As your
family grows, you may find the need for storage growing by leaps and
bounds. Rather than buying a larger home, your first step should be to
see if you can make any of your present furniture serve double duty.
Here a
large Ming coffee table is made to serve more efficiently by the
placement of two beautiful, matching flat baskets. Each basket
contains memorabilia, photo albums and other items the owner wanted
handy but out of sight.
Look
for ways to put baskets or other containers on top of, inside of and
underneath furniture to expand dramatically the amount of storage you
can use.
- Choose a sleep sofa rather than a regular sofa for a room where you might
occasionally entertain a guest. This way you can use the room for other
activities when you are not entertaining.
- Turn an unused formal dining room into a home office. Add shelf units or
built-ins for more storage. By using the height of the room to your advantage,
you'd be amazed at how much storage space become available.
- Bring in an entertainment center to a bedroom that is usually used for
guests. Not only with your guest appreciate ways to entertain themselves, your
room will become more functional and useful to you as well.
- Daybeds are great for helping a sleeping room appear
multi-functional. You do need to add plenty of pillows if you expect
to sit comfortably on one. Daybeds are usually 39 inches deep.
- Consider adding chairs that swivel, rock or recline or all
three at once. This adds flexibility to your decor. Look for
quality, however, as movement must be able to withstand lots of
punishment.
- Wall beds are another clever invention for small spaces. When
not sleeping, the bed, bedding and everything else are
conveniently out of the way and out of sight.
- Nesting table are a clever way to pull out extra table tops when
needed and store them compactly when not. One is placed under
another and usually come in a set of 3.
- Expanding tables and flip-top tables are great space savers
that can be expanded at will when needed.
- Decorative boxes are great accessories and serve as
excellent storage spaces too because they usually come
with tops, drawers or other handy storage units for
smaller items.
- Kitchen storage units that you can buy at most hardware stores can
be effectively used as low or high storage units. When several are
used together they take on the appearance of "built-ins"
and don't have the expense of hiring carpenters to custom make.
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