Designing Maine: Key to Successful Small Spaces

Designing Maine: Key to Successful Small Spaces: In today’s trends of living green homes and apartments are becoming more and more compact. Rooms are serving as multifunctional spaces. Un...

Key to Successful Small Spaces

In today’s trends of living green homes and apartments are becoming more and more compact.  Rooms are serving as multifunctional spaces.  Unfortunately are desires for stuff doesn’t go hand and hand with our desires to help save the plant. This creates a mental drain on our lives daily as we sort through this stuff to find what we need.

So how do we resolve this dilemma? Our first challenge is to determine which stuff is adding value to our life and which is being a drain on our life making our living space feel much more like our utility or gear shed.  Whether you’re an avid outdoorsman or a book collector you need to first organize your stuff into three categories.  First is the stuff you use in your daily life. Second is the stuff you use at least once a month or seasonally, and finally the stuff if lucky you use once a year.  This can be done by taking an inventory room by room create a list with 4 column the first column is the item the other three are your three categories.  If you find broken items don’t add them to your list put them into a recycling pile and get rid of them immediately.  Create your list and categorize everything you own.

Now you’ve gone through every room of your house including the garage and any storage outside the house you may have the hard part is done. It’s time to go back through room by room and remove anything that is on your rarely used list. If you only use it once a year then there is a really good chance you won’t miss. Give it to a friend or donate it where it can be used. You’ll feel a lot better about getting rid of it this way and it keeps it out of the local land fill.

Now it’s time to evaluate what you have and how to store it. Make sure if the item on your frequently used list is store close to the area it is being used. Other items can be remotely stored in a spare room, basement or garage.  If you do not have room to store these items where they are used, look at you space and how is it used? It is important to keep thing as accessible as possible. Can you add horizontal storage by adding shelves?  Create a space for everything you own that will allow easy access to it. If you have a lot of small items that can go into a basket on a shelf, that gives you a convenient and attractive storage for little of no cost if you own the basket.

Small space can be very livable if you eliminate the unnecessary clutter and organize what you need. If rooms like kitchens are poorly designed you may need to seek professional help, but with stores like Ikea you will find a wealth of storage solutions that will make your closets and rooms more organized and enjoyable.  Small spaces are all about storage and organization!