Help, Storage ideas for tiny cottage?

[SummerSkye]

Does anyone have any good storage ideas for a tiny cottage. We are downsizing from a large family home to a tiny cottage and I really would love to keep some of my various collections .. linen, china, glass, kitchenalia. There is only one built in (main bedroom) cupboard plus the small kitchen cabinets, where one earth do I put all my spare bulky doonas, towels etc.

[Pippa]

How about seagrass baskets with lids that can also be used as coffee tables or to stand a small lamp on, I mean quite big rectangular baskets. A wooden chest or ottoman could also hide linen etc. and still be used for seating.

[jazzactivist]

Hi! Summerskye, my advice would be to look around for unused areas in the walls etc that could be turned into built in cupboard space. What about under the windowsills? Or I once saw an article where the people had ingeniously built small cupboards into the stairs - each stair had a hinge at the side and the tread opened to reveal cupboard space underneath for tools etc. My last cottage was very small and we dealt with the storage issue in each room by completely shelving the wall around the door - using a carefully thought out design made up of square spaces and longer spaces. In the rooms where it mattered we attached blinds to the top which could be lowered if we wanted the room to look tidier. OK, you lose about a foot of space in the room, but the floor to ceiling shelving holds so much and as it covers the whole wall it just looks like part of it, especially if you paint the shelving the same colour as the wall.

[SummerSkye]

Thanks they are both good ideas. I think I will investigate building more shelving, into the walls especially, would be a great space saver.

[Ivy]

I find the Ikea website allways very helpfull fort his sort of a problem.
If you have stairs in your cottage you most probably could use the space beneath them as some kind of storage place.

[SummerSkye]

Hi Ivy, unfortunately no stairs but I will check out Ikea.