Making Storage Beautiful

I love beautiful storage.  It makes my life easier, it makes me appreciate my home more and in some cases it can add value to your real estate investment.

Here are some great websites recommending ways to get organized and add some beauty to your home.  So many ideas that can lead to even more creative ways of using your closet, wall space, and shelves.

Four Tips to Organizing Your Closet “People wear 20% of what they have 80% of the time,” says Donna Smalin Kuper, a professional organizer and author of How to Declutter and Make Money Now!

50 Cool Jewelry Storage Ideas Take care and show off you beautiful stones, pearls, and beads. 

Clever Built in Storage Ideas “These images are completely inspiring and really display how every nook in a home can be functional with a bit of ingenuity…”

House Tours: A Stylish Home with Practical Storage “After she lost most of her possessions in Hurricane Katrina, Amanda Catalanotto, professional organizer and homeowner, rebuilt her family’s house with style and function in mind.”

Ideas for Strategic Organization & Storage “Stop clutter from clogging up your home by taking an orderly approach to fixing pain points, such as your entry, kitchen, and closets…”

Add Brackets for Neat Stacks “Prevent folded clothes and linens from toppling with wooden dividers.”

Wall décor with a personal touch

1. How to make your own chic silhouette art

2. Giant Personal Picture

(Note: I also suggest using a foam core board that can be purchased from a office supply or craft store.  This can eliminate the cutting and painting a border.  It may be a bit more expensive, but will save time.  All you need to do is print the picture as directed, buy the board, spray glue it on and hang).

3. Cherry Blossom Bottle Art

Closet Upgrades 2

Condo living makes for unique ways to creatively maximize storage space. I usually found that my extra items that I like to have on hand, never had a decent accessible space to dedicate to them. My “extras” refer to items such as crafts, linens, luggage and tools. Other items that sometimes come into consideration, if you don’t have a storage locker or need them to be a bit more accessible may include sporting gear and seasonal items.

I decided to convert two of my closets that I felt weren’t maximizing their use. The one closet originally had two wire shelves with adjoining hanging bars at 3’ and 7’ heights. The second closet had one shelf at 6’. These shelves are the common installed product with new builds. You can still see the placement of the shelves in the pictures. I was considering removing the shelves, but decided to keep them and add more shelving and drawer units.

To get started, I first looked at what space I had, what I needed to store and how I though I would best be able to access my items. At one point I was considering adding a table that I could sit at to do work or even ironing . Eventually I realized that my preference would be to work at our living room table and stick with my current ironing board arrangement, therefore, I made many of my supplies more portable.

The stackable Ikea Salma box with lids from the craft closet were purchased from Ikea. They hold a variety of supplies from paints, to ribbon to paper, photos and cards. I used an old plastic bin as a holder for my wrapping paper, and the Antonius drawer units are great for tissue, bows, gift bags and décor. The other drawer unit to the right of the closet holds boxes, candles, candle holders, and note books. The extra shelving and the Antonius frame and drawer unit on the left side were purchased from Ikea.

The second closet I kept with a similar concept. I kept the original shelf and added other Antonius shelving to give me more places to stack and hide things. On the bottom I kept my household paints, tools, and hardware bins. The shelves mainly hold my extra linen, pillows and towels, while the top shelf stores our luggage bags. I also keep my ironing board and iron in here. The iron will eventually be installed properly with the Rationell Variera iron holder from Ikea on one of the inside walls. The iron fits nicely between the shelves and the closet doors.

Both these closets may not be the pretties looking, but they are functional and can easily be adjusted or changed if I ever wanted to re-arrange the space or put it back to the original design for rental or selling purposes.

Closet Upgrades 1

Closet designs are constantly over simplified and underutilized. This continues to be an issue with the construction of new homes, condos and townhomes today. Developer’s can cut costs by putting in a basic wire shelf with an adjoining hanging bar, leaving it in the owner’s hands to use ‘as is’ or customize the space to their needs. The common result, owners continue to use the closets ‘as is’ without considering customization.

Living in a metropolitan area where the cost per square foot is the highest in the country, it pays to rethink and invest in closet and storage space to make it as useable and efficient as possible.

For a number of my closets, I purchased an installation piece with a row of shelving with three (extendable/retractable) bars. I manipulated the placement of the bars to work for various closets. In some, especially the smaller entry closets, I removed the bar from the one side and only had the shelving and the dual height bars for jackets.

The shelves were used for accessories; hats, toques, gloves, scarves, and shoe maintenance products for the hall closet and socks, under garments, and belts for the bedroom closet. The accessories fit nicely in the Branas baskets from Ikea.

The Perfect Home Essentials picture shows some additional ideas on how to add extra shelving and shoe storage to the bottom of your closet to gain maximum versatility.

In addition to bottom storage units, shelving can be added above the hanging bars for extra storage of boxes, seasonal clothing, bags, etc. I purchased shelving from Ikea that was installed using a bracket/bracket rails system, which allowed for various height adjustments. Alternatively, shelving can be purchased from your local hardware store, cut to your required size and installed with brackets.  Both shelving options are shown in the pictures below.