Favorite space-saving ideas for small spaces

[ReadingMama]

We are buying a new house.  It's 1270 square feet and has a great split floorplan, which makes the house feel bigger to me.  We plan to declutter a bunch when the storage PODS deliver our stuff to the house next week, but we also want to make the best use of space we can.

What are some of your favorite space-saving ideas and products?  My husband is pretty handy, so if you have any built-ins or storage ideas with photos, that'd be great!

[maisiedotes]

We moved from a small house to a smaller townhouse with a tiny kitchen and as chefs by trade, we have tons of kitchen stuff.  We try to make the most of space with wall-mounted spice racks, pot racks, etc.  Our washer and dryer are in the kitchen and we have a wire rack on top of our dryer that holds detergent, miscellaneous junk (lack of storage space for DH's stuff means it is full of hammers, cigars, lint brushes, etc)... it is our version of The Junk Drawer.  We managed to make space for the ironing board, vacuum, and steam cleaner in the coat closet... but yeah, we are lacking big time in storage space.  I try to stack upwards to save floor space and as i mentioned, wall mounted stuff seems to be good.

Another thing we did that saved alot of space was got a coffee table with a shelf underneath for cards, games, etc and one of those CD folders for video games, DVD's and CD's and got rid of all the cases that they came in.

I am not organized by any stretch of the imagination but these things have saved space for us!

[ReadingMama]

Your post got me thinking about those wire cabinet door shelving units.  That might help too.  I know that 1270 square feet isn't a tiny space though.  We're actually going a little bigger than our old house.  I just want to make the best use of space I can.  Those Real Simple magazines are inspiring/intimidating!  I need a good shoe organization system too.

[nerdymom]

We live in a 960 sq ft apartment. We are in the middle of a huge pre-baby reorganization of the whole place. We converted DS's mostly unused bedroom into an office/sewing room and moved his toys into the living room, and his bed into our room, since he sleeps there anyways.

[KoalaMama]

You can run book shelves along the upper parts of the walls around a room. It looks interesting and uses space that you otherwise wouldn't make use of.

Those over-the-door shoe holders can be great for storing a variety of things. We use one for craft supplies, and I saw a clever idea where someone did the same thing but put all the supplies in old peanut butter jars. It kept things very neat and organized. (Loose stuff in the pockets tends to attract other, non-related, loose items.)

I just saw an awesome idea for using a closet as an office. Basically, pop out the bar, put in a small table or built-to-size shelf, place shelves above for office-related storage, and pull up a dining room chair when you want to sit down to work.

Use shelving that runs floor to ceiling rather than lower pieces. You'll use less floor space this way, and it will pull the eye up and make the space look bigger.

Choose items that have duel purpose. Like a fold-out couch that can be used as a guest bed, or a bed with drawers underneath that can provide storage.

[crunchy_mommy]

We have slanted ceilings on the second floor and there were knee walls to make the room more 'square' (more normal)... So we knocked out the knee walls & now one side has a built-in flip-top storage box across the whole wall & the other side has a wall-length closet with 4 sliding panels so 1-2 panels can remain stationary to put furniture in front of them while still being able to access the closet. I'm probably doing a horrible job of explaining this (and have no pictures) but if you're interested I can try to better describe it... slanted ceilings doesn't have to mean tons of wasted space (don't know if you even have slanted ceilings)...

We also added a closet to our bedroom, which juts out into the room & diminishes floor space but is essential to us for storing our clothes, and we don't really need lots of floor space to sleep lol! Also our small entryway, we put a closet in there as well (can you tell I'm a fan of hiding the clutter?!) which is where we keep our vacuum, winter coats, etc. Both closets have sliding doors (mirrored in the bedroom to give the illusion of a bigger space) because there wouldn't have been enough room for regular swing-open doors.

We use those over-the-door storage things too (obviously not on the sliding doors lol) -- we just have a towel rack right now but I'd like to get one of those over-the-door pocket organizers to use at the top of our basement stairs.