ordermaking

At the time when my present flat was built (2003) the standard was to build the storage space inside the flat.

So I have no outside storage place. We have a common bicycle storage place shared by us in the same house (6 households) that we also partly use for some gardenstuff, like the grill and such things. But it is not supposed to be used for that. We who use it have an unofficial oral agreement between us that we can do that though, in addition to store the bicycles there. There are only four bicycles in it presently. That standard, to build the storage room inside the flat, has changed since, and now they no longer build like that (I learned that from Monica in Umeå when she moved into her brand new flat there, which was planned with storage inside the flat, but in the end it got moved to another place). Standard now again is that storage is outside or in a special space.

My flat has two spaces to store things. One is the dedicated storage room, the other is the walk-in closet. Let us talk about the dedicated storage space first.

The storage space is immediately to the left when you enter the flat. This is the left side of it. There I keep an old Ikea Billy low bookcase for shoe-storage for those shoes that are not in season presently. It works for me as the depth of the shelf is just enough for my shoe-size. On top of it is a bathroom cupboard that contains wall-paint and brushes… I would love to have that cupboard in the bathroom (the cupboard, not the paint and brushes) but I don’t want to make holes in the tiles there. After that is the cabinet for cleaning stuff that originally was in the corner in my second hall where I today have my workspace. Resting against its wall is a full size ladder and a projector-table.

To get something out from here you first have to move what is in the way…

Just inside the door are the bags with papers and such which will go to the paper container for recycling eventually.

This is the right side of the space. It has quite deep shelves all the way from the bottom up that can store a lot of things. In the middle you find various suitcases, non-used pictureframes with or without pictures, the shopping bag, a non-used lamp-shade, the winter-decorations for the railing at the outside place…

I have those big black boxes (from Granit) to hide the stuff in and keep it reasonably ordered. Like Xmas decorations, empty flowerpots, and everything else you can imagine. Over the winter the mower also lives in this space. Here is also all recycle stuff in various bags. And the vacuum cleaner which ought to be in the cleaning cupboard but then it gets really difficult to get it out when needed.

It is actually a light, well-lit space with the same hardwood floor as the entire flat. It even has an electric outlet. If I had less stuff to store, it could have been used as a work-room…

On the door to the storage room are over-the-door-hangers that keep the Ikea recycle-bags for plastic bottles, cans, batteries, dead lamps… All this recycling takes a lot of space. Even if I would throw out a lot of things from here, there are still the re-cycling storage that take up the space.

I know what I have in this space and I can find everything, but I am not happy with the space because of all the reshuffling it takes to get something out of here. If I could get most of it in on the shelves… Then I would be able to enter without having to climb over all this stuff.

I know. I have too much stuff. Don’t we all?