One thing Pandemic has taught Americans is that we do not have enough storage space in our homes. Whether in family groups or alone in a home with your stuff, pandemic reinforced the realization that either there were too many things, or too many people, or both in your home. It’s a lot easier to declutter stuff than people, but even if you’ve carefully pared-down, being able to store what’s left efficiently will help you have more usable living space.
How to Make Room for More Storage Space in Your Home: Build Higher Cabinets
Millions of Americans have fallen in love with learning how to not only cook their own foods, even baking homemade sourdough! What this means, though, is a great deal more kitchen equipment. One of the best ways, if you have the means, to increase household storage in general and kitchen storage in specific is to revamp or replace your cabinets in the kitchen so that they reach all the way to the ceiling. That extra foot and a half on the top of the cabinet is a waste of space otherwise! With the help of a three-step ladder, your kitchen becomes capable of storing far more.
Use Bed Risers
While your ancestors probably felt a box spring was necessary to have a comfortable bed, modern beds do not have this issue. If, therefore, you want to use bed risers and get a platform, you won’t have to pole vault into bed, and yet will reclaim a great deal of space. Consider a frame with sixteen or eighteen inches underneath. That amount of space can hold large storage boxes. You could clear out of season clothing from your closet, or reclaim some pantry space!
How to Make Room for More Storage Space in Your Home: Smart Furniture Storage
With increasingly small apartments being used in large cities, furniture storage options are becoming common. An ottoman, for example, can hold a twin sized mattress folded within it. With the use of piano springs, a modern style Murphy Bed can fold into a couch, or even a bookcase. Engineers are getting increasingly creative with the applications for strong hinges, hidden drawers, and even hydraulics!
Convert Your Garage
Often people think they have room for storage in their garage, or their cars, but not both. You can move your car into a modular garage to make room for more storage space. After you’ve decluttered your spaces, and have figured out what you need to keep, then you can determine what things specifically need storage. The concept of a modular garage is that it has specialty spaces for individual groups of items of projects. For example, instead of storing boots in several different bedrooms, or in a large pile inside the garage (you know who you are), modular storage has shelving for boots in one section of the garage. Other sections might involve sports equipment, tools for special projects like woodworking, and spaces for household necessities like your grill, or spare toilet paper.
How to Make Room for More Storage Space in Your Home: Look Up and Down
Chances are, there are spaces in your home which can be used, which you might not have yet considered. It’s easy to move into a space and set furniture into a location, without realizing that there might be a better option for that space. A top shelf can hold a great deal, if it’s in a long, thin box, or if it’s a large item like a rolled blanket. Likewise, consider other spaces which might be underutilized. Find what works best for the ways you use a space. A chest of drawers might hold linens, socks, or be a spice or craft cabinet. Just because your mother always put cans in her kitchen island doesn’t mean yours can’t hold a trash can and your appliances. Your home is supposed to work for you!
Storage Chests
There’s good reason your great great grandparents had Lane chests and steamer trunks used in the house even when not traveling. A storage chest can be used for many purposes, and yet hold a volume of things inside. Besides being used for blankets, a storage chest can be used for games, or even as a side table or television stand, depending on how often it needs to be accessed. Besides adding a stately and grounding old-school look to a room, storage chests are often made to maximize strange locations which are difficult otherwise, like the foot of a bed, or within a closet floor.
Build It Openly
If you own your own home, being able to build in small projects can help a great deal in otherwise inaccessible storage areas. For example, building a small shelving space into a bathroom wall in a midcentury home would be both within the need for storage in a house, and fit in the aesthetic of the time frame while providing a place to put toothbrushes and extra toilet paper. A small bookshelf build or a built in chest of drawers in a child’s room could increase play space considerably. Under stairs closets can be built in with additional shelving, shoe racks, or other specialty areas as needed.
When in Doubt
Having less clutter is good for both your sense of optimism and your overall feeling of peace in life. Often, the hardest things to let go of are “aspirational” in nature. In other words, they are things you want to get around to someday. Set yourself a timer of when “someday” will come. If you pay, as is common, over $100 per square foot of space in your home, would you use that one hundred dollars to house Great Aunt Martha’s Lamp? If not, let it go.
Your home is not a storage unit for unwanted items. It can become a beautiful place that is meant to be a haven for your family. My maximizing your storage space, and jettisoning things you don’t use, want, or love, you can make it one. It will be easier to enjoy a peaceful area with organized and easy to find possessions, and easier to enjoy an organized you!
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