Tag Archives: storage

Nothing Matches…….

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……..but at least it is tidy.  The workshop area contains a mish-mash of storage cupboards and shelving.  It does not look particularly pretty but is effective.

Yesterday was the last day of our long weekend and GMan decided to continue his goal of clearing up downstairs.  On Saturday he had swept and water-blasted the open concreted area under the house so yesterday he turned his attention to the workshop area.  I do not have any ‘before’ photos but here are a few shots of the end result.

The dismantled cupboards in the right-hand photo are from our old kitchen (renovated 7 years ago) which were repurposed as temporary storage.  They are now destined to be rubbish as the chipboard is all breaking up and we simply no longer need them.  GMan will cut them into smaller pieces and gradually dispose of them via our regular rubbish collection.

Cupboards and shelves were re-arranged.  Worn-out or useless rubbish were discarded.  Items no longer required were listed on Facebook Buy/Swap/Sell sites.  Bits of wood were cut up for firewood.

The area is by no means decluttered completely but we have got rid of some stuff, made sure similar items are stored together and generally know what we have.

As always, it is a work in progress but it feels good to have taken another step towards keeping only those things that we really need.

A Simple Storage Solution

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Several years ago we bought 2 free-standing hanging racks.  They were for our daughters who were both living in accommodation that had no built-in wardrobes.

Fast-forward a few years and their circumstances changed and the hanging racks both ended up at our place.  One was boxed up in the garage and after a while I sold it on Gumtree.  The other was quite useful as I had it in the spare bedroom/sewing room.  I also use it to hang clothes waiting to be ironed or wheel it into the lounge-room to dry clothes in front of the fire during winter.

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I am working hard to streamline my sewing room and reduce the general clutter.  When I sold the small chest of drawers that had previously lived in the wardrobe it meant that I could use the hanging rail in the wardrobe for the ironing that was yet to be done.

The hanging rack can be dismantled but it is difficult to store.  I am not ready to part with it yet as it is useful during the winter months.010I decided to make a storage bag.  I found some pieces of very strong cotton fabric in my stash and fashioned a bag which was big enough to hold all of the pieces.  I added a couple of ties and it was finished.

009Here are a couple of photos showing the finished article doing its job – holding the disassembled hanging rack.  I simply tied the ties in a knot over the rail at the desired length.

011 012Now I am off to do some more sorting in the sewing room.

Have you got any creative storage solutions?  Please share.

Keeping it Clear

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At the risk of boring you, I have one more post about the new desk.

After years of an open table top with no storage, it is a novelty to have 2 large drawers on the right-hand side of the desk as well as the storage above.  The top drawer has some paper that I salvaged from the IKEA packaging which our grand-daughters will be able to use for drawing as well as last year’s Christmas cards that I need to sort and file.  The lower drawer is designed to hold suspension files and there is nothing in there at the moment.

2015-07-20 01This is a close-up of the left-hand side of the shelving above the desk.  From the top – monitor for solar panels, modem, phone and stationery items (pens,paper clips and bulldog clips).  There are 2 speakers on the centre shelf but the remainder are empty.  How long will that remain the case?

I have a couple of lists and a notepad in the small drawer on the left.  I really like the idea of being able to put them in the drawer so that they are not lying around on the desk.

My plan is to keep the desk looking pretty much as it is and I see no reason for that not to be the case.  It is a great opportunity to start with minimal stuff and keep it that way.

Home Office/Library

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Today I have been revamping the home office/library area in our home.  This is really a follow up post to one I wrote in January which you can read here.

I finally moved the Australian Geographic magazines to the bottom shelf of the shelving unit in the lounge room and finally the bookcase was empty.

003I advertised it on a couple of local Facebook Buy, Swap, Sell sites and it looks as though it will be going to a new home tomorrow.

2011-12-21 01This is what one side of the office looked like a couple of years ago.  The freezer has been moved downstairs and with one bookcase ready to go we now have this blank corner.

009I am planning to get a comfy chair to put in the corner and create a reading nook.

Meanwhile, on the opposite wall we have a folding trestle table which we use as a computer desk.

001This was always only a temporary measure but it has been like this for nearly 10 years!  After much searching I have found this piece at IKEA.  I have only seen it online but hopefully it will measure up to my expectations.

indexThe look of the room has been changed by re-arranging some of the artwork we have.

007These are above the computer desk at the moment but if I end up getting the IKEA desk I will relocate them to the other side so they will be above the reading chair.

Here are a couple of others which have also been changed around.

008The office/library is a rather strange room due to the fact that the house was extended many years ago before we bought it.  This room was originally the main bedroom at the end of the house, however, it is now a walk-through room to the additional bedrooms.  The cupboards in the above photo would have been the original wardrobe.  The right-hand side is my linen cupboard and the left-hand side holds the filing cabinet.

004As you can see from the link in the first paragraph, we downsized from a 4 drawer filing cabinet to a 2 drawer one.  This left plenty of space but it was not particularly functional.  Today, we have cut down an offcut of melamine coated shelving and created a new shelf.

006There is still more to do but I feel as though I a winning the battle to make the office/library into both a functional and pleasant space.

Flashback Friday

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Here is one I whipped up earlier.  Four years ago, in fact.  This post with a video of how to fold plastic bags is one of my favourites.  Please let me know what you think.  Do you use this method?  Will you give it a try?  I find one of these takes up next to no space in my handbag and it is useful to have one on hand.

In the first days of this blog I posted a link on ‘How to Fold a Plastic Bag’ Here it is again for anyone who missed it.  This really captured my interest. I have two bags hanging inside my laundry cupboard where I store reused bags which I use constantly but I had another lot in the cupboard in the spare room which needed a better way of storing them.

2011-03-25 01I decided to try my new-found skill on this lot.

2011-03-25 02All folded on the bench – now for how to store them.

2011-03-25 03The only thing left to do is to put the box back in the cupboard.

Make & Mend – Shelving

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My latest project is something completely different.  I designed and made a piece of furniture.  ‘Furniture’ is probably a slightly too grand to use as a description for the rustic shelving unit which is made from vintage wooden crates and lengths of undressed pine.

Shelving
This creation is the culmination of much discussion over a number of years.  When we first moved into our home in a country town in South Australia we discovered that the large shed held numerous old treasures that had been collected, perhaps even hoarded by previous owners.  Amongst these items were 5 solid wooden crates which had been used to hold explosives.  This was evident from the markings on them.

Box detail
Over the years we have moved house twice, downsized and decluttered many things but the crates, which were someone else’s cast off stuff always managed to make the cut.  The Duke would vaguely suggest that we could use them for shelving and they have often been simply stacked one on top of the other and used to store various things in the workshop.  I had always had a rough idea of a design for shelving which would make the best use of the boxes that we had.  After (yet another) clean-up in the workshop the other weekend my plan finally became clear.  I found 2 identical pieces of undressed pine in amongst the odds and ends of wood. The Duke said that they were part of the packaging on the roll of fencing wire we had bought when we were building the chicken run.  I needed 8 matching pieces for my planned shelving so I asked at the local farm supplier from whom we had bought the wire.  He was happy to give me 6 more pieces that were sitting on a bench out the back of the shop.  The pieces of pine would make the ends and legs for the unit.

Shelving showing the legs
The Duke trimmed the pine to the length required and we then set about assembling the shelving unit using my design which I had roughly sketched on a piece of paper to convince him that it was feasible.

The only cost was $7.00 for some screws. Some were from our stash but we needed to buy more to complete the project.

The shelves will provide some additional storage in the workshop and were a practical way to use the boxes which had been deemed as too good to throw out.  By the way, I checked on eBay and found that similar ones were for sale at between $20 and $60 each.  What is my designer original shelving unit worth?  I would say that it is priceless!

 

STREAMLINE – Limits

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In years gone by our stuff was limited to a large degree by the availability and cost of most items.  Goods were generally produced locally and in a relatively labour-intensive manner.  Disposable incomes were less and stuff cost more when compared to incomes.  Global manufacturing and transport, cheap labour and distribution have meant that there is a seemingly endless supply of stuff for you to purchase at your local shopping mall.

Since the natural limits of accessibility and affordability have been removed, it is up to us to take control or we will end up drowning in our stuff.  The ultimate limit is the size of your home; you can fit a lot more in a 2 storey, 4 bedroom family home than a studio apartment.  However, even this does not deter some people as evidenced by the burgeoning industry of off-site storage facilities.

You can easily apply limits to things like your books by simply choosing not to have the shelves overflowing.  As you buy or acquire new books, make space for them by moving others along.  We all have books that we are not sure why we are keeping them.  Will you read them again?  No?  Time to go.  This way you will eventually end up with a selection of books that you really love and are proud to have on your shelves.

Bookshelves
Perhaps you can choose an arbitrary number such as 20 DVDs, 10 t-shirts or 6 champagne flutes.  Make sure that you don’t simply choose a number that allows you to maintain the status quo.  It needs to be challenging yet achievable as well as pertinent to your unique situation.

No matter what the item, you need to ask yourself the question, “Do I really need x of this item?”  Nothing needs to be immune from this process – lipsticks, plates, socks, CDs, towels, candles and cookbooks are all fair game.

Linen cupboard
Once you set limits on your stuff and force yourself to choose, you will naturally choose ‘the best’.  How you make that choice is a personal decision but making the choice means that you consider the merit of each piece carefully and you will appreciate its worth to you and your life.  The stuff that makes the cut will have an opportunity to shine in the decluttered environment.

It is not only physical stuff that you can set limits on.  You can set limits on your participation in events.  For example, you may decide that you will only spend one night a week playing sport, therefore you will choose the one you enjoy most.  This may give you a chance to excel rather than putting in a mediocre performance in 3 different sports on 3 different nights of the week.  You may choose to limit your association with people who do not enhance your life.

Limits can be seen as restrictive but the limits you set on your stuff will actually be liberating as you are the one making the choices.  Don’t let your stuff rule you and your life.

Creating Space

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We hosted our first Air BnB guest last weekend and we are also expecting a couple of lots of house guests over the next few months.

The guest room is always neat with the bed freshly made but what about storage space?

002There is a full-sized wardrobe in this room and I knew that the space was not used as effectively as it could be.  So I set about re-arranging it to create a permanently vacant space for guests to use.  I only moved one thing – a spare pillow.  There are no ‘before’ photos but the photo below shows some of the things I have stored.  This was after I had re-arranged it and there is still some excess space if I needed it.

003Now we have a clear space to offer to guests without a mad panic to move things.

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Use It, Don’t Store It

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The rain continues to pour down here with more flooding predicted.  This is our third round in less than 4 weeks so I think the only ones enjoying the weather are the ducks.  Extreme weather events make life a bit more challenging so we just manage the bare basics.  The systems and organisation that I have in place make it reasonably easy to get by but there is no denying that I do long for a bit of fine weather.

Our lake

In the meantime, I wanted to share something small with you.  We do not have a toothbrush holder as a permanent fixture.  At one stage we would put them on a shallow tray in the cupboard but I decided that it would be easier to have them accessible on the bench so I cast around for a suitable container.  I wanted something stylish but did not see the need to rush out and buy one so I re-purposed this vase.

2013-02-26 02It is the right size and shape as well as being stable and quite heavy so is unlikely to be knocked over.

I was involved in an online discussion recently regarding how many vases people had and where they stored them.  I found that I had 5, including this re-purposed one.  None of them are stored as such.

This one which came from my mother is a piece which I love and it is the centrepiece on my dining table.

Two of the others live on the sideboard and are essentially decorative, although they can be used for holding flowers as required.

The final tiny vase which I was given for my 21st birthday is an ornament on my dressing table.

Do you have vases and how do you store them?

A New Corner

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This afternoon The Duke and I did a bit more sorting out in the workshop.  This area is almost the size of a double garage.  It has a workbench and storage cupboards built-in as well as various other storage that we have acquired.

Keeping it neat and tidy is difficult as there always seems to be a project in progress.  However, we do need to keep some state of order as it is located between the double garage and the downstairs entry to the house.

We had some shelving that had come from my parents’ home and we decided to rearrange things and put the shelving up.

2012-08-04 01Here it is in the corner next to the door into the downstairs entrance foyer.  There is also plenty of space to store our garden shoes/workboots/gumboots.

I am not even sure what I will put on the shelves yet but I am really pleased that they are installed.

It is another small step towards getting and keeping things organised.