Storage Ideas To Maximize Organization for Small Apartments, Dorms and Living Spaces
Especially in cities or school dormitories, the
upkeep of your wardrobe depends greatly on the
available storage space. If you watch HGTV, you've
probably seen the folks who end up keeping their
shoes atop the kitchen cabinets, and entire
families whose basements are buried in the
accumulated toys, books, clothes, bedding and
furniture of the modern consumer age.But that's
them, and this is you. Even if you live in a
shoe box-sized apartment, there are things you can
do to maximize your closet space and put your stuff away.
Most College Students Start in a Small Space
I know a couple of women who went to graduate
school together. One lived in the dorms, the other
had the world's smallest studio apartment. It was
built literally in the space between two
stairwells in an old house that had been broken
into 13 apartments. She could hear her neighbors
coming and going at all hours, and sometimes
opened her front door to let her neighbors'
visitors pass through her apartment's back door
(eight feet away) to the back stairwell, which
couldn't be reached from inside the house any
other way.
Unorganized Spaces are Miserable
She had a terrible time in the place, because she
wasn't the most organized human being, and her
books and papers tended to become strewn about the
place in a clutter mess. The open wire shelving unit above the bed were usually
draped with half-unfolded clothes, and once she
sprained her ankle by skidding across a layer of
school papers when trying to answer the phone.
When the dorm-dweller saw the tiny place, her eyes
lit up, and two years later, when her friend
moved, she took the apartment. She lived there for
four years, until she married and moved into a
bigger place, and she still sighs for her tiny,
perfect jewel of an apartment.
Organization Brings Happiness to a Space Space
The difference between these two students was one
of character. One was a highly organized person
with a great sense of order and the design sense
to take advantage of what little space was
available to her with special bins, boxes, and other storage containers. The other student was hopeless,
and needed lots of room to find things. It didn't
occur to her to use extra shelving units bolted to
the walls, or to organize her books and papers in
magazine racks. Her organized friend, on the other
hand, made perfect use of the apartment.
Furniture Tips: How to Find Extra Storage
- Captain's Bed - One of the most underrated pieces of storage furniture is
the captain's bed. Built ship-style, this bed has
drawers underneath that pull out for storage. It's
a brilliant use of space because the usual bed is
up off the floor, with nothing but flip-flops and
dust puppies underneath it.
- Closed Shelves vs. Open - Entire shelving systems can be created to fit
alongside walls or in under-utilized areas. Closed
shelves look neater than open ones, but both have
their place. Things that get frequent use, like
kitchen spices or coffee canisters, should be kept
in the open for easy access. Winter bedding and
sweaters can go on high, closed shelves in summer,
and come down to open closet areas when they're
needed.
- Wire and Wall Shelving - Large armoires or cabinets can take up a lot more
space than they return to you in storage. If you
want a grand piece of furniture to hide a few
things in, that's fine. But if you want to spend
fifty bucks instead of five hundred, and you're
looking for serious storage, open wire shelves,
bracket shelves and free-standing fabric-walled
closets may be more what you're looking for.
- Get the Right Hangers - The right coat-hangers can maximize the space in
your closets by hanging more than one item neatly
in such a way that you can still find everything
you need without having to dig through the bottom
of the closet.
Kitchen Organization and Storage Tips
- Choose smaller applicances - Sometimes, great big appliances aren't the best
choices for small spaces. If you're not a big fan
of cooking, a slightly-larger than dorm-sized
fridge can hold enough beverages and apples to
keep you nourished in between trips for take-out.
Hot-plates can be very useful for boiling water
and cooking all sorts of stove-top delights, and
can be crammed into a drawer when you aren't using
them. Before there were microwave meals, I had a
friend who lived in one room for a year, and
learned to bake fresh sourdough rolls in her
microwave. (It takes 4 hours to make the dough and
let it rise twice, and about 42 seconds to
actually bake it.) She wasn't much interested in
the domestic arts, so besides that, she ate a lot
of Cheetohs and Diet Coke. (Someone once convinced
her that you could roast a chicken in a paper bag
in the microwave, and against her better judgment,
she tried it. It was, of course, inedible.)
- Many Small Appliances Are Space Wasters - A second note about appliances: some of them are
just stupid and wasteful. One example would be the
potato peeler that works by shoving the tuber onto
a spindle and cranking off a thin, winding coil of
potato. Cheap ice cream makers don't work either:
first, you have to keep the gel-insulated bowl in
your freezer so it'll be as cold as possible when
you get ready to use it. Then, you have to chill
your ice cream mixture for hours in the fridge,
then place in the bowl which the goes into the
machine. The machine turns the mix, and while it
does start to get icy, it doesn't actually freeze
until you stop the machine and return the soft
serve to the freezer for another couple of hours.
The lesson is this" if you must have an ice-cream
maker, get the kind that has its own built-in
freezer. It costs a lot more, but you'll actually
end up with ice cream. (And my personal favorite
is the really old-fashioned freezer, which was a
cedar bucket with a metal canister inside and a
crank that you turned. When you aren't making ice
cream, which is most of the time, the bucket sits
by the door with dried flowers in it, looking
picturesque.)
- Just Say No to the One Function Appliances - Now, this is radical, and I may get complaints,
but I really, truly believe that the bread machine
is a silly appliance. It can only do one thing, it
takes up a lot of space, it's hard to clean, and
the bread has a hole in it. My bread machine is a
bowl.
- Waffle Iron Can Do Many Things - For my money, the finest all-round appliance is
the waffle iron. Nothing else in the world can
make a waffle. But, also wonderful is the fact
that you can make the best grilled-cheese
sandwiches ever in a waffle iron. You can also
grill chicken breasts or vegetables, or anything
else that isn't too greasy. You can make your own
ice-cream cones, too! An added plus: modern-day
non-stick surfaces make waffles irons a breeze to
keep clean. (But the vintage ones are extremely
good-looking, and you can always buy non-stick
spray).
- Choose a Food Processor Over a Blender - The best appliances can do more than one thing,
are easy to clean, and don't take up much space.
One more example: you can make daiquiris in a good
food processor, but it's harder to chop foods
evenly in a blender.
Tips for Keeping an Organized Home Maintained
Organization is largely a matter of scheduling
periodic maintenance. Some places in your house
(e.g., the coffee table in the living-room) need
to be de-cluttered daily. Kitchen food cupboards
can be rearranged when you bring home new
groceries. One way of keeping control of the
fridge is to throw something away every day until
the smell is gone. (I've heard that some people
actually clean the fridge at regular intervals: I
suppose you could do it that way.)
We all now have so much stuff, that it becomes
difficult to control its spread. I heard that the
word "dungeon" came from an ancient word meaning
"to forget". I wonder if today's basements are
merely modern dungeons for stuff. Proper lighting
helps you organize a space, because what you can't
see, you tend to forget. You can buy all sorts of
lamps or even have pot lights wired into closest
and cupboards to help keep you abreast of what's
living in those spaces. Even a little fluorescent
fixture on a nail can help you keep the basement
organized, because you can see what's in there.
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