As I work on this house, I'm enjoying dreaming up lots of plans for the next house. At this point, I can still pretend the home we find will have walk-in closets everywhere and an endless amount of storage.
But since that's probably won't be the case, I'm trying to prepare ideas now to make every ounce of storage as usable as possible. The five projects below all fit that bill - making the most out of space that might otherwise be wasted:
1. Under Stairs Storage, from Joat-London
2. Craft Closet for Kids, from Better Homes and Gardens
3. Shoe Boxes as Drawer Dividers, from Real Simple
4. Vegetable Drawers, from Dering Hall
5. Milk Glass Crafts Caddy, from Better Homes and Gardens
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#1 is pretty effing cool.
making custom storage from weird dead spaces money well spent imo
# 1 is brilliant!
I just showed that under stair storage picture to my dad a couple days ago, who is a carpenter. This is totally going under my basement stairs come reno time. So pumped. Great use of space, so much better than my current dank awkward storage situation...
@ Silverfire4200 I just pinned that photo to show my carpenter dad later on as well!! Great minds...
I wish I'd thought of #1 when we redid our house.
That, and the super cool drawers in the stairs they posted recently on AT.
I wouldn't have the problem I have right now regarding shoe storage.
When we finished our basement in the old house, we just had our handyman make the space under the stairs a cupboard -- like #1 but without the slide-out units. Under the stairs LANDING, a bigger space, we had a regular closet with bifold doors. And in another strange niche in the shape of the foundation, we squared off the room for yet another closet with bifold doors. It was great! Those angled shapes under stairs require a custom cut door, but otherwise it's pretty easy to convert the space.
The craft closet wastes a lot of space. I'd have gotten some of those pull-out wire baskets or something to maximize the deep shelves you COULD have in there.
My Dad was into RVs. He'd buy one, jazz it up various ways, travel with Mom to Florida for the winter, upgrade, fix up, etc. for years. He could make storage out of any empty space! Sometimes you can find more of those in a house than you expect, with a little imagination.
Another hooray for #1 - brilliant! It's the most usable approach to under-the-stair storage I've ever seen.
If you don't have Harry Potter to put in a room under the stairs, you might as well have a storeage space! :) Love #1.
Wow, that's some well-organized underwear! ;)
I love #1 as well, but, unfortunately, all my stairs are on top of each other (e.g., I need the under-the-stair space for headroom walking down the lower flight), except for the basement. Embarrassingly, underneath my basement stairs is a refrigerator that the previous homeowner had left (5 years ago) that I'm afraid to open and haven't disposed of yet.
For #1 I would prefer a closet with doors rather than the drawers, but I really like the vegetable drawers. Too bad they would rot like crazy here in the tropics....
#3 & #5 Could Easily be implemented in a current home with no effort. Why wait Until Moving Out?!
Using cut up shoe boxes to divide things in underwear drawers is great.
But honestly, who has a drawer full of panties and bras THAT organized. I WISH I could only live with 4 bras!!!!
#4 - Storing potatoes and onions together is typically a bad idea - as each produces gasses that will cause the other to spoil.
I love the vegetable drawers, though. And the undies.