We’re in quite the capitalist conundrum, where house prices are rising, as is rent so saving for a deposit seems impossible. Meanwhile, what was once a reasonable apartment or house is now getting chopped and changed to fit multiple paying residents, so you might end up paying a grand for a cupboard. All that is to say, a lot of us need more storage than we have right now. If you want to maximise the storage in your home, take a look at our storage solutions for some quick fixes.
Use vertical space
The first thing you’re going to want to do when considering where you can put everything is to really look at your home. There’s a lot of wasted space in the air that can be used up.
One way is to install some wall shelving. Move your at-home library onto the higher end of the walls and make enough room for a desk or a sofa to fit underneath. We already display all our books, DVDs, and games, so lifting them means you don’t have to go looking for a place to hide them while freeing up space for furniture that can’t hang by a screw.
It’s a concept already commonly implemented in the kitchen, with overhead cabinets keeping a hold of your crockery and canned goods, so why not apply it to towel racks, walk-in wardrobes, art studios, home offices, and the living space?
And then there is the entertainment. A TV on a stand is two otherwise useless pieces of furniture that are usually in a corner taking up two areas of wall and floor space. Instead, consider either mounting your TV or getting a projector. You can mount it anywhere, even a canopy over your bed for a fun movie night, roll it down and put away the screen when you’re done with it, thereby not disturbing that painting you love and don’t want to take down.
Another idea is to think about your bed. You can get some pretty innovative takes on the simple bed nowadays. They might look like bunk beds, but they get called loft beds for something of a little bit of legitimacy, making them perfect for studio apartments or spare bedrooms that you don’t want to entirely give up for a guest room. Other options include “wrapping” your bed in storage cabinets. Ideas like this might take a professional, however. You can check out building merchants here to get started.
Double purpose furniture
Speaking of beds, even if you don’t feel like going for the bunk bed model, there are plenty of beds that come with extra storage. You can even make your own out of various cabinets styled together. If you don’t want to put in that kind of work, beds today come with drawers, can lift to reveal storage, or house a TV.
The point here is that every time you go furniture shopping, you should wonder where the dual purpose is. You sleep in a bed, but you can also store your clothes in the bed. You work at your desk, and you can store your office supplies on your desk.
There are lots of examples. A box ottoman in your bedroom is a great place to tie your shoes in the morning but also to store all your towels. A small cabinet can be a side table for a bedroom or living room. A day bed is a place to sit and read during the day and a place to house a guest when you’ve served too much wine for them to drive. Coffee tables that can extend into dining tables, bookcases that have pull-down desks: the possibilities are endless.
Find sneaky hiding places
Sometimes it’s not about the furniture you’re buying but where you’re putting the furniture. There’s quite the uptake in more slimline storage solutions that are being placed in interesting places around the home. For example, people are putting slim bookcases behind their bed’s headboards for easy access to your latest novel and charger, plus the display potential above it. Another popular trend is to put an IKEA Billy bookcase (or an equivalent) on wheels and use it as a pull-out cubby between the fridge and the cabinets.
Even better, people are creating an entire false layer of their floors as a means of storage. Wide but flat cabinets made out of wood and perfectly fitting together can take up your entire floor and, when closed, are perfectly safe to walk across with all your clothes underneath.
