what you want.
Fix a Shelf
Scan your kitchen, living room, and bedroom for space between walls or home appliances. You don’t need a lot of space to add a shelf. Place a shelf next to the fridge and an adjacent wall, for example, to hold cookbooks and cooking utensils. Often, the shelf is as good as the parts used to attach it to a wall.
Find Staggered Shelves
Staggered shelves won’t overwhelm a room yet they offer additional storage space. The staggered models host shelves with more space on the bottom as it gets narrower at the top. You can spice up the color in a room by making your shelves multicolored.
Create a Display
You may have limited space in some areas of the home, such as the kitchen. It serves as an opportunity to create a display. It’s a fun and convenient way to maintain items without making your home messy or cluttered. Arrange larger pots, pans, and cooking utensils along the kitchen counter for a ‘chef’s corner’ appearance.
Hide the Storage
Maybe you don’t like the idea of having too many items in plain sight. You can get creative in hiding stored items with pieces of cloth or drapery. A waist-high side table may be great for storage, but its open design can be an eyesore. Find a decorative piece of cloth and wrap it around the table to hide stored items.
Have a Yard Sale
Maybe you have too much stuff and can benefit from giving away or selling items. Host a yard sale and make money selling your used items. You’ll find that it’s a lot easier to store your items when you have less.
Float Your Shelves
Traditionally, shelves are made to fit inside cabinets. But cabinets can be awfully obtrusive, so you could fit your kitchen or dining room with floating shelves. It’s one way you can dictate the size of your shelves and save money when renovating a space.
Install a Drop Ceiling
If you have added room above you, you can install a drop ceiling and use that space as a makeshift attic. Consider the value of having more storage space versus the cost of adding the drop ceiling.
3 Comments
Thanks for the great advice! We live in a nice home, but we have many possessions, and sometimes it gets difficult to find a place for all these things. We are also big fans of DIY, we often repurpose items from around the house and give them new lives. We have a similar under bed storage, but ours is made of old drawers, and we have installed small wheels on the bottom, so we can easily pull and push it without damaging the floor.
I love hidden storage, it really helps get rid of all the clutter in the visible areas of the house. We have a practice to spring clean the house every year, every room is checked, and all the items that usually pile up are being separated and sorted through – clothes, kitchen cutlery, books and documents, and everything else. We usually separate them in three categories – keep, donate, discard. It’s a very simple system and it works.
Great ideas! The idea of adding a dropped ceiling is ingenuous and I really like the storage solution of Hanging an Organizer Over the Door.