What types of furniture help with clutter?
We just moved into 1,000 sqft, so I can sympathize with your plight. The first thing that we did was took a good hard look at the storage space that we do have and decided whether or not we were making good use of it. Could there be a storage basket hanging under that shelf? Could we add a hook or two to the inside of the closet door? Had we edited out all of the things that we didn’t need or want to hang onto? From there, here are some things that I would suggest (you mentioned your house is older, so I’ve gone with a classic look. Ikea can be great, but it can also ruin the vibe of a great old house depending on your style): Reclaimed Railroad Tie Cubes at Viva Terra Corner Entry Storage from Pottery Barn An Awesome Storage Bed from Patrick Keesey
You don’t say what your budget is like, or how many cubic feet of storage you’d need, but I’m a proponent of replacing freestanding storage furniture with built-in. If you can dedicate a whole wall to storage, you reduce the visual clutter created by having multiple pieces of furniture jutting into the room, and get maximum use of the storage space. In our bedroom, my wife and I had a contractor build huge plywood cabinet carcasses that completely cover one 12′ wall; a cabinet maker then built face frames and doors for the boxes. We filled the interior with Elfa (the closet system from Container Store). This gives us 24 sqft of storage that we’re using very efficiently, and the Elfa is easy to reconfigure as needed. We also consolidated three bookcases into one big built-in—really lightens a room’s appearance. If you prowl through my flickr stream, you’ll see pics. Ikea does sell some cabinets that let you approximate this effect, although their quality probably isn’t as good, and thei
The size & weight of the Expedit definitely added to the trickiness factor. It’s assembled lying flat, and we had to keep moving other furniture out of the way, and then lift it up when it’s done (I did some improvising though.) The pieces weren’t labeled particularly clearly so identifying which bits were needed for each step was a bit of a puzzle. As mentioned above, I have the TV unit, which is the same size as the bookshelf, just with one large TV cubby hole in the middle, with rectangular shelves, all surrounded by the rest of the cubby holes. Not sure if that makes it more or less complicated than the bookshelf? I’m guessing more, due to more pieces of differing sizes. Have you assembled Ikea furniture before? It was an interesting surprise to me to discover that the instruction manual contains diagrams only – no words, so I had to study it a bit to get my head round it. We identified some pieces by counting the number of holes indicated on the diagrams. The most irritating part
