STORAGE IN THE HOME, OFFICE AND GARAGE

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Are you short of storage in your home or apartment or need extra storage in the office? Follow this advice:

• Organise existing space before adding to it - you can free up a lot of room by selling stuff, giving it to charity, passing it on to friends and family, or if total rubbish, throwing it away.
• New storage space will just create more room for more clutter if you do not clear away some of your old stuff first.
• Before building more storage, an expensive and time consuming task, plan out how much storage you will need and in which rooms.
• Make or use a floor plan of your whole area, all the rooms, and list what needs storing for each room. Then see if you can rearrange space to store things, perhaps by moving one room's items to a different storage space.
• Try to make a 'one motion' storage space, where you only have to open a door and take the thing you want.
• This means that very deep shelving or cupboards are not a good idea, as you have to move things to get at other things - meaning not only is it difficult to get at, you might even forget it is there!
• Use adjustable shelving and modular units. This means your storage spaces can change according to what you need to store. Modular cabinets can be bought and sold as required, or moved around the house to make larger groupings.
• Often modular garage-style shelving can be sued in the house, depending on the style.
• Have many small shelves and spaces rather than one big space. This makes for tidier and better organised stuff.
• In small rooms use open storage, such as shelves, as it will not make the room feel small. Or use mirrors on cupboards to add to the feel of space.
• Larger rooms can use fitted cupboards to give a cleaner appearance.
• Closets and wardrobes: these can be remodelled to give more practical space.
• Avoid damp, or mildew, and fusty smells by fitting ventilation grills.
• Stop moths with moth balls (naphthalene) or organic solutions such as cedar wood balls.

More on storage

• Storage places, boxes & carts >