Home owners in Spruce Grove, Stony Plain, Parkland County, the Edmonton area or elsewhere know you can never have too much storage space.

The problem for some of us may be too much stuff.  But what if you’ve de-cluttered and weeded out all non-essentials, and you’ve sorted and organized the things you know you need for daily living, but you still don’t seem to have a place for everything?  An article published in the “Reno Show 2011” section of the Edmonton Journal on January 30, 2011 might have the answer.

“Home Organization and Storage Solutions” goes beyond the usual suggestions for increasing storage with special baskets, shelving, cabinets and multi-purpose furniture.  Instead, the author asks you to take a critical look at where in your home you could build in purpose-designed storage.  This could be as simple as adding shelves above windows or hooks behind doors, or as elaborate as re-designing a linen closet as a home office.  The suggestions may not appeal to everyone, but some of them might just be the perfect solution to not only finding a place for a hard to store item, but also making use of an otherwise awkward or unused corner in your home. 

A significant part of the “I have no space!” problem appears to be the way space is allocated in homes, rather than the actual amount of square footage we have, especially in new homes.  It used to be that bedrooms and bathrooms were small and common living spaces were large.  Nowadays, many home buyers expect big kitchens, larger bedrooms and spa-like bathrooms.  Unfortunately, these sometimes come at the expense of common living areas.  Homeowners end up frustrated at not being able to fit large furniture into a smaller living room.

This problem is addressed in another recent article entitled “Make the most of your space”, published in the Edmonton Journal’s Homes section April 3, 2010.  The article describes new furniture that can maximize limited space, such as a pub-style dining table with built-in storage beneath the table top, as well as several inexpensive space-expanding projects like a built-in ironing board and a wall-mounted towel storage unit for the bathroom (from rona.ca’s library of Rona-by-design projects).  A little ingenuity can go a long way to solving our need for functional storage.

Looking for a home with something special or unique?  I can build search criteria for you that will help locate that perfect property.  Call me at 780-910-9669, email me at btwynam@telusplanet.net, or contact me here.