Finding Storage in Surprising Places

We have been living in a tiny home since long before it was the "in thing"! Storage has always been a challenge. Sometimes we just have to think outside the box when it comes to finding room to keep our things.

Our bedroom floor space is limited and adding a second chest of drawers was not an option. We had thought of a raised bed with drawers underneath, but I really didn't want to go that route.
We have resorted to re-purposing an Ikea Billy bookcase as a pantry and even building our own Pottery Barn knock off trunk to serve as a coffee table and a place to hold extra blankets and linens.





Bedroom storage had me kind of stumped. Until I was sitting in the living room day staring blankly at the wall that backs on to our bedroom. I got to thinking that the space in the wall "bump out" where the dining room closet is, and our bedroom closet from the other side.
I got my measuring tape and realized the total width of both closets was about 24 inches less than the total length of the bump out.
What I needed to do was check to see if that was indeed just open space behind the wall.





From the inside of our bedroom closet I cut a hole in the wall into what I was convinced was just wasted space. Low and behold I was right. There was a hollow in the entire wall about 2 feet wide and 3 feet deep.
We thought about opening it up to create a larger closet, but since it is a load bearing wall we didn't want to mess with taking out studs and putting in headers, etc. Besides I really wanted some drawers.





We decided to use just the space between the existing studs and create shelves that would hold baskets to use as drawers! It worked out perfectly. The shelves are about 3 feet deep, and I have yet to find baskets the exact width and length, I did find baskets the perfect width leaving about a foot of extra space behind, which does not go to waste. I use it to store things like off season shoes, hot rollers and blow dryers!





We now have plenty of extra storage in the bedroom without using an inch of floor space making the room feel bigger than it's 10 x 12 footprint!






Original article and pictures take http://www.hometalk.com/14026918/finding-storage-in-surprising-places site