There may not be room to add more storage cabinets in your living space, but there may be many ways to increase the usable cubic area of the storage spaces you do have. Here are some helpful tips for reorganizing your home storage cabinets, to maximize their usable volume and efficiency.
Rearrange Storage Items.
Kitchen cabinets and pantries, wardrobes in bedrooms, tool cabinets in garage storage systems, playroom toy cabinets, and even bathroom medicine cabinets may all be made to fit more contents and to be more convenient to use. First, scrutinize the way items are arranged inside the cabinets that you need to optimize. Then use some of the following tips to improve your organizational system:
- Add Accessories — Purchase additional shelf inserts, racks, containers, hooks, pegs, cork boards, magnets, slots, tension rods, or other utility storage aids that can help you organize, fill void space, consolidate small items, and more conveniently access items.
Example: Use stackable, variably sized, transparent square plastic storage boxes with lids to store a vast variety of tiny or small items. Stackable boxes increase the usable volume of your limited storage space. And, transparency allows you to see the contents, so you can quickly retrieve desired items.
- Use Cabinet Tops — Place aesthetically appealing, infrequently used storage items on cabinet tops. This change expands your storage space and makes your system more efficient by moving non-daily use items out of the way.
Example: Cabinet tops are the perfect place for your set of family heirloom dinnerware.
- Use Exterior Sides — Utilize exterior cabinet sides to hang items on hooks or to install shelving to hold even more items. Use these added storage opportunities to place items that you want to be able to access most quickly.
- Use Interior Door and Wall Spaces — To free up shelf space inside cabinets:
- In kitchen cabinets — Hang cups and large utensils on side walls inside kitchen cabinets, to increase shelf space.
- In wardrobes — Hang freshly pressed clothing and scarves on the inside of the door, where they can hang separately from the bulk of the stored clothing and are protected from being crushed and wrinkled.
- In bathroom linen cabinets — Hang bathrobes, or a pocket-storage system to use for various fresh laundry items such as wash cloths, hand towels, clean slippers, or even for toiletries, etc.
- Branch Out — Consider adding one or more open exterior shelves. Well-appointed and used open storage shelving adds storage capacity as well as a custom aesthetic to any room.
Examples: Add an open shelf or two to your kitchen for storing dishes, cookware, houseplants, etc. Or, in the playroom, add open shelves for easy access to toys and books.
- Try Cabinet Cubbies — As an alternative to entirely open shelving, consider cubbie-style cabinets. Cubbie storages lend to greater organization of exposed storage spaces. They also help prevent developing a messy row of aesthetically offensive kitchen miscellanea—a common issue in open shelving use.
- Reorganize — Objectively examine your cabinets. Make sure that every item type is assigned a dedicated place, and that that item’s location, as well as all others and the overall arrangement makes the best sense for your purposes.
Then, tweak the setup and add accessories, as necessary to fill voids and improve convenience of access to the most frequently used storage items in each cabinet.
- Install Under-Lighting — Inadequate lighting can make any storage space much less convenient for finding items, putting them away and staying organized. Install supplementary strips of lights inside and/or under larger cabinets, to illuminate the spaces and make finding items quicker and easier.
Closet Solutions Florida
Closet Solutions highly talented custom closet designers create state-of-the-art storage spaces for our customers throughout Atlanta metro. We design and build custom bedroom closets, office storage systems, kitchens, pantries, cutting-edge garage systems, laundry rooms, fun kids’ multi-use storage spaces, and more.
For information about custom storage spaces or professional organizing for any room, contact Closet Solutions Florida to arrange a free design consultation.