In many homes around the world, storage space appears to be at a premium. There never seems to be enough places to tuck away belongings and still keep the home ordered and attractive. Fortunately, there are several ways to maximize the your home storage space without having to build on another room or take other drastic and costly measures.
One of the easiest ways to increase the amount of home storage is to begin a systematic process of ridding your home of items that you never use. Just about every household has items crammed in closets and under stairwells that are being saved on the off chance they will come in handy some day. If you haven’t used the item in the last five years, chances are you will not need it any time soon. Clean out one storage area each weekend until you make a complete circuit of your current storage areas. Give the items you don’t need to a friend or relative, sell them at a yard sale, or donate them to charity. Just get them out of your limited storage space.
Once you have discarded all unnecessary items, you can move on to bringing some organization to what is left. This can often be accomplished by adding another shelf or clothing rod to each of your closets. The extra rod automatically doubles your hanging space for slacks, skirts, shirts and blouses, and suits. Another shelf positioned above the current shelf will create a little more space for hat or shoeboxes, making what is often unusable home storage space into fully functional storage.
Another innovation with closet organization is the easy to assemble organization inserts that are available at many home stores. These organizing resources allow you to maximize the use of closet space based on your needs. For example, if you don’t have a lot of hanging garments, you can customize the space to install a series of shelves on one side of the closet that are ideal for folded items, such as sweaters. Many of these kits can be assembled in several different configurations, which provides you with the ability to arrange your home storage exactly to your liking.
Kitchen pantries and cabinets can often stand some organizing. In order to make the best use of your home storage in the kitchen, consider installing adjustable shelves inside the cabinets. This will allow you to create two shelves for canned goods where only one existed before. You can also adjust the shelving so that taller items such as pasta canisters can be placed upright rather than laying on the side, making it possible to use the shelf space to better advantage.
The kitchen pantry can also use a makeover. Install adjustable shelving or consider adapting one of the closet organizers to work with the pantry. You may be surprised how much more the space will hold once it is possible to utilize the formerly dead space near the top of the space for home storage.
Don’t forget the garage as you seek out ways to maximize your home storage. Adjustable metal or resin shelves can be lined along one wall and make ideal storage space for many items. Racks installed on the upper sections of the walls will support seasonal items such as canoes or mountain bikes and allows you to make better use of your floor space. For maximum efficiency, you may want to mount your shelving units on casters so they can easily be moved around the space when necessary.
Many of the same home storage ideas utilized to increase usable space in pantries and closets will work equally well in attics and basements. By evaluating each existing storage area and adapting it to make the best use of the space, you can make it much easier to store your valued items as well as locate them when they are needed.
