What creative things have you done to increase storage space?
Debbie B.
8 years ago
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cathyyg
8 years agolast modified: 8 years agoabbisgram
8 years agoRelated Discussions
Adding cabinetry to bedroom to increase storage
Comments (45)Hello, I am Chris from ND, and I have been reading both Chris, and Melle,s posting regarding more room in their bedrooms. I too moved from WA state from a 2000+ house to ND to a 1200 foot house, and have stuff stacked up all over the house. No storage here except for the standard sliding door closet in each of the three bedrooms. We are retired, 68/71 but have family coming and going. Our guest bedroom has boxes, and tubs stacked in it against the wall across from the foot of the bed. Boxes stacked in the closet too. The middle bedroom we turned into an office, and my hubby built me floor to ceiling bookcases to store all my books, and DVD's/Videos. This room too is crammed full of STUFF! Now our master bedroom. It too is only 11' wide from the outside wall to the front of the sliding door closet. It is 12' long. There is a little space at the end of the room at the end of the closet where the door opens into the room. We have a king sized bed, two night stands sitting under the east window, and at the foot of the bed against the west end of the room there is a double dresser, and a single taller dresser. Also in the closet is another three drawer dresser. All these are overflowing, plus stuff stacked on top of them. I have gone through things over and over, but don't seem to make a dent. I am so frustrated. I looked on this site to see if anyone had done a bumpout on their room? If we could make a three or four foot by 11 foot closet bump out along that east wall, we could tear out the exsisting closet, and the room would then be 16'x12'. There is a second window in our north wall. This may be beyond or expertiese, and finances, but I am at my wits end. We have two sons here who maybe could help if we knew how to do it? I too could put some floor to ceiling cabinets where my night stands are I guess, and noticed someone had built floor to celing cabinets in place of their dressers. We still would only have a walk way around our bed, but at least we could maybe have room to put stuff away? This house has no storage other then those three little closets which are overflowing. I could not see the pictures you posted of your rooms, could you send them to me so I can see? Any ideas for me what to do. My hubby does not want to get rid of the king sized bed. We have an unfinished full basement, full of junk, and I was told there is a floor in our attic too, but the opening is tiny, and above the basement stairs so not easy to get to, or in and out of. Just a small hole covered with a board? We also would like to install a 11' x 4' bumpout in the dining room end of our kitchen. Make a walk out bay so more room for our round oak table. This is a load bearing wall so not sure how hard that would be. Also thought about tearing out this middle bedroom and incorporating it into our master, but then what do do with all this stuff in here? Also we live out on an 80 acre farm, and someday if we sell would most likely need to have three bedrooms? I just want to cry everytime I look around at all the clutter. Not normally me, but I have become so frustrated, I have just given up....See MoreSpace Under Desk - Anyone have creative use?
Comments (12)My kitchen desk ended up being a landing space rather than a work area. The desktop holds our house phone, my purse / keys, bills to be paid, and files for whatever extra-curricular activities we're involved with for the season. It sounds organized, but it's not as clutter-free as I'd prefer. The space underneath was intended for a chair, but the chair was relocated weeks after we moved in once my toddler learned how to use the chair to scale the countertops! The area underneath now houses a basket which holds newspaper (for recycling) and the kids' school backpacks. Do you have a need for craft or scrapbooking supply storage? You could tuck a wheeled cart with multiple drawers underneath. Others mentioned coolers for ice during a party. What about a small refrigerator or wine cooler if you have access to an outlet?...See MoreThe One Thing (I would have done differently)
Comments (153)Aliris19, I'm so with you on the counter edging! I like to hold the trash can right up to the lip of the sink and sweep the crumbs or whatever into the can. Edging would really work against this! I'm currently leaning towards the walnut butcher block counters from IKEA. I wouldn't put edging on it, although I might paint it black. Desertsteph, it doesn't seem that your junk drawer is truly a junk drawer. If you get a drawer organizer or some cute little boxes, you could very easily organize your batteries, flashlight, scissors, rubber bands, etc. I'm not against a drawer that contains miscellaneous items, I'm just against junk drawers where stuff is kept for years that no one ever uses, and where it is crammed full of stuff so you can't see what's in there, and where no one in the household knows exactly what's in there, haha! If you PM your address to me, I'll send you all the twist ties your heart desires. I can get them free. :-) I have learned two things about this forum lately. One, you gw people have turned me TKO! Haha! Not really! I've been decorating obsessed for years, and right now I'm just focusing on kitchens, because it's the first time in my life I've gotten to design my very own kitchen! Two, the folks here on gw come from many different backgrounds, income levels, and opinions--and that's what makes them (us) so fascinating! I've also discovered, as scone911 so eloquently put it, that if you do a bunch of stuff that you hate just for the resale value, you will not be happy with it. Unfortunately, sometimes we have to do things we don't like, but it's hard when that thing is your environment. I'm lucky with this reno in that I will live in this house for the rest of my life, and then it will go to my daughter. So resale is not an important factor in any of my decisions. Nor is equity. When I'm done refurbishing this old manufactured home, it will be worth more than it is now, but less than what I'm going to put into it. I don't need to worry that if I do such and such I won't get back my money on it. I agree that the fanciness of a kitchen doesn't add to one's quality of life--to a point. First, it depends on one's definition of "fancy," and two, it depends on the kinds of things one enjoys. For example, my range. While I do cook, and enjoy cooking, especially with my daughter, I'm not a gourmet chef. I'm going to purchase an electric range that can switch from regular to convection and has a radiant glass cook top, in black. Is that fancy? To my mind, no. I don't need a Subzero double wall oven and an induction cook top. I wouldn't mind a range with an induction cook top, but I can't afford it. But to some people, my range would be fancy. It's not the cheapest one Sears sells, and I'm not getting it used off Craigslist. I could get it cheaper in white. But that comes to my second point. What do you love? I'm a homebody by nature. There are times I can go two weeks without leaving my house. (I'm also a big international traveler too, which might seem weird.) I can do most of my work from home. And I enjoy being in my kitchen. In my new house, I will have a living room/ eat-in kitchen great room. And I'll be in there a lot. As a researcher, I spend several hours a day reading. And I won't do that in my little guest room/office. I'll do it in the living room. I decided a few years ago that since I'm in my home so much, I'm going to surround myself with beautiful things and create an atmosphere of peace and harmony. But beautiful does not have to mean expensive! I'm a great shopper and bargain hunter. I live within my means (no debt), and my means are not substantial. Yet I have managed to create beautiful living spaces that make me happy! For some, the whole remodel process is a chore, and thinking about design is a waste of time. That's a perfectly reasonable thing to think and feel. But for me, poring over design magazines or surfing the web for home makeovers and obsessing over cabinet hardware is a joy, something that takes me out of what I do for a living and relaxes me. Mrs. Pete, I had wanted to mention to you that my mom was a fifth grade teacher for many years. When my SIL and I cleaned out her home office, we discovered she had kept every single gift, card, and note her students had ever given her! It was a hoarding nightmare, lol! One of the funniest things we found was a letter from a little boy who is now a very famous professional football player. It was an apology for stuffing paper towels down a toilet and flooding the boys' bathroom! We couldn't stop laughing, picturing this hulk of an NFL player being a little boy getting busted by mom, who was a tiny little woman! Cherish your apple mugs because they will always remind you that you were an important influence in someone's life. :-) Oh, by the way, I'm a Siamese cat. ;-)...See MoreWhat is the MOST stupid thing you've done in your garden?
Comments (57)I'm so glad your dog is doing well and seems to be well on the road to recovery. We've had several cats bitten by copperheads and rattlers, and most of the dogs survive (even without a trip to the vet) and most of the cats do not. When we have a dog bitten on the snout, we immediately give it Benadryl (we keep the children's liquid type on hand so we can squirt it in their mouth with a medicine dropper) to prevent swelling. We do the same thing with a bite on the paw, where swelling could cut off blood circulation. Our big Rottweiler/Retrieve mix, Duke, was bit on his snout just above his nose by a timber rattler one day while Tim was at a fire on the interstate. He weighed 115 lbs. I managed to get him up close to the house, which was about 300' from where he got bit, but couldn't get him up the steps as he was getting glassy-eyes and woozy. I called Tim and he said he'd rush home as quickly as possible after they got the fire out and he told me to try to hold Duke upright because he felt like if Duke fell over, we'd lose him. I agreed because it seemed Duke was going into shock and fading fast. So, I sat there with that big dog leaning on me until Tim got home and gave Duke the Benadryl. Within a few minutes, you could see an improvement in his condition. He didn't eat for several days, but we got water into his mouth (with a turkey baster) and he slowly recovered. I had been so afraid that the swelling near his nose would interfere in his ability to breathe. We still have one living cat who survived a snake bite from a copperhead more than 10 years ago. It probably was closer to 12 or 13 years ago. His name is Shady (he had a brother named Slim and their mother was named Emimem after her father Emmit, lol) and after he was bitten, a circular copper-colored rash formed around the area on his body where he was bitten. That rash took months to fade, and hair never has covered over the scarred area. We never thought at that time that Shady would outlive his brother and his mother because his health was just pitiful for the longest time. He couldn't or wouldn't eat, and when he ate he didn't gain wait. Ultimately he made a full recovery but I bet it was a year or longer before it seemed like he was finally eating normally and gaining wait again. He's about 15 years old now and has no problem gaining weight at all. After Duke's rattlesnake bite, he was suspicious of anything snakelike for the rest of his life, and he was very cautious, so he did learn from it. He hated water hoses because he thought they might be snakes. He hated to walk past the place where he was bitten and would make a wide circle around that spot instead of walking right past it. I loved Duke and he was a great, faithful companion for many years. , We lost him to heart failure earlier this year, but he lived at least another 8 years after the snakebite and I was grateful for that. We had one cat, Spots, survive being bitten twice by a copperhead, about two or three years apart. The vet said a second bite likely would kill her but it didn't. A couple of years ago our mama cat, Ranger, got bitten in the head/face area and was nearly paralyzed. There is no reason she's still alive except that we had a cat specialist vet who simply would not give up on her. He kept her at the vet hospital for about a week and did everything under the sun to save her. He worked a miracle with her and saved her life and restored her health. I am so grateful for him, and it was worth every nickle because she's a very good cat who means a lot to us. He also did not charge us an arm and a leg for all the careful, time-consuming care that he gave her. Even after he finally let her come home, her face was paralyzed for weeks and she couldn't close her eyes. He told us he thought that the paralysis would fade, but he wasn't positive it would as he'd never seen a case exactly like hers. Eventually it did fade, though. For a while, she looked kind of like one of those Hollywood people who'd had a facelift that arched their eyebrows way too high to be real, you know, , but eventually the paralysis faded and her face returned to normal and she no longer looked like an aging Hollywood star with a face that is, um, abnormally tight. She'd go to into a closet so she could sleep, eyes open, in relative darkness, and I wouldn't let her go outside since she couldn't blink her eyes. I think she stayed paralyzed for at least a month, and didn't go outside until late fall after the snakes were hibernating for the winter. We try to teach our animals not to stick their heads into tall weeds or something where they cannot see if there's a snake there, but you know how animals are...the minute you turn your back, they are off in the tall grass in the fields where they shouldn't be. One year I walked outside and there was a timber rattler coiled up underneath the big pecan tree, with five cats sitting around it like Cub Scouts at a campfire. It was a horrible sight and I thought all 5 of them were about to get bitten. I got as close to them as I could and started throwing whatever I could find....a chicken feeder, a bucket, sticks, etc. at the cats to drive them away from the snake. I was calling them by name but they were mesmerized by the snake and were totally ignoring me. Then a neighbor came over and shot the snake. By then, I had the 5 cats safely indoors. How we got through that incident without a single cat being snake-bitten amazes me, and I felt bad for the snake....it had restrained itself and not harmed anyone but had to be shot anyway so it couldn't come back another day and maybe bite someone that time. It wasn't off in some obscure spot where you'd never encounter it again. It was right in the yard where we all spend a lot of time. Having venomous snakes around is just a nightmare. If I could change anything about living here in such a natural, wild location, it would be getting rid of the venomous snakes. A great local remedy for feeding an ailing pet after it is snakebitten is to mix together a raw egg and bacon grease and feed it to them. The family that farmed the land we now own used to do that when their animals were snakebitten. I try to feed it to the cat or dog as soon as possible after they are bitten. I don't think anything about it saves them from the venom or anything. Rather, it seems more likely that the bacon grease merely tempts them to eat the egg and the egg provides protein for them at a time when they don't feel like eating very much. I have noticed that if a snakebitten animal won't eat the bacon/egg mix, they are less likely to survive the snakebite, but then maybe that's just because their reaction to the venom is so strong that nothing would save them anyway. We have had friends whose expensive competition dogs have been bitten by rattlesnakes and they did not survive even with veterinary care. Sometimes the bite is just too much for the pet to overcome, the venom too strong or in such quantity, the location of the bite, etc, being something that cannot be overcome. One friend of ours, many years ago, took her two dogs to a snake aversion course offered at a local junior college near her. They used shock collars to train dogs to stay away from snakes. That may seem cruel to some, but its goal is to save the dogs lives by teaching them to avoid snakes. Her two dogs were her babies and she lived in a rocky area filled with snakes, so she was doing what she could to keep them safe....See Morecathyyg
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8 years agoDebbie B.
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