Any ideas on how to have efficient storage i.e. be able to store stuff within a small volume of space but still be able to find and retrieve stuff. I have a room that I can’t literally can’t use because it is piled up with random stuff in there.
Obviously throwing away some stuff is a good start, but what about storing what is left over? Do you go with shelves? Boxes on shelves? Stacked boxes? Something amazing that I haven’t thought about?
Good looking or not? I’d have a look at Ikea IVAR shelves.
Good looking is better, but I have a high tolerance for ugly by very practical solutions.
Depends what kind of stuff you have.. Me for myself I prefer a shelf with closed fronts. It looks always neat from the outside.
Boxes help with small items to use the m3 properly - easier to stacking small objects in a box than on a 100cm shelf. But I won’t do stacked boxes. This is good for things you want to store for some years, like childs clothes for the younger sibling. But it’s a hassel so search through it.
If some of your stuff can’t fit in a shelf consider mounting the shelfs on the wall. This gives you space on the floor.
If some of these items weren’t touched within a year, bring it to the basement. after another year give it away
There are simple logistics solutions for home/small shop use, like database, bar/QR-code generator, etc. Don’t know specific names, sorry.
I went with a fitted hanging shelving system for pantry and storage room. Flexible enough to re-arrange for all sorts of stuff, stuff in boxes and stacked boxes.
Something like this:
A more frugal start would be to pick up any free shelves that fit close enough in size and carrying weight. Or visit your favorite local home improvement or self-assembly furniture store for different systems.
To sort and arrange, and actually find and retrieve things, you can go all out on nice boxes and sorting systems, or just slap some label or picture on old moving or shoe boxes.
Some drawers would be nice, but it adds to cost.
we have exactly the same solution for our pantry and storage room. Its cheap, practical and works very well.
I’m also interested in options that are not cheap as if they free up more space, or makes something more useful, then this has value too.
Buy a bigger house.
That is the big cost I’m trying to avoid! And why having an expensive storage system might be mustacian if it allows downsizing…
I think the garbage bin is a very cost efficient option. It reduces the long term storage cost and hassle. Also the one time cost to store things in it is very low if looked at annualized. It does have certain drawbacks, but for most things it is a suitable storage method. YAGNI
More serious: Renting a habitable room to store things instead of humans is probably a very costly luxury.
For everything else:
A residential rental should provide an “uninhabitable” storage room. Where is yours?
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Another alternative, and I was very happy that we went this path when building our house, is having custom wall to wall cabinets built in. Creates so much space and makes the house look very clean and tidy.
Mustachians don’t have stuff.
not much more to add
I like Ikea Boxes
pros:
cons:
I found these plastic boxes not robust enough. They all got cracked broken in a short amount of time. The cardboard boxes actually held up better.
There’s a ton of yt videos about that topic.
I’d get rid of that stuff.
Every year I have this resolution, but never succeeded. The stuff is piling up. Maybe next year… 
My entire basement consists of UTZ RAKO stackable containers.
Do you stack them on the floor, or put them into shelves or something else?
You reminded me of the budget king: Ikea Pappis. Great for storing A4 paper but you need shelves to put it on as they are not strong enough to be stacked high.
On the floor. A shelf would be easier because to reach a lower box sometimes I have to play a bit of Tetris. But on the other hand, the pressure to buy a shelf hasn’t been high enough so far.
I don’t need the bottom boxes very often.
Google showed this to me today
