Small House Organizing Tip #4 - Add Shelves in Unused Spaces

One of the things I learned at the small house was to look for unused spaces to install shelving. It greatly increased our storage in a house that was very low on storage!

Our small house kitchen did not have any extra food storage. Just the regular kitchen cabinets that we needed to store dishes, pots, pans, etc. So we had to get creative! We did have french doors in the kitchen and a laundry room on the other side. Two of the doors would meet on the same wall, so that wall wasn't used for anything. As our family expanded, we decided we had to do something to create more storage in the kitchen! We decided to take the laundry room door off the door frame. It was a very small room and really didn't need a door. The kitchen door didn't need to open 180 degrees to touch that wall either. We were then able to install shelving to create a pantry. It added so much storage space! Knowing we wanted to sell the house in the next few years, we decided on easily removable shelving since we were aware it was in an odd place. Our realtor ended up telling us to leave the shelving because it added so much space! 

If you notice to the left of the shelving, we also added a wrack to hold some of my most used cookbooks as the others were stored in another room. We tried not to waste any space!

Small House Organizing Tip #3 - Turn a half bookshelf into a shoe rack

In our old house, we had a closet just inside our front door that needed to serve a few functions. It was tiny, but we needed to keep 6 people's shoes, jackets, gloves, and scarves. Our master closet was about double the size of this so we also didn't have room to store any shoes in there. So when I say 6 people's shoes, I mean ALL the shoes. Thankfully none of us were shoe addicts, but I definitely had more than anyone else! I thought I would share our solution in case it would help anyone else.

We had a half bookshelf left over from college days that we didn't need for anything else that just so happened to be the right size to fit in the closet. We adjusted the shelves to maximize usage and even added an extra shelf from another bookshelf we had. It worked really well for our purposes!

To keep things semi organized, we assigned a shelf to taller shoes, one for flip flops, and one for the kids. That way the kids wouldn't bury my husband's shoes where he couldn't find them or get my nicer shoes covered in dirt.

Small House Organizing Tip #2- Easy Winter Hat Storage

At our house, the kids winter hats are supposed to hang on the hooks by the door with their backpacks and coats. But, usually they just end up in the floor. We have a closet just inside our entryway for our shoes and extra jackets. But there wasn't a good place to store the hats.

As I was unpacking the boxes of winter clothes this past fall, and hanging up the jackets in the closet, I had an idea. If there was just a way to attach the hats to the hangers the jackets are on, that would solve our problem. Clothes pins would work if I had thin hangers, but we have thick plastic hangers. Then it hit me! I have a little box of 1 1/4" binder clips. They attach to the hangers and hats perfectly without causing any damage to the hats! Yay!!!

It also works for gloves...

Small House Organizing Tip #1: Buy Double Duty Products

A big struggle of mine is house keeping and time organization. It's not for a lack of trying. It's just not something that comes naturally for me. I know I'm not alone, and wanted to offer some tips that have helped me. I love reading tips on other people's blogs on organization and time management.

Today's Tip: Double Duty - If you have limited space like I do, make sure something you buy can serve multiple purposes for you. Especially if it's something you'll only use for a little while.

Example: Changing Table/Dresser/Hutch

For baby number 3 we bought a dresser with a hutch instead of the regular baby changing table. A standard sized changing pad wouldn't fit so I bought some foam at the craft store and hot glued it together. It worked perfectly! Now, instead of the changing table only being usable for her diapering years, it can easily transition into a traditional dresser later by removing the changing pad. And the hutch uses a lot of wall space we wouldn't otherwise be able to use. We even have some canvas containers on top to hold extra diapers and toys.

On a side note, don't be afraid to buy something for storage that isn't part of a system. Meaning it doesn't have official "matching" storage containers to fit it. Just measure it and go online to find containers that fit those dimensions. Turns out the Circo (or Closet Maid) canvas containers fit great for my shelves. I also found some pretty hard canvas baskets that worked great in the drawers at Target. So I was able to maximize the storage space even more with little effort (or money).

We were able to get the whole unit for $120 used ($300 retail). About $200 total for the whole unit and the storage containers. Which is much less then it would have cost us to buy a dresser, changing table, & shelves for the wall (to gain the same amount of storage and use)! And it can be used for years!