Designing storage for a new home

We bought an apartment a few years ago while the project was in nascent stage. Towards the end of last year, we moved into this completed apartment. The apartment, being newly constructed, was a blank slate. We did not hire an interior designer and decided to design the built-ins, closets, and the rest ourselves. Our apartment, being in Mumbai, had to make the best use of the space available to us. The apartment was still a great size for Mumbai because it was in a somewhat remote location.

We took things very slowly and took nearly 6 months to complete the interiors to a livable state. We started with the known -
We knew what stuff we owned and wanted to fit into the apartment.
We knew how much space we have to fit all our stuff.

So, even before there was a single thing in the house, I was organizing stuff in the house in my brain. What should go where and what kind of storage would need to be built in that place for the stuff that would go there? This was the starting point for our design.

We would design in excel sheets with each square on the sheet representing a specific measurement. For example, the below shoe rack design has 2-inch squares. This makes it easier to look at the proportions in the design and also easily calculate the dimensions.



Then we would discuss the design with our carpenter and then he would start working on it. Working with carpenters is a bit frustrating. I worked on the pretty design part and making the models on paper like the one above, while my husband had to deal with the carpenters.

I am listing some of the interesting designs we used around the house.

desk and bookshelf in one

The person with the most stuff was obviously, my daughter :). What with millions of toys, books, and school stuff. And a few clothes :)We started there. There was a niche in the wall where we could build storage. We wanted it to have some open shelves and some closed ones. We went to the extent of measuring the sizes of her toy boxes to determine the size of the drawers to keep them.

We needed a desk in the bedroom but there wasn't enough space there. So we designed a folding desk with space to hold the laptops. That was on one side of the bed.

On the other side of the bed, there is a dressing table with small shelves on the side for photographs.

There was a small storeroom in the apartment. Initially, we were not sure what we would do with it, but now it is the room which has the most stuff "stored" in it. It might just be the most important room in the house. :) We kept it simple and put in shelves all around the room. We did measure containers to see how high we want the shelves and what we might keep where. I keep my appliances like mixer-grinder and rice cooker in the storeroom. I just bring the box to the kitchen when I need to use them.

empty shelves

filled up

to the top

I wanted some kind of partition by the front door because the dining table was just opposite the front door. We chose a jaali design for the partition, which was hung in 4 panels from the ceiling. Below the partition is a box to store helmets and bags and two drawers on top for other stuff. I also wanted a surface next to the dining table to use my roti maker and maybe use as a buffet table sometimes. The bottom part of the box has sliding doors and it holds extra dinner sets and crockery. It also has pickles, ketchup and extra forks and spoons which we might need while dining. Being right next to the dining area, we don't need to get up from dinner if we need them.

partition and helmet box	dining area with storage on the back wall

You might have noticed that we have not used handles anywhere in the house. We wanted a very clean, minimal and unfussy design.

In the next post, I will talk about what organising tools I used in the house.