Finding space

I loved reading your sweet comments about the Bub’s room! Thank you so much! Many of you asked about the book holder in his room -- it’s actually a Goodwill find. It was natural wood and I spray painted it white and added the “books” letters. Love it. :)

I’m continuing to make progress on his room’s transformation, and I continue to get more and more excited! Yesterday and today, I’ve been working on the layout of the room – the addition of the full sized “big boy” bed has thrown me for a loop.

I think I’ve figured out a set up I love, but to get there I removed a few things – more on that in a minute.

We are SO lucky our house has a ton of storage space – lots of closets, a decent sized garage, a basement, and even some attic space we don’t even use. Don’t hate!  ;)

But I still try to find ways to store items in spaces that may get overlooked. Our utility closet in the laundry room holds things like extra filters, a step stool, etc:

You have to be careful with a space like this – don’t block any vents and watch the hot stuff. :) This space works well, because most of these items would go in the garage, and this saves me a trip out all the way out there. A whole ten feet.

I showed you how I painted this laminate TV cabinet here, and it’s held up great!:

The storage in this piece is great, which is why I wanted to rework it instead of getting something new. There was so much space inside, most of it was being wasted. So I got a piece of wood cut to the right size and attached it to the inside using brackets:

It almost doubled the storage space for tapes and DVDs! And no, I didn’t paint the inside of the cabinet. I got stuff to do peeps! I was onto the next project!  :)

All drawers in this house are home for something. The table in our foyer holds a few tools I use a lot, so I don’t have to run down to the basement:

And maybe a checkbook for the pizza guy. Oh, and a nerf gun my Stink Eye Sister got the Bub. She is an aunt, and thinks she’s fun and cool to get nerf gun for a three year old. Who shoots it in places he shouldn’t. So it’s hiding.  :)

In the linen closets, try rolling your towels instead of folding them:

It really does create more space!

Our linen closet in the loft also functions as toy storage:

I go up as high as I can in closets (that empty space way up there should be used for something!) and put stuff on the floors too.

This closet used to hold a bunch of games as well, but that brings me to my latest project. When I was trying to figure out the furniture layout in our son’s room, I was pretty positive I was going to have to put his dresser in the closet. I luuuurve to put dressers in closets. I’ve always done it! We have two in our master closet. :)

If you leave closets “as is” – they are such a WASTE of space! Soon after we moved in to our house, I took down every shelf they had just installed in our closet and rehung them so they were much more functional. I’ll show you that space soon – I need to do a load of laundry first. Or 25.

As you could see in my last post, the dresser I bought and painted for the Bub’s nursery is beautiful! And it wasn’t cheap. So the thought of sticking in the closet wasn’t really floating my boat.

I decided I would look into a closet storage system instead, but figured it would be at least a few hundred bucks to do, even if I installed it myself.

Wrong-o! Yesterday, on my 8th trip to Lowe’s out of ten already this week, we took a trip down the organization aisle and I found a very simple closet system that worked perfectly!:

The camera was crooked, the bins are not. :)

I was a little intimidated to do this, but it was SO EASY! Each canvas bin goes together in maybe three or four minutes, seriously. The only hard part was getting the two metal pieces on the wall level and the right distance apart:

The bins are HUGE and roomy! I can’t believe how much they hold! The dresser that held his clothes had three large drawers and two small, and now it’s in the guest room (which is perfect because I needed one in there anyway!) and for now, it holds games:

Can you believe the four canvas bins hold WAY more than the dresser? They are DEEP.

I cannot even tell you how much I love these! You just pull out each bin to get inside:

Uhh….I don’t fold the jammies. I pick my battles. And I already told you I need to do laundry –- he really does have clothes.  ;)

I wasn’t sure how this system would hold up to the Bub, but I’m really happy with it so far:

He’s already tested it out, and it’s working great.  :)

The metal pieces that go on the wall were $8 each, and they have extenders you can buy if you need it to go floor to ceiling. (I didn’t need them.) Each bin was about $25 – so this whole “system” was about $115. Now I want to chuck the dressers in our closet and put these all over!

I know $115 isn’t necessarily cheap, but it’s a LOT less than I thought it was going to be. I will probably need more bins as the Bub gets bigger and the clothes get bigger and more plentiful, but for now I’m thrilled with it!

So how do store creatively? Any fun tricks? Do you use every crevice like me?

P.S. These are made by Rubbermaid, and no, I’m not getting paid for this post. :)

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