Perfect Fit

Hi there, thank you so much for tuning in today. You are really so incredibly fabulous and you deserve a truly amazing home. One of the most impactful ways to make your home feel more polished and put together is to have a well thought out storage strategy, and I’m not just talking about the idea of organization, which is a wonderful subcategory in the storage universe.  But we need to grasp the big picture of storage first, and that requires a radical shift in the way we look at space and volumes. So buckle up because we are about to pull extra stash space out of thin air, and you will never look at you cabinets, closets, or shelves the same way again.

But first, let’s talk about the Color of The Week. Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings have begun and will continue through March 24th. It is 2022 and the United States has yet to appointment a black women to the Supreme Court, so Jackson’s hearings are  monumental and long overdue. She is an extremely accomplished judge, and she showed up to the first day of her confirmation hearing wearing an ultramarine blue blazer. There’s a great image of her being sworn in and there are water bottles on the desk in front of her, with labels that match her blazer almost exactly, it’s like this beautiful synchronistic moment in time. That is why The Color Of The Week is Pantone 2746. This bold, fully saturated blue says I am ready! And you can incorporate this into your home with a Lapis Lazuli geode or a classic blue Cindy table lamp from Kartel. This is a huge moment in history and it’s cause for a big celebration.

I will always have a soft spot in my heart for metal office filing cabinets. One of the less glamorous tasks that I got to do as a corporate office designer, was to go into someone’s office and measure all of the cabinets. Sometimes this was one floor’s worth of storage, sometimes it was three. In the professional interior design world, storage is quantified by linear feet. This includes papers, folders, three ring binders, banker boxes, and storage bins. When an office is planning to leave their existing space for a brand new, professionally designed, jazzy office, one of the exercises we designers will facilitate is to reduce the storage footprint. This is a multi-step process that begins with a conversation, usually between various department heads, operations, or the facilities team. We discuss the company’s  various workflows, how much paper is actually needed, or any other particular equipment that would be taking up unnecessary space. Then, we go around  the entire office and actually look at what the staff is storing. This isn’t always as invasive as looking at individual employee’s personal storage, but it does often involve going into storage rooms, or the filing cabinets that line the hallways of an office, and measuring the width of each cabinet. For instance, a standard cabinet can be 42 inches wide and five drawers high. 42×5 = 210 inches or 17 1/2 feet. We can then tell the client how much storage space they will need to account for in their new space. 

Often, we have to assess if what is being stored is actually work related. This does not fall solely on the responsibility of the designer; we are usually chaperoned by a client team member and let them ask the more prying questions. For instance, it's not uncommon to actually have rows and rows and rows of completely empty filing cabinets. Totally abandon. Taking up precious space, blocking sunlight, and keeping you away from seeing your beautiful coworkers. There are also filing cabinets that get used for non-work related items, like snacks or the ubiquitous holiday decorations. This did sometimes make me feel like the fun police, but it was all in the name of helping an office truly assess what the heck it was paying all that rent for. That 4 foot wide section of shelving in the storage closet dedicated to Christmas decorations tallies up to a ballpark of $700 a month in a big city. That starts to add up overtime, and we’d rather be using that area for things like a second coffee bar or better employee cafe. So, we would eliminate extraneous storage where we could and help the client maximize the efficiency of their footprint.

All this to say, more people, DIYers, and homemakers, will benefit  by looking at their storage in terms of linear feet. Measure the length of your shelves, multiply that number by the amount of shelves you have - do this with all your storage pieces and don’t forget to note the depth of each shelf or drawer. This strategy is used by the pros because it’s flexible, it doesn’t bind you to a single type of storage or piece of furniture, it’s just a number that you aim to accommodate any way you can, and sometimes that means getting creative with how and where we find nooks and crannies.

So often we hear about the process of decluttering.  While this is a good strategy, it has its issues. I could go into those in depth, but I want to focus on one specific problem, which is that it is possible to completely declutter your home and still not feel like you have ample storage in your space. Not all of us are minimalists, we can’t all live our lives with nothing but a single bath towel and a witty report. Some of us have families, pets, and special needs that include all kinds of equipment. I can't help but think of my dear friend and client who has decluttered and Marie Kondo’d her space twice over and still couldn’t get her storage situation under control. She lives in an amazing, classic New York railroad apartment, and for those of you who aren't familiar with the term “railroad,” in the real estate market it refers to a very long, skinny apartment. In many cases, these come with high ceilings. This is the case in my friend’s apartment, the ceilings are practically double height all throughout her apartment. She had followed the common advice to think vertically for storage solutions. She had cabinets mounted above her doorways and storage stacked above the upper cabinets in her kitchen. The reality of that situation, unfortunately, is that when storage gets too high, it’s too much of a hassle to actually reach it, and we don't actually use it. So she had empty cabinets stretching high up into the far vertical reaches of her home. When I talked with her about it, we decided to focus on incorporating storage into any new pieces of furniture that she got. So now, her sofa cushions lift up to reveal storage, the second bedroom has an elevated captain’s style bed with storage underneath, she even got a full length mirror that opens up with some tiny shelves inside. We also added a row of mirrored wardrobes that actually increase the perceived size of the space, and provide tons of hidden storage.

It’s no secret that here in New York City every square inch of storage in our shoebox apartments is a treasure. I should throw in the caveat that I actually think my apartment is quite large for New York, so I’m really not complaining, but I’m lucky. Since I do have a decent amount of storage space, I avoid storing much of anything under my bed. This is a go-to place to hide away all kinds of things, so let’s get into why I recommend keeping this space nice and clear. You might be familiar with the design principles of Feng Shui, this school of thought was very popular in the 1990’s. I am by no means a Feng Shui master, but I do pay attention to a lot of the rules because they are just good plain common sense. One of the principles is to keep Chi or energy, free flowing in your home. This is implemented in a lot of different ways like having windows that fully open for circulation, and to avoid storing things under the bed. It's all about creating maximum movement and not having things feel packed in and stuffy. Spaces look naturally more organized when there is more breathing room, so the goal is to balance an efficiently planned storage strategy without making any one space feel completely crammed. Especially where we sleep. When I first started working from home at the beginning of 2020, I had to make temporary space for a lot of work related items and I didn’t know where else to put them except next to my bed and I swear, that stuff haunted me in my dreams. 10/10 do not recommend. Now I have heard people say that it is OK to store things like bed linens, extra pillows, and sheets under the bed because those items are for the bedroom itself. But avoid off-season clothing, shoes, books, art supplies. Keep it in the bedroom category.

Part of shifting our thought around space  requires us to think volumetrically. You have to look at storage like it’s a three dimensional Tetris puzzle. That being said, the shelves and cabinets we have in our homes are not finely tailored to efficiently contain standard household items. When I say three dimensions, I mean depth, width, and height. Let’s look at some specific examples to put this into action, using the kitchen, because no matter what size kitchen you have, everyone always wants more kitchen storage.

Most kitchens have storage cabinets under the counter and above the counter. These are two different sizes of cabinets. Below counter cabinets are deep and above counter cabinets are more shallow.

Generally, things that are used more often and are lighter in weight are kept in the upper cabinets, items like dishes and glassware. Lower cabinets hold heavier items like cookware that may not get used every single day. This is just common sense, right, because bending down below the counter to pull something out is annoying at best and inaccessible at worst. The one caveat here is for under counter drawers. Usually, the top two drawers are the easiest to access and the bottom ones rarely get opened. 

You’re still with me, right? Because I realize this is all pretty common knowledge, but I need to set the table for where we go next. Kitchen storage starts to get interesting when we look at the size and proportions of each cabinet and compare that to the sizes of the items they house. For instance, a standard below counter cabinet is approximately 34 inches tall, 24 inches from front to back, and 36 inches side to side. There is usually one - that’s right only one, horizontal divider shelf in side each cabinet. That means you get two 17” high shelves. But the average cooking pot is only 12 inches high, meaning we’re left with five vertical wasted inches on each shelf.  When you multiply this along the number of cabinets in a kitchen, it adds up quickly, and what looked like a fair about a cabinets, for some reason, is just not providing the storage we need.

Then, let’s look at a typical upper cabinet. These are 12 inches front to back and 30 inches high, with only two shelves inside, meaning you have three ten-inch high shelves to work with, but the average coffee mug is only 4 inches tall and the average tumbler is around 7 inches without the straw. So it’s the same situation as the lower cabinets, we have all this wasted, unusable space, and boy does it drive me nuts. But don’t worry. There is good news.

First, even though we’re given minimal divider shelves in both upper or lower cabinets, the ones provided are almost always adjustable. If you open up your cabinet, and look at the sides, you'll see a series of small holes running vertical, one stacked on top of the other. And below each shelf is a peg that goes into one of the holes and that is what supports the shelf. There is nothing preventing you from emptying out your shelves and adjusting how high or low each shelf sits. Which means, if you want to have a section that's a little bit higher for that really big pasta pot, or your 40 ounce acrylic tumbler or even a giant salad spinner - that’s no problem. You can have another section that's shorter for cups and mugs too. You can even measure the size of the shelf and create another shelf by buying a simple piece of particleboard, getting it cut to size at the hardware store, wrapping it in some nice looking contact paper and having an additional surface for more storage -yay! Just make sure to get more support pegs to attach the shelf.

Secondly, this is when bringing in accessories really helps keep any cabinet organized and maximize the given space in an efficient way. There are all kind of shelf organizers, and you can find these at places like Bed, Bath, and Beyond, The Container Store, Williams Sonoma, and Ikea; or you can even fashion your organizers by reusing different size boxes, scrap wood, or even simple pieces of hardware. It can be as minimal as installing a pair of tiny hooks on the inside of cabinet door to hold a pot lid. You can do the same thing with a high power magnetic strip. Magnetic strips can really change the way you use any storage space when you’ve got metal items in the mix - if you mount a magnetic strip to the underside of a shelf, you can actually hang things like mason jars and spice containers, making the shelf do double duty. If you want to get really luxurious, you can invest in shelf organizers that have integrated drawers, which makes that way back back of the cabinet come to you with ease. And don’t be afraid to get really specific with what you want to do. You can take a full interior design approach and get some graph paper, treat each square on the paper like it’s 3 inches, and drawer out how much space you have, and how you want to divid it up. That kind of granular work will pay off big time for years to come.

And that’s the heart of it - once you start to reexamine every space in your house with your new, 3D, rose-colored, space hunting glasses, areas that once looked like they were totally filled up, become a completely new landscape of usable real estate.  Thanks again for tuning in, I really love getting to spend this time with you. I have so many things planned for our community over the next year that I’m working on behind the scenes, and sometimes its so hard not to tell you all about it, but just know, I am cooking up a storm. Until next time, you’re amazing, keep doing what you’re doing, and stay grounded.