An entire assortment of lessons learned... pt I.

[kaigou]

After the last week or so of nonstop go-go-go (with the final note of it all being the news a friend is shipping off to Iraq for a month, sigh), I realized the best sanity saver is to avoid deep thoughts and chase the shiny, which for me will always be How To Occupy Space. That is: when you rent, and can't tear down that wall or tear out that cabinet (as much as you want to), how else can you squeeze 40lbs of storage into a 5lb sack?

And if I hear so much as a whisper of anyone making comments about rearranging foldable seating on any kind of naval vessel, I will be unleashing a serious can of Virgo whomp-ass.

*clears throat*

First stop on the Virgo express is the all-important rule: the most neglected storage possibilities are always at the edges. Also known as: lay down on the floor and look, and then roll over on your back and stare at the ceiling. (And here you thought I was just being lazy and zoning.) The two places in any house, in any room, least used are closest to the floor, and closest to the ceiling.

CEILINGS & FLOORS

1. It's lucky folks who have no soffits.
   
   In kitchens without soffits, you can store boxes, less-used cookbooks, pottery, display items, along the top of the cabinets. If the cabinets are framed, there will be a lip at the front top-edge and the rest of the cabinet top will be about a half-inch lower. In that case, measure the cabinet and get cheap masonite or thin plywood to fit. Get a strip of cheap cleating or a bundle of wedges -- switched around to make a level shape -- and place this cleating/level at the back of the cabinet so the MDF or plywood can sit evenly on the cabinet. You can go without, but it will make it harder to get things off because you'll have to lift over the lip, and it'll look awkward -- the cabinet's frame will "cut off" the view of the items and it doesn't look good; it looks like you stuck stuff up there in a jumble where it doesn't really belong. The masonite-leveling 'finishes' it, I suppose.
   
   
2. Hang it all.
   
   When renting, often landlords get cranky about holes in the walls (and in some houses, it's a real question whether the wall will stay up!) -- but just as much as other folks rarely look up, same's true for landlords. Hang shelves from the ceiling. This can be as simple as using Ikea's $20 Utsaga pot rack; but make absolutely certain you've found joists! Lesson learned: slam a few 3" nail-holes into the ceiling until they go through the drywall and refuse to budge; then do another to left and right, an inch in each direction to get an idea of the joist's center, so your eyebolt has plenty of wood to grab. Far better to spackle a few tiny holes than to have the entire ceiling drywall land on your head.
   
   
3. Build your own platform.
   
   For suspending a wood platform: determine dimensions of suspended shelf, including distance from ceiling. Go to Home Depot and pick up 4 eye-bolts + nuts, and 4 heavy-duty eye-screws. Go by the chain department and have them cut you four equal lengths of metal chain to your measurement (there's other ways to do it but hooking chain to eyebolt is easiest to explain/use). Go to wood department, and pick up 1" plywood (NOT MDF!); you can get precut pieces in 4'x4', 4'x3' and 2'x2', usually, and if that's close enough to your specific size, just trim down as needed.
   
   (NOTE: don't try to support significant loads across spans greater than 30"; if your suspended shelf is 2'x4', for instance, you'll need additional eyebolts/screws/etc for the midpoint on the long side. If you're positive the load will always be light, you might be able to get away with it...maybe.)
   
   Drill 3/8" hole in each corner about 2" in. Find joists (the closer to the corner, the more likely you'll find solid wood), drill guide-holes, put in eyescrews. Next, paint the board's underside whatever color you like, screw the eyebolts through the board, slap the nuts on the other side, and then hang the shelf by the chains, from the eyebolts--to--eyescrews (duh).
   
   Here's one way to do it. You can buy rafter-hung shelves in a kit, or you can follow directions for a suspended shelf using rods & bolts, or buy a shelf suspension system or even a designed for retail but works at home package, or just print that out and take it to Home Depot and ask them what they've got that would do the same. These are particularly useful over sinks and toilets, where you can bring the headroom down to as low as 6' and still not have head-bumping risks (that would give you 2' of storage height, assuming standard 8' ceiling height).
   
   I've also seen examples where people have bought regular metal grid garage-type shelves, put them together, flipped them upside down, and bolted them to garage rafters. Nifty.
   
   EDIT: I finally found it, sheesh! ClosetMaid has a hanging shelf unit (model 1048) -- $12 at Lowe's -- that hangs from the underside of a wire rack shelf. Hah, just screw in four solid hooks into the ceiling joists and hang that puppy. At 13" height, it'll reduce your headroom in the average house to only 7'. Woot.
   
   
4. Make the room's architecture work a little harder.
   
   Just down from the ceiling, look at your door-frames. Measure any door from outside moulding to outside moulding; add 2". Code says interior doors have minimum 24" opening, and exterior doors have minimum 36" opening. If your house is older than about 50 yrs, anything goes; if the building's by ADA-code, chances are all interior doors will be 36" like the exterior doors. Buy 1x6, cut to width of door (from outside moulding to outside moulding), and add two inches. Next, attach two shelf brackets to the outside of the door moulding so the bracket's top is flush with the line of the top moulding. Set shelf on brackets; screw into underside of shelves, and put a single 1.5" nail through the shelf's center back, down into the moulding as additional stability.
   
   Now you have display areas over every door, far away from break-crazy residents like kids and cats. (I suggest a 1x6 because anything larger and the shelf's depth will make it difficult to enjoy the display unless you're over a certain distance; acrylic or glass shelves will make you feel like the stuff's about to fall on your head when you walk under it.)
   
   You can do the same over windows; there, acrylic cut to length will be fine since it won't block light. If you don't have mouldings around your windows (ours don't) and the overall width is greater than 30", you'll need a center brace-point (or more, so long as there's a support-point no less than every 30"). Get an L-bracket with at least 2" arms, set against the wall with bottom flush to window-edge. (You want the shelf to look like a natural extension of the window's surround.) Screw bracket into place; put other brackets up at outside of window; put shelf in place, and screw into it from the underside, for all brackets. Done!
   
   
5. Use the below-deck space.
   
   For home owners, and renters with understanding or enterprising landlords: take a whack at your cabinet kick-plates, in kitchens and bathrooms. Most kick-plates run about 5" to 6" high; if behind the kick plate, it's open, that means knocking the kickplate away gives you a place for a narrow but wide and deep (usually about 30" wide by 22" deep) drawer for baking pans, muffin tins, cookie trays. It can also be a place to put sealed-up storage bags with seasonal stuff (xmas towels and plates and tablecloths in one, reuseable birthday stuff in another, etc). Anything that wants low, flat, dark, and relatively dry (being down near the floor) will do well: wrapping paper, packs of tissue paper, etc. If you're worried about potential water damage, just store all items in two-gallon freezer bags, press the air out, seal, and there you go.
   
   
6. Large, rarely-moved furniture can be a storage haven.
   
   For renters, the kick-plates are out of the question for really sneaky storage, but you've still got space under the beds. Use the large squared zip-around plastic bags for seasonal and/or long-term storage, or get a captain's bed, and that example is probably the most obsessive I've ever seen when it comes to using every last inch of possible space and I thought I was bad. If you need more room under the bed to fit even the slimmest of storage boxes or bins, consider raising the bed (or sofa, or desk). That link is handy as ready-made, but you could probably do the same with a 4x4 block cut neatly into however many lengths of the precise size you want; glue 3" cleats around the top edge as bumpers to keep sofa/bed/desk feet from sliding off the block.
   
   Another place is the bottom of closets; move your shoes to a hanger-rail-suspended shoe-racks, and you'll probably find that if you rearrange your clothes so the long stuff is all together, you can get in at least 3' of floor-storage without getting in the way of the hanging shirts/jackets. Don't forget under every piece of large, not-moving-often furniture like dressers, sideboards, etc.
   
   For the best secrets on storing amazing amounts of stuff in the tinest places, look at Japanese interior domestic design (not the ultra-modern, but the every-person kind), and boat design. The latter is probably easier to get, and man, is that design all about the cubbyholes.

KITCHEN

1. Get pots and pans out of the cabinet and off the countertop.
   
   Hang a pot rack as close to the ceiling as possible, or as out of the way of walking area as possible. Racks are awesome for freeing up horizontal spaces in a visual sense (rather than rearranging pots on the countertops as you use/need them). Also, you can hang drying herbs from it, which is handy, and put any lightweight but bulky mixing bowls on top.
   
   
2. Use the full depth of every cabinet.
   
   Install drawers wherever you can. Home Depot seems to have the good stuff in this area of the house. I did find Rubbermaid's version at Lowe's, at $15 for the 14" version, but I suppose that depends on what it is you're looking to store, too. Rubbermaid's cheaper, and -- unlike the wire-rack Closetmaid version, which lists at $35 -- you can lift out the plastic units and carry them elsewhere, if needed. If you're baking, for instance, you could bring up the entire 'drawer' that contains flour, sugar, baking soda, etc; measure out, and then return entire drawer to cabinet. I don't know if it'd be as sturdy as the Closetmaid version on screwed-in fixed-rails, however. Depends on how much of a beating you'd give it, to determine how much of an investment.
   
   A cheaper way to do this might be to go to the nearest restaurants and ask them for their tomato boxes. These tend to be much heavier than usual boxes (to protect the delicate veggies), and set at a standard size that's a bit smaller than packing boxes (about the same as a box for reams of paper). Fill that and slide it into the cabinets, using the boxes as makeshift drawers; they sure as hell won't fall apart. (I've tomato boxes that are over ten years old and have been through seven moves!)
   
   
3. Clear countertops by suspending all daily-use items from cabinet undersides.
   
   We've been using a bar system to organize stuff off our countertop; Ikea has various metal pails, boxes, wire grids, baskets, etc, that you can hang from the rod -- we had two large metal boxes behind the stove that held all the kitchen implements of destruction like spoons and spatulas and whatnot. Also, organize by purpose, and situate all items together out of the way of cook's traffic: we have a "tea making" area, with a pail for sugar, a pail o' just my earl gray, and a pail for CP's brown rice tea, green tea, etc.
   
   This trick doesn't remove stuff from your kitchen; it simply clears out the horizontal to create the *illusion* of a larger kitchen, because you can see the countertops all the way to the back. And once I put those puppies in, wow, it really does. (Yes, I'm a geek; when we first installed them, I must've gone into the kitchen ten times that night to revel in the psychological change.) Btw, Home Depot has versions of this (Rubbermaid) but Ikea's is far cheaper.
   
   You can also use cheap towel rods (if you can find them cheaper than Ikea's $2 for a single rod!), get S-hooks from Home Depot, and hang whatever you like from the rods: little lunch pails, wicker baskets, metal boxes, even the metal-grid shower containers, cardboard boxes with attached straps to hook on the S-hook. One length of rod in our kitchen was simply a line of S-hooks with kitchen utensils hanging from them: it reduces the junk-drawer clutter, it's easier to find what you need by feel without looking away from what's cooking, and it becomes a strangely cool sort of organic display that even moves when it's bumped.
   
   
4. Place most-used-spices within easy access of cook-area.
   
   Get a handful or more of magnetic spice containers at Bed Bath & Beyond, $2 each (Ikea has similar -- Grundal -- with slightly less capacity, for $5 for 3). Best part I think are the clear lids: you can see what's running low. Just be careful; if you tend to slam the fridge door and they're on the door-front, sometimes the magnet loses its stickiness and the tin goes flying (but the lids stay on well, though the tin ends up dented!). Side of fridge is probably better.
   
   
5. Store knives in easy reach but in protected place.
   
   I wouldn't recommend putting a magnet-strip on the inside of a cabinet door unless you know the door requires little effort to pull open: too much effort and the inertia of the yank may let the knives go flying. If possible, hang the magnet-strip over the sink or at the back of the stove.
   
   Or, get a flat drawer-storage knife-tray, invert it, and attach it to the outside of a upper-cabinet door with blade-tips pointing down (which means to remove, one must pull UP). Many of the in-drawer knife storage thing, btw, have no way to keep the blades in the slots if the box isn't flat; take strapping mesh (it's linen, comes in 2" wide thicknesses at the fabric store) and put that across the knife-holder. Elephant glue on either side (since I'd expect staple-gun might not work), and that should hold the blades in. Test it, see what works.
   
   
6. Install task lighting on the underside of cabinets.
   
   Home Depot has an LED undercabinet light, 9" long, 1" deep, 2" high (when it's attached to the underside). One on each side of the kitchen sink and another to the left of the stove (if there's width enough) and that should do you for the kitchen. At $13, it really beats anything else I could find. (Budget for more to use in home offices as task lighting there; once you get used to having task lighting right on your work, you'll never go back to diffused overhead lighting!)
   
   
7. Replace free-standing shelves with wall- or ceiling-hung shelves.
   
   Again with the "free up horizontal surfaces to increase impression of space" -- this includes the floor, people. If you prefer ready-made, use Bjarnum/Jarpen, which is 47" long, and about $20 each.
   
   Or, for cheaper, pick up simple metal brackets from Home Depot (they'll run about $1-3 each, depending on style). If the wood is 1" thick (I know, I keep repeating this, but it's important), you'll need a bracket minimum every 30". The US national building code is studs 16" on center for load-bearing walls, between 18" to 24" for non-load-bearing: which is to say, you will find another support point before 30", so use it. (If, for some bizarre reason, you can't, drill a 3/8" hole, wham a plastic Toggler in, pop it open, and keep going; Togglers will hold just fine, though I'd still say at least one bracket should be grounded firmly in a stud.)
   
   Get one or two lengths of Primed MDF Bullnose Shelving or Eased Edge Board (depending on your preference for the finished edge); have the lumber folks cut it to your specific lengths, screw brackets into wall, then at least once screw from bracket into wood -- books and gravity will do the rest. MDF pre-primed boards come in 12' and 10' lengths; you can save $ by getting unprimed but you'll spend a lot more time painting the puppies because MDF will soak up paint like no-one's business, unless you want to deal with primer (which, in fact, comes out to being far more expensive than just buying primed MDF in the first place!).
   
   You may be able to save more on the shelves by getting wood instead of MDF; it depends on the cost of wood in your area. Two boards and eight brackets will come to roughly $60 or less, which means each individual shelf is about $15. Not bad.
   
   (AR: this is where you put all cookbooks & resource materials, as part of your office, and move the black cabinet to perhaps a corner of the living room to store DVDs and VHS tapes, or perhaps upstairs to the hallway in beside the furnace-closet. The other shelf could become temporary shoe-rack for now, over by the door..?)
   
   
8. Create a pantry.
   
   Hang an over-the-door wire rack as your pantry on any door adjacent to the kitchen. Grayline has a nice one for about $37 at Home Depot. My parents had something like that hanging on the inside of our hallway linen-closet for years; it's where we stored all medicines, bandages, toothpaste, shoe polish, extra toothbrushes, shampoo, all that jazz and anything else that was randomly regularly needed by the family in the upstairs area. Theirs went all the way from top of the door to just about a foot shy of the floor, and I think the bottom was stationed in place with double-sided tape. After twenty years in that house, when I helped my father move, we let that rack convey -- it was still in great shape.
   
   If small kids are an issue, look at the versions that end just above or a foot below the doorknob; also measure and confirm that if you hang the pantry on any door abutting cabinetry, that you can still open any drawers when the kitchen door is closed and the pantry's in place. (Some of the pantry-racks are 7" to 8" deep; there are narrow-depth ones, but none less than about 4.5" deep.)
   
   
9. Find the dead space, and fill it.
   
   A gap between the fridge and the wall is most common; often you can even increase this gap by shoving the fridge smack dab up against the countertop. Here's a trick I've used for that kind of slot, and if you harbor secret virgoistic urges, feel free to revel with me; if not, skip to next section because I will not be mocked by the semi-washed masses. *shakes fist*
   
   Go to the hardware store and get yourself a set of 24" long full-extension drawer slides (sometimes called European, I think). They'll be labeled "heavy-duty", which is fine; you want to be able to pull them out all the way to use as much space as you can. Now, look at your fridge-wall gap: can you place the slide against the wall and pull, or does it hit moulding? If it does, you'll need to insert shims (or a cleat the same thickness as moulding) to raise the drawer slide enough to clear any obstacles.
   
   Full-extension drawer slides do not come apart without a lot of effort, so it's actually easier to build your "drawer" first and then attach it to the wall. The version I did, I cut a 2' section of 2x4 (which are great for things like this because they're damn CHEAP -- something like $2 for a lower grade; try to get the straightest ones possible). My dead-slot was 4.5" wide, so I put the 2" side (yes, I know, technically the 1.5" side) to the drawer slide, drilled guide-holes so the wood wouldn't split when I put in the screws, then attached it with the screws that came with the slides. I also drilled guide holes for the hooks just to make life easier, and in went cheap little hooks I picked up at Home Depot for about $2 for a pack of 20. Then I "opened" the drawer so I could get at the wall-half of the slide, and screwed it into the wall. If I couldn't find a joist, I used a plastic hollow-wall togglers, which are considerably stronger than the old expanding plastic insert crap.
   
   Voila, you have a "drawer" you can pull out, from which you can hang hot-pads, pot lids, whatever fits. The one key is that the 2x4 is a heavy piece of wood; hot-pads and trivets, if light, will be fine. Heavier stuff, combined with the 2x4's weight, will make the wood tilt a bit -- if that unnerves you, get a smaller piece of wood from the hardware store's selection of 'craft' wood pieces. (Note: the smaller the wood's width, the more important it is to drill holes just a tad smaller than the screw-diameter, or else the wood will crack and split with the force of screw coming through.)
   
   Since slides always come in pairs, you could use the second slide, put a cheap towel rod on a second 2' 2x4's underside and hang a bunch of linens (which really do best if hung, not folded); if you'd rather protect the linens, then store them in a vacuum-sealed bag or freezer bag with all the air smooshed out, make a "handle" out of packing tape, and hang it from hooks instead. These full-extension slides are incredibly strong; think about what you can jury-rig from the various wire rack units (like those made to go inside a door), and you'll find you've also got a place to store all your tinfoil, sandwich bags, possibly even cereal and snack boxes (which tend to be about 2" to 3" deep).

WISHY-WASHY CLOSET

1. A cat doesn't need a lot of head-room.
   
   A closet for washer/dryer is going to be at least 2' deep (standard depth for W/D is 24.5"). Lacking a WiWa, you've got a boatload of room if it's used properly. This is where catboxes often end up, but a cat doesn't need a lot of headroom. Determine cat-height plus a few inches more, then install shelves to that height: ClosetMaid's 3 Ft. Garage Organizer ($30 for three 2' rack-shelves) is a really good buy. Even just a single shelf over the cat-box could be a place to put a vacuum cleaner.
   
   
2. Hang large/bulky items from WiWa ceiling.
   
   If you don't have a garage, then you need to look up elsewhere; the WiWa closet's a good place even if you do have a WiWa present. Use utility hooks ($3-$5) inside the closet up at the ceiling, maybe a foot from the closet's end walls. Use one hook to hang your vacuum cleaner if it's an upright, or a folded stroller, perhaps luggage -- anything that you rarely use but isn't *too* heavy to lift over your head. (Also, something that won't mind the radiant heat/humidity from the WD, if you run them when the door is closed.)
   
   
3. Put all cleaning equipment together in one place.
   
   Hang a wire-rack cleaning supply/tool storage thing ($25) on the closet's side wall, and move a lot of the stuff under your kitchen sink into a spot, up high. This frees up the under-the-kitchen sink for other stuff you actually need related to *cooking*, like pans or a large square-storage bucket filled with the random tupperware we all collect. If you use a bucket system and hang the bucket from a sturdy hook, then on cleaning day you can take the bucket around the house, cleaning as you go, and then return it all. (I need to do that myself, since I can't stand needing to clean one room and then being unable to track down the right stuff for the job because it got put away in the room where it was last used, grrr.)
   
   
4. Subdivide items for more efficient finding/keeping.
   
   I have several wire baskets that slide onto shelves to create additional space below the shelves. I think I got them at Home Depot, and I can't find anything like them on the HD or Lowes sites (naturally). But I highly recommend finding some; they're especially good in closets with built-in shelves (for some reason, contractors insist on putting the shelves so far apart there's lots of dead space between tops-of-items and next shelf). Then, you can organize items into general clumps, throw them all in that wire basket, and it's a lot less hassle to find thing (or to keep them organized in the first place).

HALF BATH

1. Put in a free-standing over-the-toilet cabinet.
   
   You can find the free-standing units at Bed/Bath/Beyond and Target and WalMart (none at Ikea, oddly), but what appears to be cheapest (and leaves the space directly over the toilet free for either towel rack and/or pictures), would be two chrome towers, which at $30 each is pretty good considering how much they'll store. Could use the upper shelves for display of smaller decorative items that are bathroom-safe, too. If your house is even marginally code, the space beside the toilet should be plenty for one of these on each side.
   
   
2. Lift all the display items from countertop to eye-height.
   
   Use simple wooden corner shelves like these I found on Amazon (I know Home Depot and Lowes both have them for like $6 or so). The plus there is that you can paint them to match with the room, they're relatively sturdy, and they use space normally otherwise wasted.
   
   Me, though, I like Grundtal: it's more stylish, it's less intrusive, doesn't require painting, shows off display better, and it's only $15 for 2' worth of pretty glass. A standard countertop runs from 18" to 24" deep; the glass shelves can "frame" on either side wall at just below eye-level.
   
   (AR: if the 2' shelves fit on the left of your half-bath-wall, move the towel rack to the stone wall & attach with a bunch of double-sided foam-tape -- a single hand-towel isn't that heavy, after all! Move towel back when/if you move, if you have to -- I'd think the important thing is that you had a towel rack when you arrived, and you still have one. So what if it migrated somehow.)
   
   Alternately, Lowe's has a 3-Tier Wood Shelf Organizer. Hang it directly opposite the door so it's full-impact when someone walks in. For difficult walls like stone, brick, or concrete, screw eyescrews into the joist-plate at the top-corner of the ceiling (about an inch from the wall), and run two heavy-duty picture-hanging wires from the eyescrews down to the display shelf. Unless, of course, you want to use a concrete drill-bit and hang directly on the wall, which -- if you're renting -- might be hard to cover if you screw up.
   
   
3. Use the headroom for more than empty space.
   
   You only need headroom directly over where a person stands, which means you can use the space above the bathroom sink -- and the space above the toilet -- as long-term storage, but at the same time make it into a decorative effect. No matter which hanging shelves you use, remember: in a guest bath, you'll only see the bathroom maybe for five minutes a day. You can go insane in a guest bath; it's not like you have to stare at it the entire time you're eating dinner. (Our last guest bath was dark-crimson with gold-leaf sponged randomly across it, a chinese fan, several pictures, and just... people would open the door and take a half-step back. Yah! It was great. If you're renting, you can do it with fabric -- a guest-bath has far less wall-space to cover, so the cost won't be as high as doing, say, your bedroom.)
   
   So to cover the suspended shelves: tack fabric to the ceiling so it covers the shelf & chains, with just enough coming down in decorative fringe or whatever, to overhang bottom of shelf by about 2", so the underside isn't immediately obvious. (The shelf should not extend farther into the bathroom than the toilet, or people WILL knock their heads!) You can also use a glue-gun on these little curtains, since glue-gun fabric will peel with a strong yank and steady pull, and leave nothing behind. Yay. Do the same above the sink, and the 'feeling' of the bathroom becomes a very cool space -- just think of what it'll look like with a few low votives burning while guests are over.
   
   If the shelf isn't that low-hanging, you could cover it with toran, which are embroidered Indian door-hangings that designate the entrance to a sacred space. Hrm, then again, putting those in the bathroom...maybe stick with some dark or neutral fabric with a fancy ribbon or beaded fringe along the bottom...
   
   
4. Compress long-term storage.
   
   Go pick up a set of vacuum-seal storage bags; the prices seem to vary, but I got a set of 8 in various sizes from small to MASSIVE from Costco, for about $15. And then... all those baby clothes, your favorite old jacket, even seasonal bed-coverings, etc: VACUUM IT. I took about seven large boxes of old clothes down to small enough that they all fit on the top shelf of our hall closet, which is only about two-feet wide. Wish I'd gotten these long before; not just in terms of storage but also in terms of protection. That's what might go best in that downstairs bathroom, and you'd know that all long-term storage clothes are in that single location.

KID ROOMS

1. You want 70's? I got yer 70's right here, baby!
   
   Hang a Blimp! hehehehe. That is, if an 'adult' in the house doesn't eyeball it suspiciously for a few days, after which it disappears and reappears in his office... hrmmmm.
   
   
2. Divide rooms visually by purpose.
   
   Use the brighter, eye-catching colors to designate the room's main focus. A rug like Ikea's Blanka will definitely say, "over here!" but also gives you a variety of colors to use elsewhere in the room. And at 3'x4' it won't overwhelm the room by taking up too much floor-space.
   
   
3. Find the closet dead-space, and use it.
   
   There's one thing I hate about closet design in the US: the framed area is smaller than the actual closet. There's no way to ever see the entirety of the closet all at once. Plus, you can't stack the top shelf past a certain point, because you wouldn't be able to tilt the top boxes to an angle to get it out of there. Stuff ends up wedged; how annoying. (If you remove the folding doors -- and instead, perhaps, use full-length curtain hanging from rod, then you can strip the door frame down to jackstuds and thereby make the opening larger by a few inches, but still not perfect. My ultimate goal is to strip out the closet-surrounds in this house and install floor-to-ceiling sliders across the closet openings so the entire interior is fully accessible.)
   
   If your closet is greater than 2' deep (the standard size), use ClosetMaid Pantry Linen Organizers; they seem to be the best buy for what you get. If the closet's the usual 2', then a different ClosetMaid setup might work better. Investigate. Point is, one shelf-set at each end is just right, since that side-space is usually 12-16" and the ClosetMaid shelves, IIRC, are about 16" deep. Now you have extra storage at the closet-ends, which prevents clothes from getting shoved out of sight. On the higher shelves you could use the squarish-zipped plastic storage bags for seasonal stuff; it'd also possibly be a place to put rubbermaid boxes with crafts & supplies, labeled neatly on the outside. (I'm big into sealing containers now that I live in the Wild Kingdom. Cripes.)
   
   
4. Use the backs of doors for soft-storage.
   
   (I say soft storage, because if the door flies open, you don't want breakables to get crushed, while soft storage will not only cushion the slam, but help muffle noise just a tiny bit.)
   
   Lowe's price for a clear 24 Pocket Shoe Bag is $8, which is so low, I'm wondering if it's just for the hooks. (Hmph.) Use this kind of shoe-rack to store smushable hats, socks, gloves, school supplies, etc -- my sister used one in college to sort her art supplies. Shoe-racks have a plus over wire racks because little things can't fall out the bottom, *and* it's see-through so you can find what you need right away (with no wire rack in the way, either).
   
   Get a second one for your bathroom, while you're at it, which will allow you to free up a lot of countertop space and increase the visual impression of Lots Of Room. If a towel hook is in the way, move it to directly beside the tub so it's right there for grabbing when you get out of the shower; for kids, hang the hook at an adult's hip height. The kid can reach it, and if the kid's still at supervised bathing-age, an adult can grab the kid-towel post-bath from a kneeling position, instead of having to get up and fetch the towel from the hook high up on the door.

But there's more...

Comments

[hinotori.livejournal.com]

This list is Teh Amazing. May I save and store for reference purposes? :D I'm sure gonna need it when I eventually move out of the dorms.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

Yes, of course you may! I've lived in enough small places in my life, I figure I should've learned a thing or two by now... might as well have someone out there benefit from all my mistakes!