BEDROOMS
- Store cans on their sides under a twin bed. When you purchase cans place under the left side of the bed. When you need a can for meal preparation pull it from the right side. You have a cheap rotating storage right under your kids beds!
- You can get wide, shallow plastic bins at most department stores that have wheels on them for rolling under your bed. These are great for storing cans of food since they are about as deep as a can. You can easily pull them out for food rotation purposes as well.
- Behind the bed headboard
- **This one we actually do I raised a twin bed using 5 gallon buckets of wheat as risers. I don't think you 'd want to do short term storage this way.
- Buy some of the heavy duty Velcro from any store. The stuff that’s about two to three inches across. Put one side on the back of a pantry, or cabinet, then attach pieces of the other side to your spices. Easy spice rack on the back of the door for almost nothing. Works even with the really big Costco spice jars. We have a couple rows of this, keeping the spices organized, and easy to use.
- Inside the door of our pantry and the converted coat closet hang a pantry door shelf that hooks over the top of the door. The one in the pantry holds my 50 or more spices. The second row from the bottom holds my nonstick sprays and Crisco. The bottom shelf holds all my pancake syrups. And big bag of Krusteez.
- If your kitchen has a breakfast bar that is too tall for eating (approx. 46 inches) then find someone (husband, a family friend, or pay someone) to custom make shallow cupboards underneath the counter. If they are made with a wood to match your kitchen cabinets then it should be a nice useful addition to your kitchen. We are in the process of doing this.
- We put short bookshelves in our son’s closet and used them for food storage. Since his clothes were small they fit great over the top of the shelves. We also stacked boxes of #10 cans in the ends of the closets. Just make sure the boxes are labeled with what’s in them and put the things you will need to get into most often on the top or it can be a real pain to find things.
- Create false bottoms in your closets! Clear everything out of the bottom of your chosen closet. Fill that space with either #10 cans or a couple of cases of canned goods. Cut a piece of plywood (or have it cut for you!) to size and place on top of the cans. Now, use your closet as you normally would!
- We converted our coat closet to a little storage room (we kept the coats in our regular closet). We used boards and #10 cans to “build” shelves and it was amazing how much stuff we were able to put in there.
- I live in a manufactured home (no basement) with a large master bathroom that has a corner “garden” tub. The side access panels are held on with Velcro. I store my laundry supplies in the dead space under the tub.
- What I’m planning on doing is curtaining off two feet or so along one wall of the dining room (Ikea has curtain rails you can mount on the ceiling) and putting all my food storage on shelves behind it.
-Cathie - In one house (we were owners so we could cut into the wall) there was a space under the stairwell and we cut an opening in there and put a door so we could store things there. It was quite small, but functional. We’ve always looked around at wherever we were living for available space.
- The laundry/utility room often has extra space above the washer and dryer that can be used. Even if you don’t want to put food there, it works for storing toilet paper, dish soap, shampoos, etc.
- We took sheets of 2 inch blueboard and made a 4×10 food storage room at the end of our very small living room. Made a door out of duct tape/blueboard.
- You can put organizers under your sink that are adjustable and can fit around all the pipes. It’s a great way to have shelves under that awkward space. I also put racks directly on the cupboards to hold different kinds of plastic wrap, aluminum foil etc.
- Don't forge the those alcoves
- Storage ottoman
- Use buckets and plywood painted or covered
- I sewed a liner for a big basket I had (like a big bag). Then I was able to put extra oatmeal boxes, crackers etc in it. I put a round table top (the kind you screw legs on) on it and used it as an end table. The bag liner hid the contents….When I moved to a bigger 1 bedroom apartment that same basket was used to store all the extra laundry detergent and dryer sheets I would stock up on at sales, soap and shampoo too – since I didn’t have a linen closet.
- The food storage boxes from the church canneries (the kind that hold six #10 cans each) fit very nicely between the wall and my couches. Every piece of furniture in my living room and family room has food storage boxes behind it. I stack them about 3 boxes tall, and then extend them as long as the couch. It leaves just the perfect amount of space between the wall and the furniture — nobody would guess there was anything back there. Those boxes also can be stacked to form a table — my telephone sits on one such table. It’s just boxes with a cloth over them.
- One year when we lived in an apartment my in-laws gave us a big wicker chest for Christmas. We put it in our living room and filled it with cans. We were amazed at how many cans could fit in it. We had a futon in our living room and we hid soda bottles filled with water behind the futon.
- We also did the plywood table top thing, except we used two buckets of wheat for each table–they were beautiful and no one would have guessed what was under them!
