Dream of a clutter-free home, but don’t have enough space? Here are some clever space saving ideas you can use to maximize unused areas in your home. 

Whether you live in a tiny urban apartment or a more spacious suburban single family home, we all face our own space challenges. It might be how to keep bedroom storage hidden in a studio apartment or how to deal with not having a separate office space in a townhouse; but whatever the reason, we all can use some more space saving ideas.

The ultimate way to deal with these challenges is to not accumulate too much stuff. Realistically though, even the most conscientious consumers among us still easily end up with more stuff than our space allows and that’s even if we don’t live in a tiny house. It’s even worse for those of us with partners and/or children–the ability to accumulate possessions is magnified then!

So, if after being a conscious consumer you still find yourself needing some space saving ideas for how to store your stuff, we have put together some some clever tricks for maximizing your space. There are solutions for cramming in more stuff to your apartment or townhouse that you might not have thought about and here are some of the best.

Clever Space Saving Ideas

1. In the kitchen, hanging pots and pans is one fantastic way to maximize space. Free up cupboards by adding a hanging rack.
2. Add corner shelves to utilize what is often viewed as unusable space. Think about how handy some corner shelves next to the bathroom sink could be.
3. Under the bed storage is a must if you are trying to maximize space and it’s possible to use the space without adding unsightly clutter. Consider some of these space saving ideas for under bed storage.
4. Many of us don’t use our closets to their fullest potential either. The back of closet doors are an often overlooked storage space. Try adding shelves or hanging storage to the backs of your closet doors.
5. Add more counter space in the kitchen by using a large cutting board that fits over your sink.
6. Clean up clutter that piles up on the table by making and using “seat sacks” for the backs of your kitchen or dining room chairs.
7. Build a storage ottoman to add hidden storage space to your living room or den.

Top Image: Wicker Paradise

Related on EcoSalon:

9 Functional Home Office Ideas for Small Spaces

Minimalist Living: Our Problematic Obsession with Small Spaces

My Tiny House Adventure: Have I Lost My Mind?

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Minimalistally speaking, the Murphy Bed turns every room into a living one.

The original Murphy bed was patented in 1900, but that doesn’t make it antiquated – not in the slightest. For all the touting we do of small (and smaller) living spaces, it bears mentioning that for this concept of the new scaled-down modern living space to literally fit, we need to not only reconsider the excess we’re holding onto but our concept of “living space” altogether.

There are living rooms, and there are bedrooms. Even in the tiniest of dwellings – tiny either by choice or budget – there’s generally a pretty clear delineation between what corner is meant for living, dining or sleeping. But The Modern Murphy Bed Manifesto brings into question a more existential question: should not all rooms be living?

William Lawrence Murphy thought so, anyway, hence he invented the bed that bears his moniker. Newly wed and living in a one-room apartment, he wanted to do away with the bed cramping his style so he and his wife could entertain like civilized people.

This scene was replicated recently in the grossly under-appreciated and hilarious flick Wanderlust. Of course, the punchline was: “Look at us. How lame? Feel sorry for us. We have a Murphy bed instead of a real one. Pathetic.”

It was comedic line borrowed from the silent movie era, in Charlie Chaplin versus the Murphy bed.

Very funny for Charlie Chaplin, Jennifer Aniston and Paul Rudd – none of whom deal with the kind of storage issues the rest of us do. The spatial challenge of the studio apartment is, for the studios, slapstick or romcom entertainment. Today’s studio dweller must reach back to the 19^th century for legit human empathy.

According to this fascinating historical account of the Murphy bed on Design Sponge, hiding the bed was all the rage in the 19th century, considered an art form borne of practicality. “The parlor was the defining room from 1850 – 1900 and signaled the social circle to which the family belonged.”

Nowadays our social circles are defined by if we tweet or not, the sophistication of our pins or whether we deign to visit Google+. The Murphy Bed Manifesto, meanwhile, declares that a room can be anything it wants to be. With a push and a pull and cleverly placed stools, it can be a parlor, a bedroom, a closet, a DIY room, a sex caddy, a room of her own, his own or its own.

The Murphy Bed is our past. And by God, if tiny is what tiny does – it is our future, too.

Images: Eunju Namkung; Design2Share; Resource Furniture; The Fancy: Trendir; All Things Thrifty; Resource Furniture

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A round-up of what we’re reading right now.

NASCAR and environmentalism? Stranger partnerships have happened… we think. [via Triple Pundit] 

Bill Clinton weighs less than he did in high school, and he has veganism to thank. [via Girlie Girl Army]

Looking to clear out your refrigerator? This vegetarian African peanut stew includes everything but the kitchen sink. [via Big Girls Small Kitchen]

Treehugger founder Graham Hill’s minimalist 420-square-foot studio incorporates every space-saving tip in the book. [via Curbed]

Before you dedicate your next vacation to playing with orphans or building a school, ask yourself if “voluntourism” is really the best way to make a difference. [via HuffPost Impact]

We always thought it was strange that Election Day falls on a Tuesday. Turns out, the answer is as dated as the horse and buggy. [via Take Part]

Image: The U.S. Army

The post Link Love: Vegan Diets and Voluntourism appeared first on EcoSalon.

Restoration Hardware is going out on a limb for spring with a line that speaks to modern minimalism.

Meander into Restoration Hardware’s highly architectural, bare bones showroom at the San Francisco Design Center, and you will be puzzled by what has been added as well as subtracted as the retailer keeps devising new algorithms for tweaking and modernizing its line.

The spring inventory is almost unrecognizable, the company having tossed out most vestiges of its former traditional self in a reinvention of what it is calling “furniture for the ages.”

In this case, what is being restored are deconstructed old world Queen Ann and Napoleonic reproductions impersonating timeworn naked frames awaiting fabric and welting in the upholsterer’s workroom. They are at once sadly barren and perversely fetching. And in many ways, these tactile statements reflect an impulse to shed the excess that binds us.

As described by the maker: Inspired by the unadorned beauty of their grandfather’s 19th Century wing chair- limited from its velvety upholstery and the frame exposed – the Van Thiels replicated the old world artistry of its inner workings. Character belies comfort. A distressed walnut frame accented with nailheads is complimented by the texture of burlap and antiqued cotton.

Exposed: The Deconstructed Collection is the latest attempt to head into a new direction. Chairman Gary Friedman and his management team of function-forward retailers strive to become the fastest growing luxury line in the home furnishings market. Apparently, there is also a goal of being the most fabulous and that can be left to the eyes of the beholder.

Earlier, they set the minimalist stage with fabric and leather seating taking their cue from classics, such as the tufted and rolled armed Kensington sofa and armless fabric and leather seating. Elongated like the best low slung Mid-Century collectibles, a reductionist profile is achieved in the intentional scale,  density and no- frills textile options.

Grand Kensington Rolled Arm sofa

Plush and low Soho recalling tufted Chesterfields of turn-of-the-century men’s clubs

Chelsea, inspired by 1970s English sofas

The jury is still out on how clients will take to the new direction, but then again, retailers everywhere are trying to capture an upscale market of trendsetters seeking these neutral statements for dynamic primary and second homes.

This is apparent in the Big Style/Small Spaces line, unveiled with a nod to the recognition that “the world is getting smaller” and Restoration is fitting in with furnishings and accessories for seven settings: the Paris Pied-a-Terre, the San Francisco Victorian, the  Napa Farmhouse, the London Townhouse, the New York Loft, the Boston Brownstone and the LA Bungalow. The pared-down upholstery follows the design rule that understated classics as part of an overall scheme allow other embellishments to stand out.

But in this case, most of the new vanilla classics for the ages are paired with other understated elements, resulting in a high brow beige-on-beige wash, accented with deep metals which help define the otherwise neutral canvases. Good deconstructionists have long appreciated the marriage of important period pieces with simple, clean cottons and linens, which brings them more current.

Still, buyers who have been fed rich velvets, and mohair and washable linens by vendors like Restoration, Pottery Barn and Crate and Barrel, might find the the hot deconstructionist direction leaves them a tad bit cold once it leaves the stylized design center showroom and comes home.

Image: Restoration Hardware

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Bigger isn’t always better.

There it lurks by the window, veiling its girth under a swath of drapery in feigned modesty. You inch towards it, lured by its seduction, its “comfiness.” The giganta-loveseat, a chromosone short of evolving into a Great White Sofa awaits. Sit your tush in that thing and it will swallow you, chew you up and spit you out in what is guaranteed to be the most graceless moment of your life.

Earlier this month, the New York Times reported on the Big Chair trend, which started in Texas and has since spread to living rooms across the nation.

“Furniture has been bulking up for several years now, partly to match the scale of all the cavernous “great rooms” that became must-haves in new homes (and perhaps also to match expanding waistlines),” Steven Kurutz of the Times wrote.

“But big furniture seems to have reached a critical mass of comical massiveness. One tipoff that the scale of a couch might be a bit out of whack? When you start comparing it to a large farm animal.”

The Times is right on record with this one. Even in homes that are cavern free – featuring moderately good rooms instead of “great” ones, single level ones with or without a doorman – bulked up furniture is cropping up at an ironic rate. Ironic, why?  Because even in this day and age of downsizing and settling for tiny, homo sapiens just can’t seem to shake themselves of this notion that a home is meant to be anything but a castle.

Although even that doesn’t hold water, or the mass of this Versailles Domed Burlap-Backed chair from Restoration Hardware.

The purpose of owning a chair like the Versailles is to have a throne in your living room. Though, again, almost. Take a look at this snapshot of Henry VIII’s throne in Dover.

Might as well be sitting in an aviator accent chair (also from Restoration), an ideal position for sugar bombing donuts into coffee while watching the entire season of Band of Brothers on DVD.

Regardless of the size of your abode, be it a little house by choice or mega green giant just because you can, the scale of furniture these days is considerably out of whack in comparison to what humans were sitting on during Tudor times, true. What was good enough for an ulcerous Henry VIII in his fat Elvis, uxoricidal days is, in modern era, as quaint and cute as his daughter Elizabeth’s dollhouse furniture. But buying furniture to scale is not too antiquated of a notion.

“At Raymour & Flanigan…a chair from the Briarwood collection…is equal in width to Le Corbusier’s LC2 love seat, designed in the late ’20s,” Kurutz notes. Opt for the “chair and a half” and you’ve got yourself a pre-war couch.

Post baby boom derrieres are bigger, but the median size of homes is on the decline (from 2,308 square feet in 2006 down to 2,244 square feet in 2011). For now, the upholstery market is a bull one. In a final mixing of metaphors, two questions nevertheless remain: are we in the midst of an upholstery bubble?

Images: Mouse Breath: Restoration Hardware; Lara Eakins

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Small was sexy in 2011. 

The world’s population hit seven billion this year and is projected to reach nine billion by 2050 – a sure sign that we better start figuring out ways to maximize space. The average house size in America has more than doubled since the 1950s, forcing us to consume more utilities and resulting in a housing culture where bigger is better. We think just the opposite.

These Shelter posts from 2011 highlighted the small space trend and showed that less can definitely be more.

Not only are narrow homes more energy-efficient, they’re also genius and popping up in cities from London to Tokyo.

Artists, professionals, and sustainability activists like Graham Hill and Jay Shafer are turning extreme micro-living into an art, but can others follow suit?

When her partner starts building a 130-square-foot wooden cabin from scratch, Merete Mueller decides to document the process. The result is “TINY: A Story About Living Small,” a film exploring the couple’s turn to minimalism and the concept of small living across America.

Small living is one thing, but dumpster homes? Artist Gregory Kloehn debuted Elite Waste, a luxury urban home installation housed in a trash receptacle, at the San Francisco Fringe Festival in September.

Guests at the Tubohotel in Tepoztlan lodge in 6-by-9 foot concrete tubes set in an organic orchard. What they lack in entertainment and facilities, they make up in pure novelty.

Mirrors can instantly make a small abode appear larger. We loved these 12 eco-friendly ones.

If you’re ready to make the leap to little, you’ll need some innovative storage solutions. Try these.

SEE ALSO:

2011 in Review: The Most Offensive Ad Campaigns Of 2011

2011 In Review: The 10 Stories That Defined Shelter in 2011

The post 2011 in Review: How Small Spaces Trumped McMansions appeared first on EcoSalon.

Two new books being released by Rizzoli this fall prove that when it comes to a new direction in innovative sustainable architecture, this could be the start of something small. And not just small, but harmonious as well – the road less traveled in the past, but all pointers head in that direction now. Yes, scaling back and using less is the prescribed mantra for reformed McMasnion resource hogs, and perhaps these new reads will stimulate not only thought but action when plotting new dwellings.

Small Eco Houses: Living Green in Style by Chrintina Paredes Benitez and Alex Sanchez Vidiella, showcases prototypical sustainable lofts, repurposed barns, hip urban apartments and woodsy homes built by innovative architects. “It has a fresh perspective on how smart design can create stylish yet ecologically sound living spaces in small-scale homes,” says the publisher, adding that over 50 spaces are included in the pages. Accompanying the descriptions are color photos and helpful floor plans, supporting how in each case history the architect met challenges for reducing power with solutions such as natural light, cross ventilation and more efficient thermal insulation. They also maximized space with with high ceilings, collapsible furniture and sliding doors. $35, Universe Publishing.

Modern Natural/Natural Modern by Ron Broadhurst includes works by design luminaries across the globe that illustrate how the most creative architects produce structures that relate to their organic, natural surroundings. Among the harmonious examples featured: A square house by the architects Makota Teki and Chie Nabeshima of the Japanese firm TNA; Two ski chalets with contrasting shapes and finishes (one an open dorm with rough finishes and a refined modern take in the the mountain top House on the Rigi by Adreas Fuhrimann and Gabrielle Hachler, AFGH Architecture). We see the works of other known innovators like Kengo Kuma in China, Sean Godsell in Australia and Allied Works Architecture in the United States. This book, too, appeals with exceptional color photography, and takes into consideration the goal of a reduced carbon footprint by way of radically rethinking traditions materials like wood and stone in forging spaces that co-exist blissfully with the landscape –  the way nature intended. $60, U.S Rizzoli.

Image: AFGH Architecture

The post New Responsible Architecture Books Praise Humble and Harmonious appeared first on EcoSalon.

Metropolitan Home is being put to bed for good.

I suffered reflux trying to digest the death of Gourmet, one of four Condé Nast publications closed recently. I didn’t sample the food bible much but felt nostalgic about it as an American institution. I only picked up Modern Bride a few times when plotting my wedding. (I had the main prop but needed flowers and a dress.)

Now, achy-breaky heartburn ensues from Hachette’s news about dumping Metropolitan Home.

Set to fold after its December issue, the loss of the treasured shelter guide is another casualty of the ad recession – in fact, the biggest casualty to date.

It has taken about 30 years, but the ultimate collapse is what my harshly prophetic broadcast journalism teachers at Northwestern predicted in the early 80s, proclaiming, “Print is dead!”

The grim forecast prompted many of us grad students to seek careers in television, only to make our way back to print eventually. Dying or not, it offered dignity. Print was where the rubber met the road in terms of writing acumen. The words didn’t always have to match the pictures. Imagine that.

I had a personal connection to Met Home, the uber source of swank urban nesting. I began as a fan, dovetailing pages challenging us to uplift our rooms with color, modern accessories, innovative gadgets and accessible art. It had a soft spot for small spaces urban dwellers could afford. Make puny pads bold, we were told.

Later, I became a contributor. When I first hooked up with Met I was a burned-out CNN writer and reporter, frustrated by the network’s ranting, mediocre producers, sensational live coverage and zero commitment to covering visual art.

I got up the nerve to phone Met one day from the Omni to pitch a few story ideas. I was merely a fan. A fan with a good resume: I worked at CNN. I had grown up in the housing design business. I desperately wanted in.

An erudite senior editor, John Sweeney, was happy to bite when I suggested a piece on world-famous pop artist, Kenny Scharf. The magazine was going through that we need hot celebs on the cover phase and my timing was excellent. God, I miss the 80s!

Nevermind that I hadn’t spoken to my college friend in years; that didn’t keep me from exploiting the connection. After all, Kenny and I had slow-danced together like Fred and Ginger in our dorm elevators, singing Cheek to Cheek. He owed me.

I called Kenny and boom, kismet! He graciously invited me to his upstate Hudson Valley Charles Addams-style manse which he had transmogrified into a graffiti palace with his signature cartoon aliens, atomic whirls and swirls. He was even producing ancient-future furniture that was an extension of his art. Right up Met Home’s alley. Lucky, lucky me.

I never turned back after that, and Met Home invited me to continue on as a Southeast editor, contributing cutting-edge articles on inner city housing projects and urban architecture.

I found Met was always on the cusp of all that is modern and functional, all that enhances our visual world, and that happened to include good green living.

The magazine should be proud of its April 2009 eco issue, which, like many of its best editions, entertained and informed while sharing valuable decor resources. This, in addition to consistent annual coverage of “the best little green houses,” and other examples of how the world of design is making strides in sustainable living.

But pride won’t keep you afloat when the dollars go down the drain. The biggest and most prestigious victim of the ad recession has fallen. Thirteen editorial staffers will join the growing list of unemployed journalists, including Donna Warner, the editor-in-chief for the past 17 years.

Warner, who replaced wonderful Dorothy Kalins, worked at Met Home for 26 years, joining shortly after it was founded at Meredith Corp, where it was introduced in 1974 as Apartment Life.

“I created this baby and loved it a lot,” said Warner. “It’s very sad. That’s what happens when you lose one of your children.”

My journalism instructors would boast “We told you so!” And now, I must admit, I  finally believe them. Print is dead.

While I know we will save paper, it just won’t be the same not being able to tear out pages of great sofas and chairs when I’m in the dentist waiting room or at the beauty salon. Saving them on the old Crackberry just isn’t the same kind of tactile experience.

This is the latest installment in Luanne’s column, Life in the Green Lane.

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