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Started 1 year ago by ninakk
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ninakk
Member

Ever since Jackthetiger posted about building a house I've been meaning to ask you guys what you think about unsmart storage, or more specifically how much restricted and/or inefficiently designed storage space influences your daily life?

I always used to dream of living in a high-storey building in the same neighbourhood that I grew up in due to an excellent service level, not forgetting to mention that it's perfectly safe for kids to play in the yards and walking or biking between theirs and friends' houses by themselves. Then my husband messed the picture up because he grew up in the States in one-family houses and after many, many talks finally admitted to preferring to live in a house again. Yikes, so I tweaked my dream first into one of those buildings where small houses are kind of attached to one another in one long snake if you know (sorry, my vocabulary fails me here), then later into living in a house of our own. Took much processing though, but now I can't wait to not hear my neighbours anymore as well as have the spaces that fit my needs, not me adjusting to the limitations of a space.

So back to designing a house. I know it is a pure luxury problem, but I still find it very annoying when I'd love to have a different kitchen arrangement (I hate with passion corner cupboards for instance) or would need another kind of storage skeleton in the walk-in closet to name a couple.

Is this something you recognize or were you able to have your say before moving in? (I'm not talking about redesigning a kitchen only, because that's still about making do with the pre-existing floor plan.) Or is this something that doesn't bother you?

Next question is for those who feel restricted by their living spaces; does it affect you in such a way that you think you'd use some kitchen tools, pieces of clothing, personal-hygiene items in the bathroom, etc. more, if the space had another flow, other physical borders? And one more; do you think you have gotten rid of an item only due to these restrictions and therefore feel sort of annoyed by it?

Posted 1 year ago #
trillie
Member

Interesting question! And the first thing that came to my mind was: Built-in closets envy! I'm from Germany and most of the houses and apartments I've lived in or visited friends in don't have built-in storage like it seems to be usual for American and Canadian homes, or even Japanese ones (a friend who lives in Tokyo has had entire walls of closets with sliding doors in her apartments there so far). In Germany, all I've seen are occasional entryway nooks here or there, or tiny rooms with shelves serving as a pantry or junk room - but listening to all of you speaking about linen closets, hallway closets, bedroom closets, and walk-in closet made me realize that without those, I simply have to own furniture to house my stuff.

I know that without any doors from closets in my room, I'm free to rearrage my furniture as much as I want to, and I love that. On the other hand, once you own bigger furniture, looking for a new home has suddenly gotten constraints - not only does your couch have to fit into the living room, but the bedroom needs to have room enough for a dresser and a wardrobe, too, and so on. Also, I imagine that with build-in closets it would be much easier to achieve an uncluttered and calm atmosphere in a room, because you can simply close the door and it's an even surface with the wall :o)

On restrictions: I do have a long narrow hallway (8m/26feet long, 1m/3feet wide)and sometimes would love to glue some of this square footage on to the bathroom, which is really small - to dry myself after a shower, I need to turn sideways. But the huge advantage of a tiny bathroom is that it can be thoroughly cleaned within 20 minutes, so I'm not complaining at all ;o) The hallway helped me accumulate more stuff, because we put IKEA shelves there when we moved in, and so there was always enough room for everyhing. Ever since I started decluttering seriously though, my one goal was to have the hallway free of furniture (except a wardrobe near the apartment door) - achieved since the end of last year. It looks great now, but I really have to be strong and resist putting stuff there ;o)

Posted 1 year ago #
MellieTX
Member

Ninakk, I hate corner cabinets too. I use mine to store kitchen items I don't use often, but I almost have to crawl inside to get things in and out. My kitchen pantry is very awkward. It consists of two very high shelves (I'm short) and underneath those shelves an area under the stairs with shelves on the side. Its too low for an adult to stand up in. It is an absolutely huge space, tall enough to store a vacuum, but getting in and out is a chore. We meant to make it more user friendly, but now the house is on the market and I'll leave that up to the new owners to do what they want with it.

Posted 1 year ago #
susanintexas
Member

nina: the houses you are referring to have different names in different areas. Where I grew up in Philadelphia (and in Baltimore & Washington DC, in my experience) they are called "row houses." In most of the rest of the US they are called "town houses." In England they are called "terraced houses."

Posted 1 year ago #
JuliaJayne
Member

Efficiency and point-of-use are 2 of my favorite subjects :)

This house has a lot of built-in storage, but all of it wasn't (isn't) as useful as it first seemed.

The coat closet in the front entry was removed because it was so massive, and the doors so heavy that we didn't like to use it, so coats were all over the place. Plus, when walking into the house, the first thing you saw was the floor to ceiling monolith closet; it was oppressive in such a small space. Opposite the monolith, as I unaffectionately called it, was a built-in cabinet, like a kitchen base cabinet with drawers above the doors except the doors were sliding doors. I have no idea what people used it for. Previous owners tried to decorate it, I suppose to try to make some sense of it, but it was hideous and pointless. A very poor use of space, IMO. We tore it out the day after we moved in. The closet followed a month later. Now the coats hang where the cabinet was, which is logical because they are behind the entry door when it's open, accessible when the door is closed. There is a shelf with decorative containers to hold hats, gloves and scarves, and a bench below for putting on shoes or boots, and a rug under the bench for wet footwear. The bench is also used for a staging area for things that need to be taken with us when we leave. It's a very efficient space. The space were the closet was now is home to a decorative console, so when you walk into the house, you are greeted with something attractive, not towering doors. The entry is small, but it feels more open since rearranging the space.

The room that we use as the den/office also had a behemoth, floor to ceiling closet which had shelves in it. I'm not sure what the original intent was with 2 foot deep shelves. We filled the closet with our clutter until we eventually tore that out too and made it into an office space. Before the office space, most of the office stuff was in several places in the house, and it was all a cluttery mess.

In our L-spaped living/dining room combo, there is very large built-in hutch. While it's great for storing things that aren't used daily, it is a clutter magnet with its 6 cabinets and 7 drawers. When looking at the house for the first time, I knew the front entry had to be redone, and the closet in the den, at the very least, needed to be reconfigured, but I only saw the open, horizontal surface of the hutch as a clutter magnet. I didn't realize how much the hutch would beg to be filled. And filled it was at one point. I also didn't realize how much I would grow to dislike the hutch. I've been making a point, the past few years, to reduce it's contents, but stuff ends up in it anyway because it's available space. Even though there is very little clutter in it, (I need to pare down a few things) it seems to limit my creativity for finding better places to store what's left in it, but worse, it has become a place to put things away that should be in the basement or upstairs. At least once a week I get the urge to rip out the hutch even though that means storing some things in the walk-in attic until the kitchen is remodeled. Aside from the problem of the hutch being a clutter magnet, having a dining room table with chairs in that space felt congested, so we got rid of our big dining room table and replaced it with a small table. The smaller table didn't make much difference because the floor to ceiling hutch still felt oppressive when you sat at the table. The hutch just makes the space feel awkward and unusable, except for the vast storage and all-too-convenient place to set things. Eventually, we got into the habit of eating all of our meals in the living room.

Posted 1 year ago #
luxcat
Member

We have these in our corner kitchen cabinets, and I really like them, but I still use them to store lesser used items like the big soup pot etc.

http://www.kitchensource.com/lazy-susan/ha-5-14.htm

The place we live now has thankfully very large closets but not much else in the way of storage. I work from home so one half of a room and all of its closet is taken up with work stuff. The other two closets store our clothes/shoes, linens, tools, blankets, luggage, a small box of xmas ornaments, records and record player, vacuum cleaner, and misc. bulky items like a vaporizer we use during a certain season here, etc. Despite my best efforts to unclutter it's all packed pretty full and I still have quite a bit of work to do.

We are looking to move this summer and I am apprehensive about what we'll find in the way of storage. The older homes we'll be able to afford usually have very small closets unless they have been remodeled, but I'm hoping to find that balanced out by a garage and perhaps even the luxury of a linen cabinet. I have a personal thing against under-bed storage so I'm trying to avoid that as much as I can. Our kitchen also needs some more uncluttering work but hubby a bit of a "just in case" person and the kitchen is proving to be more of a challenge that I thought because we are having to make joint choices.

Posted 1 year ago #
lucy1965
Member

Our house was built in 1912 and has only two tiny closets in the bedrooms, with a built-in cupboard in the bath. This means that coats are put away immediately, unless they're wet; there's a hanging rod down in the laundry room for that. For parties, we have a rolling coat rack that goes up in the hallway.

The new apartment has a coat closet in the entryway, plus room for a shoe rack and table; a hall closet near the bathroom, and walk-in closets in the bedrooms: we've already decided to put shelving in the second bedroom/office closet and store software and technical books there. Even though it's considerably smaller than our house, the storage design makes it more functional for us.

Posted 1 year ago #
Jackthetiger
Member

A great question Ninakk! We have a small built in cupboard in our bedroom and it gives us each seventy centimetres of hanging space each, with one large deep shelf above. There is a void above the cupboard 60 centimetres by 140 centimetres. I know it was probably designed with issues of scale and aesthetics in mind, but that wasted space has always annoyed me, especially since there is so little storage space in the house.

Posted 1 year ago #
lottielot
Member

I too have basement and garage envy :) Not to mention the luxurious idea of built-in cupboards in the hallway... But they'd probably just fill up with crap, so we have to make the most of what we have, right? I did get to design my own kitchen 10 years ago when we redid ours and it is a very usable space. It is so lovely to have a space which fits our needs, accommodates a big cupboard for a pantry (so many people I know have their food spread about lots of tiny cupboards), deep drawers perfect for keeping pots and pans, cat food and plates, and a little pullout table for the kids to eat at while I'm in the kitchen. We also had built-in wardrobes put in the main bedroom about 7 years ago, and it really transformed how we could store our clothes (though dh still has far too many and spills over into other rooms and storage units). For the remainder of our storage, we have 3 understairs cupboards which are all awkward shapes and work more or less successfully. The top one houses a duvet and pillows for the sofa bed in the loft. We could fit more stuff in there but dh is always filling it with crap. The middle one has a Hoover, out of season clothes and bed linen plus travel bags. It could be much better organised and is on my to-do list this year. The bottom one is big but very awkward, with shelves at the side (only 2 though) and a long narrow corridor along to the back, which slopes down steeply. Basically I don't know how to use this space except to pile stuff in boxes and then try to wedge it all in. We have a LOT of camping equipment to store when we're not using it, and this is the only dry, rodent-proof area big enough to keep this stuff. The tool box and half-used pots of paint and DIY stuff also live here. I cleared out a load of camping gear and put it on freecycle recently, but it's still pretty chaotic in there. Every year I spend a day clearing it out and piling stuff more neatly, but it gets horrible again very quickly. I was actually thinking that maybe when I have a new shed put in the garden that I may buy some big plastic boxes for storing some of the camping equipment in which can be stacked up and easily accessible in there, it seems a bit crazy to have useful space right next to my kitchen which is stuffed full of things we only use for maybe half the year, if that. We also have a very small attic space, but that only houses the Christmas tree and decorations. It's pretty inaccessible, and I actually think that if I used it for other stuff it would end up as a dumping ground. Oh, we also have a small space in the boiler cupboard where I keep a big box full of towels. I've culled these a lot over the last 6 months and now I have other places where I store towels nearer the point of use, so I'm thinking maybe I could use this space for other things. Ds2's duvet and pillows live there as he has a futon in his tiny room, so that frees up space for him to play in his room. JuliaJayne has a good point about some built-ins attracting clutter! Sometimes you have to adapt how you think about and use your storage, sometimes you have to attack it from a different angle (like ripping it out a la JuliaJayne) and sometimes you get the luxury of designing something around your needs. I think the hardest bit is thinking beyond what you already have and changing your storage behaviour to fit your house.

Posted 1 year ago #
Jackthetiger
Member

Lottielot @ camping gear is so frustrating. In order to lead a simple existence in the bush for a few days, it seems like one has to pack an INORDINATE amount of STUFF!! I think it is more that my husband loves the gadgets.....

Posted 1 year ago #
lottielot
Member

lol, my dh too, he is a bit obsessed with camping shops and camping gear... Drives me crazy!

Posted 1 year ago #
lazycow
Member

I was so spoilt living at my parents' house for my first 29 years (pathetic, I know!) that I had a walk-in wardrobe and an ensuite bathroom. When I got married, the 3 houses I've lived in (2 rental, this one ours) have collectively had virtually NO storage. No built in wardrobes, no proper cupboards, crappy kitchens and bathrooms with terrible storage. That's what comes of choosing Victorian cottages and Californian Bungalows :-) Finally, after 10 years of living here we now have a wall of built in wardrobes in my son's big bedroom (1/3 for his stuff, 1/3 mine, 1/3 husband's), still no storage in the main bedroom (just an antique chest of drawers for our underwear and stuff), and a new wardrobe in my daughter's teeny, tiny bedroom. There is also an odd little cupboard next to the fireplace in the living room which we've dubbed the 'panic room' which houses things like batteries, torches, candles and some other random stuff - must declutter it again!

Fortunately, I've also been able to design my own kitchen, which incorporates a European laundry (the previous kitchen was galley-size and the laundry room was 2x it's size, bizarre!) so there is lots of lovely storage, and a big pantry. I even have a little vertical space to slide my chopping boards and trays. The only permanent items on the benches are my cherry-red Kitchen Aid and EVOO, rice bran oil, salt and pepper shakers and an ugly wooden knife block (husband won't hear of getting rid of it, sigh).

There is one bathroom with a long skinny cupboard (toilet paper, laundry hamper, hair dryer, clippers) and a 3 door bevelled shelf/mirror over the sink (I don't use a lot of beauty products, so it is relatively empty). Spare towels have to live in my son's room. We have no garage or shed, but a little crawl-space under the house to store plastic boxes of Christmas decorations, lawnmower and assorted odds and ends. The camping gear lives on top of my son's wardrobe (as it doesn't go all the way to the ceiling). I'd love a hall cupboard too, but we have a skinny little hallway and it would just look so cramped and dark, so hooks on the wall have to do.

Posted 1 year ago #
bandicoot
Member

o let's talk about husbands and camping gear!
my husband, who owns almost nothing else, went out and bought himself an insane quantity of camping gear last year when i was safely away overseas working.
he's got a spork! he's got dehydrated food! he's got a backpack! a tent!
how many times have we EVER been camping in the last 21 years?
i'll tell you.
not once.
not one time.
neverrrrrr.

now guess this.
how many trips have we got planned?
several.
how many of them are CAMPING trips?
NONE, that's right.
zippity zero, nada, zilch.

the stuff lives in a series of plastic totes in the workshop extension.
the extension we added on at vast expense a year or so ago.
the extension intended to house two very expensive motorbikes and an expensive lawnmower.
instead, i see the motorbikes and lawnmower living sort of on the balcony, while the extension provides premium accommodations for a $200 weight bench and a heap of camping gear that is never going to be used.

but me no complain.
he obviously felt the need for a man cave after all these years.
but damn, i wish he'd chosen one of those cheap aluminium garden sheds instead. or a shipping container.

Posted 1 year ago #
Netleigh
Member

Aah, collecting camping gear, a boy thing.
bandicoot, perhaps he needs some boy alone in the wilderness in a tent time?
My dh is sometimes significantly better to live with after an out in the wilds weekend without me, it gets it out of his system. Be grateful that he only has the one tent!

In a household of 2, formerly 3 before ds grew up, we have 6 tents and 5 camping stoves. Probably 2 big tents can go to freecycle because they were for family camping where space to cook and have a table inside for the rainy days were essential. That only leaves 4, one for 2 of us, one that is for 2 but is comfortable for 1, one lightweight for backpacking to campsites and a tiny one for camping where you aren't allowed because it hides behind dry stone walls.
However the 5 cookers all seem to have their specific uses,1 meths that I use if I'm camping alone, 2 camping gas if we are camping together and 2 petrol, one very lightweight the other more stable. I do refuse to use the petrol ones, they scare me.

lazycow, What is a 'European laundry' that's incorporated into your kitchen? I'm assuming it's just having the washing machine and dryer in with the kitchen units as is normal in the UK.

Otherwise I fantasize about replacing all the built in wardrobes and the kitchen units with ones that use the space more efficiently. However the ones that we have are adequate and I suppose I'd rather spend the money on travelling! If only UK houses were big enough to have walk in wardrobes.

Posted 1 year ago #
susanintexas
Member

I disagree about camping gear being a boy thing -- when we married I was the one who camped and DH never had and never intended to -- my gear has met it's natural demise, or was given away to interested young people.

Posted 1 year ago #
Anita
Member

Thankfully, the camping gene is not all that strong in my boy, so no camping gear to deal with. Photography gear, on the other hand... *eyeroll*

But back on topic, unsmart storage is indeed a pain, but the only way to deal with it is to make it work for you as best you can. The first step is, of course, to choose a home that has storage that suits your needs. If that's not possible, then it's time to get creative :P

My bathroom is tiny, and my landlord insisted on keeping a bath tub in there instead of replacing it with a shower and freeing up some space, which means that there's precious little conventional storage space to be had. There are a couple of shallow shelves built into wall in the bathtub area which hold shampoo and shower gel and whatnot. There's also a little medicine cabinet above the sink that holds a few toiletries. The sink is tiny and has no room to hold anything, so we put up a small shelf/holder on the wall next to it, for hand soap, hand cream and toothbrushes and toothpaste. And then there's the "nook". The nook is a tall (floor to ceiling), very narrow (less than 20cm/8in) and quite deep (maybe 70cm/2ft?) space between two walls. The landlord put in 2 shelves, to make it more of a useful storage space. The bottom part holds spare cat litter and misc. bathroom tools (toilet brush, plunger). The middle shelf holds towels and, at the very back, travel toiletry bags. Which left the space between approximately shoulder height and the ceiling. Rather than waste that space, I put up a small rod on the ceiling and hung a MALLA organizer from IKEA (http://www.ikea.com/ca/en/catalog/products/90154559) with matching inserts (http://www.ikea.com/ca/en/catalog/products/50154556), which house spare/rarely used/seasonal toiletries, first aid kit, medication, and various feminine items. Works remarkably well.

Unsmart space of any kind bothers me, but I try to approach it in a positive way -- i.e. "I don't like this, now how can I make it work for me?". I'm lucky that my landlord designed the storage space in my apartment very smartly, so I had relatively few changes to make (remove a shelf here, reinforce one there...), but I'm not shy about making adjustments if something doesn't suit me :P

Posted 1 year ago #
lottielot
Member

rofl bandicoot, that is so funny about your dh. Make the man camp in the back garden! When it's hot we move out there for the weekend if we can't go to a campsite. My dh may buy a lot of camping gear, but he does at least use most of it from time to time, and at least most of it has a home in our campervan... He went camping by himself a few weeks ago and I went the week before last, and I won't let him book a holiday unless it involves camping of some variety. Though we do seem to have about the same number of cookers as Netleigh, plus a vast assortment of 'portable' BARBECUES, grrrrrrrrr! One is a gas barbecue bought at vast expense that I almost always veto him packing, as it takes up an even vaster amount of space.
Don't even get me started on sleeping bags now :) I can't even count how many of those we have for 4 of us!
Which reminds me, I need to buy a new tarp, our last one died in the Forest of Dean last year and started leaking badly through the material. Maybe susan is right and not all the gear is a boy thing, I do have a bit of a thing about tarps...And silk mummies, love my silk mummy :)

Posted 1 year ago #
Rosa
Member

it could be worse, Bandicoot, he could make you camp! I actually don't mind family camping trips in the car/on a bike, but my partner's idea of a hot vacation is 6 days in the backcountry carrying everything in a pack.

I love our house, I chose it and I love it - the neighborhood, the size (though not the work that goes with it)

But it was built in 1902. There's one electrical outlet per room, added after the fact by running lines on the outside of the plaster walls. There are 3 closets, one could double as an ice-box, two are 2'x3' and not square (they share a middle wall and look like this

|**\**|

where one opens toward the top (east bedroom) and one opens toward the bottom (west bedroom).

The kitchen cupboards were built in about 1930, and are oddly-shaped with plumbing & exhaust running through them. The sink is on the North wall to ensure freezing-cold water.

There is a lovely enclosed front porch and front entryway (about 2 and a half feet square, just big enough for people to stand between the doors - we did add coathooks), but the back door that we actually use opens directly into the kitchen, no "landing pad" area. Doors, archways, radiators, and giant windows occupy each wall, limiting shelf & furniture placement.

No coat closet, no linen closet, inch-deep medicine cabinet, no under-sink cabinet, a disgusting corner behind the clawfoot tub that's nearly impossible to clean, a lovely attic that is either freezing cold or scorchingly hot, a basement with brick walls and an uneven sand floor...

It's a beautiful house but I have come to think modern house design reached an apex at about 1950 in terms of size/storage/cleanability. Pretty much every storage, cooking, cleaning, and entertaining decision we make is influenced by the house's design (right now we have no countertops, so I can reach into the awful corner cabinet from the top. It's lovely but unhygeinic. When we get countertops half the cooking crap is going away and if it means my partner never cooks rice again because I ditched his awful rice cooker that only I wash, I will just make all the rice myself.)

Posted 1 year ago #
tmichelle
Member

I just have to say to lazycow that I don't think being 29 and in your parents home is at all pathetic. :)

Posted 1 year ago #
chacha1
Member

Regarding storage, DH and I were lucky to find a large midcentury apartment with ample closets and kitchen/bathroom storage. If he didn't have so da.. uh, so much stuff ... it would be more than enough space for ease of access and use.

To be fair, I also used to have more stuff than the available space could accommodate!

We augmented with many large pieces of storage furniture - closed bookcases and other cabinets for books, artwork, souvenirs, supplies, the fine china, etc. Efficiency and aesthetic appeal have been the primary qualifications for everything we've bought over the past 7 years. We have managed to avoid, since we got smart, buying any furniture item that was merely adequate. We have waited to buy the exact right thing.

And fortunately, most of the old, pre-smart stuff was inexpensive. :-)

My only real beef with our space is the configuration of the kitchen, and it's not the storage that's the issue; it's the appliance placement. I have a counter-height, wall-mounted gas oven that is right inside the kitchen door, so not only does it heat up the dining room, you have to walk right past this beastly hot old thing to enter the kitchen, plus it's got a drop-down door that extends nearly the whole way across the passage (it's a galley kitchen) so you have to work from the side. I loathe it.

Posted 1 year ago #

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