Create More Storage
It is pretty easy to become annoyed with trying to maximize space, and candidly, there is something rather maddening about it. You need a lot of concentration, resolved intent, time and gasoline to drive all over in search of the perfect solution. Yes, there is the internet, but that presents a different range of limitations.
Imagine that every piece of furniture in your tiny apartment could have two purposes, with one always being a little bit more storage capacity for items that don’t have a drawer or cupboard of their own. The process can be frustrating because it is often hard to locate all the pieces that you envision ought to be found and that makes one feel “less than” somehow. As if you have some sort of unworthiness because you have so little space. As if life would be infinitely simpler if you just had a bigger house and then you could just march into any old furniture store and buy any size sofa without regard for inches for heaven’s sake!
Maybe the best way to move beyond all of these conflicted emotions is to experience at least one success in locating genuinely attractive pieces of furniture that also happen to have additional function. It isn’t easy, but not impossible to accomplish. The most important quality, beside the style of the item, is just how sturdily it is made and how well it functions. If any piece of equipment that is meant to flip up or pull out binds, squeaks, or hesitates rather than smoothly does what it is billed to do then you won’t want to use it.
Very often odd-ball pieces that fit perfectly into a tight area are marketed through direct catalog sales and of course, via the internet. It is extremely difficult to get an accurate idea of how something is made without seeing it in person. While catalog vendors offer to return your money, realize it is your responsibility to ship the item back. One of our clients bought a rug once on-line and when we tried to help her ship the eight-foot long roll back, we were shocked to find out that it was hard to find someone to pick it up, and it was expensive.
Here we see a classic European style breakfast set that might fit into a variety of different settings easily. It could blend with simple contemporary upholstered pieces in an adjacent room or with more traditional details like button tufting or cabriole legs on arm chairs or a sofa. The unusual aspect is that the table offers not one, but two good sized shelves for storage. In this instance cookbooks and serving pieces are stashed. The attractive basket might hold linens, mixing bowls, or roasting pans. We don’t know what it stores and that is just the point: You could store tax records there for all it matters visually! This is how you get your space to really function. A laptop and CD’s could be held in the basket for when the dining area must double as your home office where you pay bills, check e-mail, and communicate with your office or clients.
The biggest adjustment has to take place in our minds. In this same vignette, very narrow shelves offer some useful storage for small and necessary kitchen staples. We find cooking oils, condiments, utensils, espresso pot, mugs, and table service. It works in creating extra storage and at the same time it is decorative. But to get here happily someone’s mind had to shift to the place where it was all right to expose things to everyone’s view that “normally” would be behind a cupboard door. Think of living on a boat and how the table turns into a bed at the end of the day smoothly and without incident fulfilling the intent of the designer.
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