Much like fellow EAD Living contributor Erin, Evs and I currently reside in a home built nearly a century ago.  Our little cottage, constructed in the 1920s, is our dream first-home – one story, hardwood floors throughout, with modern updates but still maintaining that “vintage home” feel. As of now we rent, but are hoping to convince our landlord to sell in the next year or two so this gem will really be ours!

A home tour post is definitely in order (after we put the finishing decor touches on the cottage) because I freakin’ love this house!  But this post is about the one downside of our home – storage.

Thank goodness I am lucky enough to have married a man who willingly donated 3 of the 4 closets in the house to my vast clothing collection (don’t worry – my shoes and I thank Evs daily for his sacrifice!).  But (shockingly!) there are other items that require space besides J. Crew’s fall and spring lines – and that’s where the challenge presents itself.

We were lucky enough to have landlords who actually lived in and remodeled our adorable cottage themselves – thus providing solutions for many of the tight squeeze conundrums that face dwellers of older homes.  But, for you DIYers out there, any of these brilliant little space-makers can be recreated with the help of retailers such as Restoration Hardware, Ikea, Pottery Barn, Container Store, and Bed Bath & Beyond.

Kitchen / Laundry Room

While we do have some great cabinets for the area provided, our kitchen space is not expansive.  These 3 shelves allow us to store (and display!) some of our prettier entertaining pieces, as well as a photo and a few decorative pieces.

The stainless steel mounted folder is also a wonderful edition to our kitchen.  At first I thought it was a bit too modern and utilitarian for my tastes but its such a perfect place to store coupons, recipes, and clips to keep drygoods in our pantry fresh!

Our landry room is tiny.  In fact, I wouldn’t even call it a room – its more of a teensy nook.  Gladly, our gorgeous washer / dryer units (btw, if you had told me 2 years ago that I would ever describe appliances as “gorgeous,” I would have told you to go play in traffic) stack nicely.  But without the pedastles, I was at a loss for places to store necessities like dryer sheets, stain sticks and fabric softener (the heavy-duty detergent just hangs out on top of the units).  Enter the hanging baskets from Target – they store all my essentials without all the clutter.

On the other side of the laundry nook, we have a padded pegboard that stores brooms, mops, reuseable grocery bags, and the like., keeping them off of the floor and out of my way!

Bedroom

Our bedroom – the master bedroom – is not massive.  A queen-sized bed, two small bedside tables and a small half-dresser fit nicely but the addition of anything else would feel cramped.  Evs actually keeps his dresser and his clothes in the guestroom (a saint, that one) because of our close-quarters.  However, each of us brought a flat screen television to the marriage and the obvious place for the smaller version (mine) was our bedroom.  To save space, we had the TV mounted (much like our living room television, below), right above the dresser.  I wasn’t sure if I would like having the cable box and DVD player on my dresser, but overall, I love how clean it looks!  A favorite photo of the two of us, plus a funky jewelry box add some decoration but keep with the simple lines.

In college, I was all about the plastic bins, drawers and shelves… so dorm-room-chic!  And while I still rock the under-bed bins for my sweaters, books, and Christmas decorations, I’ve adopted the out-of-sight school of thought for the heavy duty plastic pieces.  However, one of my old hold-overs that I still use everyday is this four-drawer unit – it fits perfectly in my closet and holds my (1) underwear, (2) bras, (3) tights / hose / Spanx / camis, and (4) socks – thus freeing up that space in my dresser for T-shirts, PJs, swimsuits, shorts and work out gear.

I’ve never been a huge fan of over-the-door shoe wracks until I started using this one.  However, my bedroom closet is severely limited in floor space and my shoes would be a crazed mess without these heavy plastic units.  They keep my shoes off the floor but still allow me to see most of my collection with ease (flip flops and running shoes stay on the floor and winter boots are stored on the high shelves).

Bathroom

Our main house (we have a small “guest cottage” that is a converted garage) has two full bathrooms and a half-bath.  Each of these bathrooms are equipped with three amazing little space-savers: (1) towel shelves, (2) cup / toothbrush holders, and (3) soap dish holders.  These accoutrements may not seem like much but when your bathrooms boast attractive yet spatially inconvenient pedestal sinks, you take what you can get!

We do have a (very small) linen cubbard in our hallway but it fills up quickly with sheets and the “crummy” (pre-registry) towels.  Thus, these above-toilet towel shelves come in super-handy to store clean towels for each ofthe bathrooms.

Pedestal sinks are aesthetically pleasing but don’t allow much room to set hand soap, toothbrushes, or rinse cups.  Having particular gadgets already installed to hold your bathroom necessities reduces sink clutter and allows space for a hairbrush or hand towels.

A few other easy bathroom space-makers:  a hanging jewelry sorter and tons of hooks!  I hooked these clear plastic jewelry compartments to the back of my bathroom cabinet door – it keeps my jewelry easily displayed, untangled and at my fingertips.  A hook on the back of the bathroom door, a towel bar tucked behind it, and a hook beside the shower allow for maximum hanging space with minimum visual clutter.

Living Room

Like our bedroom, we mounted the (much larger) television in our living room in order to maximize space.  While its a bit more visible than I would ideally like, the  glass and steel shelving below streamlines all of our media gadgets (cable box, DVD player, DVR, etc).  This set-up does require a rather large (and ugly) mounted power strip but the black woven basket that stores our DVDs provides a little camouflage.

For excess living room storage (more DVDs, hand weights and a yoga mat for my Jillian Michael’s DVDs, our computers when guests are over, etc), we have two catch-alls that double as decor pieces – an upholstered cube from West Elm and a chest (hand-me-down from my aunt).  Pretty, storage items like these are godsends in spaces like ours!

What are your go-to space-makers?