7 Clever Home Organization Ideas to Make Small Spaces Work
January 26, 2023

7 Clever Home Organization Ideas to Make Small Spaces Work

Every home comes with a few areas of built-in storage, but your hall closet is rarely enough for everything your household needs to stow. From everyday items to seasonal  outfits and everything in between, a small space can make elegant organization a challenge. Whether you are living in a small home, have a small home office, or your family has just grown beyond your original organization design, Fossil Blue is delighted to bring you a few ideas to make any small space work for your organizational needs.

Let's dive into a few of the cleverest modern ways to stay elegantly organized when your space at home is limited.

Stack Corner Shelves

We often underestimate just how much square footage is hidden in the corners of each room. Every room has a space we rarely use, except perhaps to place a single floor lamp. Even if your small space can't support the bulk of a full-sized bookcase in an empty corner, a corner shelf can provide a surprising amount of storage.

Corner shelves are shaped like a wedge with a right-angled back that nestles into a corner. They often have rounded fronts to make shoulder-scuffs a little safer, and tall corner shelves offer a surprising amount of storage. Corner shelves can even be nestled into the small space between a wall and doorway, or into the corner of a hallway where a normal bookshelf would never fit.

Use Hidden Compartments in Furniture

Many pieces of furniture and built-in cabinetry are bulkier than they need to be. Using hidden compartments is a great way to keep plenty of storage at-hand in every room without cluttering or filling your space with extra shelves. A chest ottoman is the most well-known type of storage furniture, but there are also coffee tables with storage inside, coat racks with an empty compartment, and custom furniture can often include more storage than it appears to.

You can find compartment furniture, commission custom pieces, or even embrace your inner carpenter and build a few hidden compartments of your own to have convenient and organized storage nearby without appearing to have storage at all.

Fold-Away Furniture

Fold-away or "murphy" furniture is all the rage right now. From tiny homes to luxury condos, furniture that folds out of the way is a decorator's dream when it comes to elegant and functional home design. A fold-away child's bed can transform their bedroom into a play room during daytime hours, while a fold-away guest bed might allow your guest room to double as a home office most of the time.

There are also many types of fold-away table, desk, or sidebar that include storage revealed when the surface is lifted. Any combination of these ideas can not only give you back some of your floorspace from large furniture, but also provide additional oft-hidden storage for tidy room organization.

 Hang Pegboards and Wall Hooks

One of the best ways to reclaim your space is to make use of your walls. Pegboards, floating shelves, and wall hooks all have the potential to lift clutter off your floors and surfaces into delightfully well-organized arrangements. You can arrange your often-used hand tools into an artful and orderly display on the wall in your favorite workshop area, hang pans and utensils in the kitchen, hang hats and bags in the front hall, and even hang toys in each child's room or play area.

Pegboards allow you to rearrange your hooks and racks based on your current organizational needs while a single hook or rows of hooks allow you to plan storage for specific items like coats and hats, or ties and necklaces. In each room you can discover which type of low-profile wall mounted storage will look the best with your décor and organizational needs.

Secret Storage Doors

Another fun recent craze is "hidden" or storage doors. These are shelves and cabinets mounted on hinges or gliders that take the place of a normal door. For slightly more bulk, you can delight in a hidden room and a whole lot of extra storage on both side of the door. Just be sure your doorframe and hinges are sturdy enough to support both the storage door and the items you stow in it.

Use Cubes and Containers

A more classic solution is to begin organizing into decorative containers. You can store many more family items tidily simply by organizing them into closed and opaque containers. Baskets, cubes, cute collectible lunchboxes; the storage type is yours to decide. The key is that these items will become part of your décor, sitting in neat rows along shelves, while also acting as a system of drawers and smaller cabinets for household items.

You can stow all the spare cables and controllers for entertainment in elegant cubes along the lower shelves of the entertainment center without the cable-squid making your living room look messy. You can stow all the remotes in the couch arm or in a closed basket on the coffee table. You can stow toys for children or pets, each in their own personal tote, cube, or basket on a reachable shelf, in a neat row so that everything looks nice when put away.

Maximize with Sink/Stove Covers and Grids

If your kitchen is often too cluttered, one smart way to make your small space work is a sink cover or increase storage with a sink grid. A large Farmhouse sink is amazing when you need to soak dishes or prepare a whole turkey, but when you want more counter space, you can simply slide a well-fitted sink cover over the deep chambers to reclaim more counter space, or use a grid to make temporary in-sink storage safer. This gives you back much more of your countertop space than you might realize and unblocks a critical area of your kitchen.

You can do the same with the stove, so that the burners become a smooth and family-safe prep space when you need extra countertop. Sink and stove covers can work wonders in a small kitchen, especially if you'd like to reclaim your space for work, crafts, social time, or homework when there isn't a meal in production.

Every Space is an Opportunity

Whether you have a small home or a growing family, organization can be a challenge in limited spaces. Fortunately, every nook and cranny is an opportunity to organize. Corner shelves, stair landing storage, pegboards, and fun hidden compartments all have the potential to transform your cluttered home life into organized elegance.

In the kitchen, Fossil Blu is you want to enjoy the spaciousness of a large farmhouse sink in your smaller home contact us to find the perfect sink as you work on your at-home organization.