How To Increase Your Home Storage Space

There’s a reason walking into a beautifully organised space or seeing a magazine-worthy organised pantry is like a breath of fresh air. Organisation has been proven to be psychologically uplifting, just as clutter can enhance feelings of stress and confinement. Avoiding physical and mental clutter with efficient storage is even more important since the COVID transformations have shifted so many schedules to spending far more time at home – or at the workplace.

Though clutter can be mentally damaging, it’ can also be a joy to experience a well-organised spae where everything is nearly labeled and finding what you need is as simple as opening the right tote or drawer. That is why, today, we are diving into creative, practical, and creatively practical ways to increase your storage space and the quality of your organisation.

Reevaluate Your Current Storage

Start by taking a look at the storage space that you already have. There are almost always a few logistical improvements to be made and most people significantly overlook the potential of places like hall closets, garages, and attics.

Here are some common ways storage space can be underutilised.

Closet Space

Closet space is rarely used to capacity, and closet organisation systems can show you just how much space you could really put to use. With hanging racks or built-in shelves, you can take full advantage of that vertical space instead of just hanging a few coats or placing one or two boxes.

The Garage

Garages are excellent indoor-outdoor spaces that also tend to have really great margins for storage. That lip around the garage door to the wall? LIne it with shelves. Garages are often tall enough for ceiling racks, and walls without shelves can be built up with pegboards and vertical wall-mounted storage – while still leaving room for the car.

Attics and Crawl Spaces

Attics, cellars, crawl spaces, and stair cupboards are often completely ignored when looking to optimise the space in your home or business. These natural under-insulated areas of a building are excellent for long-term storage and can even be built  up for efficient shelving and more comfortable retrieving.

 

Think Multifunctional

Smaller spaces can store more with multi-functional furniture. Look for furnishings and designs that allow for storage in addition to other useful and essential purposes.

 

Chest Benches, Ottomans, and Play Tables

Any solid piece of furniture could hide chest storage. Chest benches and ottoman foot stools lift off the padded top to reveal handy near-seating storage underneath. Many children’s play tables also include chest storage inside for easy playroom tidying.

Shelf-Legged Furniture

Look for furniture with shelving and slender cupboards in the supports. Instead of legs, a table might have a waterfall bookshelf.

Murphey Beds, Tables, and Desks

Fold-away furniture is always efficient and fun, reducing the floorspace needed for tables, beds, and desks, and often providing built-in shelves and cabinets at the same time. Murphey beds are the signature name for this kind of fold-away style.

Hidden Cupboard and Bookshelf Doors

You can even build a door into a shelf or cupboard using hidden door designs. This turns one section of wall normally never covered by shelving into a swinging shelf of its own.

 

Use More Efficient Storage Containers

Often, the biggest problem with disorganised storage is the container system. If you’re rummaging in unsorted mess to retrieve anything from storage, it’s no wonder if you take a morale hit and stop looking. Here are some great ideas to use more efficient storage containers and container-strategy.

Stackable Totes

Matching stackable totes are not to be underestimated. Match your totes to the size of things you need to store. Larger totes are appopriate for the garage while smaller totes can make a craft room or child’s room refreshingly organised.  You want totes that look good stacked together when full and can easily be tucked into storage in a tidy stack when empty.

Colour-Coded Cube Storage

“Cube” storage is a decorative organisation craze that uses matching, attractive (often fabric or wicker) containers of a regular size that look nice on similarly sized shelves. We suggest colour-coding your cubes and then labeling each one so it’s easy to quickly find what you need while enjoying the aesthetics of a few dozen matching containers throughout the house.

Compartmentalisation

Don’t be afraid to use organisers. Drawer organisers and packing containers (dividers and zip-pouches) can be used in all sorts of ways to keep surfaces, shelves, cubes, totes, and other containers organised within each container.

Efficient Labeling

Don’t forget the labels, or you’ll soon be back to rummaging for missing items. Choose an attractive, consistent, and easy to read at-a-glance labeling system and label absolutely every container and sub-container with what’s inside.

Shipping and Storage Containers

Consider expanding your storage options by adding a shipping container to your property. From a small 8×8 container to very large 45 foot containers, these eco-friendly recycled compartments are like placing an instant storage shed – ready to use and easy to shelve. If you need extra garage-like space or a workshop to organise all your tools and craft goods into, a storage container is a very versatile choice.

A simple 20ft storage container is an eco-friendly and efficient addition to a home or business where you can offload all your storage even fully reclaim interior rooms for more efficient and attractive uses. Other shipping container models are also available, such as the full side access container which offers end door as well as full side loading/unloading. You can buy a recycled storage container to repurpose as your new storage shed or even an add-on garage by working with Adaptainer to find the right solution for your property.

 

Rethink Unused Space

Another option is to make better use of typically unused space in a home or business. Consider the areas that you rarely make any use of, like the space closest to the walls or ceiling.

Wall Space

Wall space is rarely fully utilised for storage. Hanging storage, floating shelves, pegboards and even whiteboards make better use than simple blank drywall or wood panels. If you want to keep your lovely wall hangings, consider sliding doors over wall-mounted shelves to enjoy both.

Unused High and Low Spaces

We rarely use our vertical space efficiently. Consider how much space near the ceiling could be used for storage. Also consider areas below your knees. It may be troublesome to stoop all the time, but long-term storage and heavy storage does fantastically well in under-used low spaces.