Indy Total Construction

In many small homes, the height of the rooms is scarcely used but could almost double both the storage and the living potential. For example, it might be possible to create a balcony area in a living room which could be used as workspace, play space or for visitors to stat overnight.

If there is not enough height for that, a built-up platform could provide storage underneath, at the same time giving the room an added dimension.

In a small bedroom, build the bed on top of a 1.2m (4ft) high cupboard. This is just the right height for being able to see out of the window from the bed, an enormous bonus if you have a pretty view. The cupboard underneath will provide useful storage space for quite large objects, anything from clothes to small pieces of furniture, pictures and pieces of equipment which you may not want to throw away but do not need at present It is also useful for duvets and pillows for guests. A more primitive version would be a bed base resting on two chests-of-drawers.

Make the bed base out of slats with a good 12mm between them; if you are using solid pieces of board, drill holes to allow the mattress to air. For a 1m (3ft) high bed you won’t need a stepladder but you will need a step of some kind. A box-step can hold lightweight objects so that you have no difficulty raising it when you want to get into the cupboard. A chest-of-drawers next to the bed, at about the same height, acts as a bedside table.

A tall bed can be curtained off with muslin or pretty cotton print fabric to give the enclosed and private feeling of a four-poster.

No amount of pre-planned storage is going to solve all your storage problems. There are always little items like drawing pins, elastic bands, corks, postage stamps, pens and pencils and computer disks, and medium-sized things like calculators, cameras, film and so on which don’t fall into any convenient storage category.

It is important to find places for all these, otherwise they become the very things you can’t find when you need them most. There are also bulky items—extra blankets, sleeping bags, duvets and pillows for visitors, and the inevitable stepladders, bicycles and pushchairs.

Let’s look at the bulky items first. Drawers that pull out from under beds are practical for extra bedclothes. If the bed is tall enough drawers from an old chest-of-drawers will do, but if you are buying a new bed or divan choose one with drawers specially designed to go under it. Large but comparatively narrow items such as bicycles can be hung on a wall.

In modern, minimalist homes they can be a decorative element in a living room, but they take up potential storage space which could be used for other items and this idea would not suit everybody’s taste. Items which fold up into narrow shapes take up less space when hung than when simply leaned against a wall.

When it comes to the medium-sized items such as calculators and cameras, you can allocate a drawer to a particular type of storage so that cameras, film and boxes of slides will all be found together.

For the little items which are so difficult to organize, mini chests-of-drawers intended for carpenters’ nails and screws are excellent for home office use and will take labels, paperclips and other small items which need to be separate and available. Other drawers can hold buttons, thimbles, hooks and eyes, and other sewing equipment.

Filing can be a problem. Paper never looks tidy and gets lost so easily. Specially designed chunky ‘household’ files with categorized compartments are theoretically the answer, but the pre-ordained categories seldom correspond to those one actually needs and the files usually end up being too small. It may be better to buy box files or even to use shoeboxes for filing.

A low filing cabinet may be the answer, where you can store writing paper, envelopes and other office paraphernalia as well as letters. In a room which has to double as an office and a guest room, files can act as low room-dividers and there’s a choice of colors to make them less industrial-looking.

Many bits and pieces can be organized into albums. Photographs take up far too much drawer space and are largely wasted because of the trouble of sorting through them. Albums can be lined up in a bookcase, where they look orderly, take up less space and are easy to find. If you keep Christmas cards, postcards, children’s paintings and letters, they will be better preserved by being kept in scrapbooks rather than scattered about in cupboards and chests.

A well-stocked kitchen dresser is full of everyday items, anything from jugs and plates to graters and wire salad baskets. People who choose to keep their kitchen equipment on view are usually very particular about what they buy, and will look for things they like or consider to be well designed so that the dresser is an exhibition area as well as a work unit. In the same way, a simple, narrow kitchen shelving unit allows the packaging and labeling of tins, jars and bottles to create their own entertaining and decorative display.

Another example of mixing the practical with the decorative is to intersperse shelves of humdrum objects (folded towels or the family’s toys and games) with one or two shelves in the middle set aside for a display of pretty china. The eye will be drawn to this collection and will ignore the rest, particularly if the display shelves are lit from the back by concealed strip lights so that the china stands out in a warm glow. Other possibilities are to use the central shelf or shelves for a vase of flowers or a collection of intriguing objects.

Shelves in themselves can be a source of interest, particularly if they are asymmetrical and thereby add a shape of their own. Modular shelving systems, which can be built up in various ways, will fit into almost any space. Another way of combining utility and decoration is to place small sets of shelves at random on walls between pictures or prints. Here they will provide space for those small objects which are always difficult to display but which it is a shame to have to relegate to the permanent darkness of chests-of-drawers or the backs of cupboards.

Small, awkwardly shaped alcoves provide a good balance between the useful and the decorative. A tiny alcove can become a highly personal showcase fitted with just two shelves, comparatively wide apart, so that the top shelf can house the music centre (out of reach of young children) while the lower shelf can hold a selection of small prized possessions and perhaps a painting tucked in at the back.

Some restaurants make a feature of their wine collections by fitting wine-racks all around the walls, up the stairs and over the doors. Wine connoisseurs could take a leaf out of their book and use wine-racks as decorative additions to the room. They can be fitted into the alcoves made by a chimneybreast or the alcoves created by building a deep-arched division between one room and another. The simplest wine-rack, filled with bottles, looks exotic.

Some things are awkwardly shaped for storage— umbrellas, walking sticks, ladders, hats, tennis rackets, and so on. Yet all these things together, perhaps with some purely decorative additions such as hand-carved decoy ducks, can look picturesque. It helps if you hang them from something with more character than the normal nails or screws—try small brass or china cupboard door handles, or colored cup hooks, coming practicality and interest.