What did you do to add storage?
 

I would love to hear from my fellow TVers what creative ideas you have come up with to add storage to your home. We are thinking of adding an attic stair. But other than replacing those darn half shelves in the kitchen cabinets with pullouts and buying a stackable washer and dryer, I'm stumped. Any suggestions?

Put in the stairs. The builder has supplied "some" plywood/particle board in the attic over the garage. I put in extra plywood in the attic and had the pull-outs installed in our previous house. Just haven't had a chance to get to it in this one yet. It's definitely on the "to do" list. I'm also thinking of adding pull-outs under the kitchen sink and the bathroom vanities. It's a real female dog to get to stuff in the back of those places. Also when you do the pull-outs in the kitchen, have those half shelves replaced with pull outs also.

What model home are we talking about??

If you're looking for more shelf/hanging space in your closets, take down the shelf/hanging system TV installed with the new build and put up double rows for shelf/hanging. This will work for hanging shirts, etc. Still will need the ones at the original height for longer items. If you've got higher ceilings, you can do a third shelf as well, just for storage shelf purposes.

Put shelving on your garage walls, too - up high, just to store things up out of the way.

Original/prior homeowners of our place installed extra wall cabinets in the laundry area.

Bill :)

Storage
 

I took all the 1/2 shelves out and added pullouts to top and bottom as well as the pantry. In the walk in closet I added a full row of upper shelves, in the master bath closet I added 2 additional shelves, in the laundry I added and extra upper shelf and a shelf on the wall,in both other closets I added a 2nd upper plus 5 smaller shelves on the right side. My garage I added 28' of wire shelves on the walls plus installed a 6' base cabinet plus added attic stairs. Once a year we go thru everything and donatate what we haven't used or worn.

We are adding additional cabinets in the laundry room and over the commode in the master bathroom 'water closet'. Also using lidded baskets where floor space allows for toilet paper and extra folded/rolled towels.
Hubby installed Craftsman work cabinets in the garage and attic stairs/plywood flooring.

We purchased furniture with an eye for drawers and cabinet doors/cubby holes.
Platform beds with drawers underneath.

Have ordered extra storage in the master closet. Double rods are most important for us here.
I also will convert the 3rd bedroom closet to become all 16" deep shelves (wall to wall, ceiling to floor) for oddball storage.

And I am really downsizing possessions. I suspect I will continue to do that in waves, as time goes by and we see how we are functioning.

Solving storage problem was easy for us---------we got rid of everything we had not used in 15 months. Now, no storage problems!

Ours was a Begonia.

We have Bridgeport model and I added cabinets under the kitchen window by the desk area. I also had to add a cabinet and full counter in my laundry room because they didn't offer that when we built. All of our closets have shelves and double hanging rods. Put in attic stairs and also shelving in our garage.

In walk-in closet hubby installed the Craftmade (sp) closet organizer system - well made, pretty easy to put together and looks great, economical, too. Great storage for blankets, pillows when company arrives, and other unit has shelves (we added doors on upper half)......second home we've done this to.

We did everything above PLUS we had these huge hanging steel selves installed in the garage. Once I convinced hubby he did not have to have the car in the garage, we also put in a row of heavy duty shelves basically dividing the garage in half. The left has the golf cart;the right have the laundry area. In the back hubby has a hobby area with shelves and a work surface he built.

OMG! We're going to have to get serious about getting rid of all our stuff. No way do we want to NEED all that extra storage and no way is our car NOT going to be in the garage. No offense intended. By the way, this is my first post. We hope to buy our CYV in a few months and move in by the end of 2012.

And when you think you've whittled your possessions down enough, do it again.....and again..... :D I'm not looking forward to the moving experience if we decide to move to TV f/t at some point in the future!!!

Welcome to TOTV!!!

Bill :)

That's what I've been doing..... I go through it and through it and through it. I toss and give away each time! whew!!!! I don't want to end up with boxes left over after I move in!

I think you'll find when you get here, you don't need all that stuff anymore. The whole idea is to make life simpler and easier and having a lot of junk you really don't need doesn't fit into the lifestyle here. The longer you are here, the less "stuff" you need - and the more time you have to enjoy life. We have a two bedroom, two bath home with 1-1/2 garage and I have everything I need (with our car and golfcart in the garage!).