We’ve been making some little improvements to our living space as the larger projects continue. Sarah and I’ve been ripping down drywall in the basement, and I’m sure I’ll have a post about that before long. For now, though, here’s some things we’ve been doing upstairs to improve the amount of storage.

There’s basically two closets on the whole floor.  There’s a big one in our bedroom, that’s taken the role of pantry and general storage. We got some shelves for that closet and loaded them up. Even so we wound up taking a lot of stuff downstairs to store in one of the empty rooms. The other closet is in the front bedroom (if you can call it that; it’s not very big). We put in a couple of rods and some shelves for our clothes.

Pot Rack

The pot racks were a clear need early on. We don’t have a ton of cabinet space but we do have a ton of kitchen stuff. That helped a lot, especially after we learned the trick of putting the lids on the handles, which freed up a bit more space in the cupboard. We picked them up in a couple sizes from IKEA.

The kitchen was still a problem, so another trip to IKEA and some screwing and gluing later we had a new kitchen cart to hold some of the overflow and give us a bit more counter space that doubles as a cutting board.

Kitchen Cart

With the kitchen under control, the next project was putting up a coat rack by the front door, since our clothes closet in the front bedroom is doing double duty. I used the folded post-it note trick to catch the dust as I drilled the holes.

Drilling Holes

The coat racks were from the same trip to IKEA as the kitchen cart. We also got a big box of screws and wall anchors that went along with it. That place is great when you just need something cheap to get the job done. I used a level to space them properly and keep the height the same, but rather than use a pencil I just drilled against it. It seemed to turn out all right.

Wall Anchors

Of course, the last step was putting them up and trying them out.

Coat Rack

I think it turned out pretty well. Of course, if all the projects were this easy and straightforward the house wouldn’t be quite so daunting.