Selecting the correct shelving for your needs may not appear to be a difficult task but there are many considerations that may either make you very happy with your purchase or leave you thinking you could have selected a better option. Most shelving or racking purchases will fulfil your immediate needs if you have carefully thought about them and planned accordingly. The aspect that may potentially get overlooked is that of future proofing your purchase.
Whether racking is being purchased for an industrial purpose or decorative shelving is being purchased for the home or office environment, some thought about how that environment is likely to evolve may have a large influence on your purchase. Typically, modular racking systems will provide the capacity to extend and increase your available racking over time as your storage needs increase. It is logical to buy a shelving system that can be expanded both upwards and in terms of strength to handle the heavier and fuller pallets that you now need to store.
The aesthetically designed shelf may not need to be expanded in its own right but it may need to be replicated in other rooms at a later date and to do so needs to be a style that will be readily available in the future. Racking solutions with standardised fittings ensure that you have much more opportunity to modify the utilisation of a racking system as layouts and purposes of workspaces change. New innovative storage ideas are also far more likely to be compatible with standard fittings such as slat wall.
Buying shelving is not a difficult task; buying good shelving is also a fairly straightforward process but sometimes buying the best possible shelving for your needs requires access to a bit more information than any bricks and mortar retailer may be able to provide. Buying the best solution for shelving isn’t simply a case of buying the highest quality of manufacture. Obviously, you will have your own budgetary stipulations which may influence product selections but the emphasis here is not on comparing two different qualities of racking that fulfil the same purpose. The emphasis here is that there are many different types of racking and storage solutions that may afford you a storage solution that can provide real ease of use for your home or for the business consumer realise significant cost efficiencies.
A good example of an excellent storage solution is one such as a carousel in a corner cupboard. Corner cupboards typically provide a large space of which a significant proportion is effectively unreachable and therefore wasted. A carousel provides a method for putting goods into this dead space without the need for contorting yourself to reach them.
A further good example is the wall racking used in a workshop to store tools. It is undeniable that a tool box could store more tools in a smaller space than a wall rack but whilst tool boxes have their place in the workshop, a neatly arranged tool rack provides hands on accessibility to the right tool with no hunting. Online retailers may be able to present far more creative racking solutions than any physical retailer.
Warehouse racking systems are designed to accommodate large volumes of goods on either pallets or in a loose stored way. These are typically designed to be modular systems so that the shelving can extend to great heights where necessary and can easily be extended should you business need to expand storage at a later date. The variable height for shelves also means that space can be utilised in many different ways. Even with palletised goods it is possible that some goods will be stored on smaller pallets than others. It would be a foolish waste of space to use a fixed height shelf separation if many goods are stored on much smaller pallets than others.
Installing warehouse racking does benefit from forward thinking. Modular systems do provide the facility to amend the shelving arrangements in your business but, a business that is forever re-arranging shelving due to poor initial planning is potentially wasting a lot of effort.
Ideally your goods will be stored in your warehouse so that the most commonly used goods are quickly accessible whilst the occasionally used items, or goods in storage, are utilising the space in the darkest recesses of the warehouse. Some computer controlled warehouses may have detailed workflow reports and analysis tools that can arrange goods for them to maximise efficiencies in the picking operation. Even the most simple of systems that relies on human management will quickly make it evident that storing the most commonly used item in the furthest corner of the warehouse, simply because it was the only location to take a 6 foot tall pallet, was a mistake.
Small shelves can be used for displaying small and delicate ornaments or they can be dozens of feet high holding seemingly endless pallets in a warehouse location. For such a simple object, a shelf truly does appear in a hugely varied number of ways.
Shelves are very simple structures and yet similarly to the wheel, our lives would be very different without them. The ability to store things using vertical space enables us to utilise so much more of the living or work space around us. Even a chaotically organised shelf will enable things to be lifted off the floor for either simple convenience to not be a trip hazard or for practical reasons to make something safer by being out of the way of children or animals for example.
A well organised shelf enables us to access the items we want quickly and conveniently. A book shelf provides quick visibility of the available reading material. A huge warehouse may not facilitate simple item selection through a quick glance but a well organised warehouse with documented storage will enable similarly rapid product selection. The use of automated order picking in robot operated warehouses is only possible through the use of organised shelving. Robot technology may be good but it does not work with uncoordinated clutter, shelving is the route to organised goods storage. It is probably not the case that the shelves populating your own environment are religiously organised to the extent that a robot could find what it needed but, you would surely be lost without the organisation they facilitate.
Racking and shelving are so commonplace in both our domestic and work lives that we pay little attention to them. Despite this low profile in our consciousness, shelves can add great character to a room or transform the functionality of a room by enhancing the organisation of your living or workspace. A library is only truly a library when books are neatly arranged on shelves in an easily accessible manner. Without shelving, a library is simply a book depository. An office without shelving will typically be either a paperless one or more likely, untidy.
Shelving comes in many different forms with some being heavy duty whilst some is decorative. Despite the many varieties there are two basic types, which are wall shelving and free standing shelving. Wall shelving is attached to a wall and is probably more common in the domestic environment where most rooms will have load bearing walls and there is typically not a major requirement for high volume storage solutions or significant load bearing on a large scale. Free standing shelving benefits the work environment where a combination of high volume storage, heavy weights and a less common existence of structural walls necessitates self contained storage solutions.
When purchasing shelving for a specific purpose it is beneficial to choose a vendor that has a broad range of solutions to choose from. This is equally important whether you are selecting based on aesthetic or practical considerations. As few bricks and mortar suppliers are able to demonstrate abroad range of solutions buying online will frequently provide access to the best variety.
Shelving and racking is available for many different purposes such as domestic and industrial settings. Even within one of these settings, there is a broad range of the types of shelving used. An industrial setting may be for archive storage that needs to be accessible to a person using a kick stool whilst another may be pallet racking with a requirement to extend some 40 or so feet vertically whilst also supporting much heavier loads.
A need for a racking or shelving solution may typically also be accompanied by a requirement for additional storage extras such as boxes, trays or fittings that will provide a customisable and bespoke shelving solution for your particular needs.
When sourcing a shelving or racking solution it is beneficial to identify suppliers that offer a broad range of solutions. This will typically enable you to compare the many different specifications that are available and to also see examples of storage solutions that you may not have considered.
If you are simply looking to extend or replicate an existing racking solution that works for you already then a supplier with a broad range may be sufficient for your needs. Perhaps where a market leading supplier is able to offer most benefit is in new solutions. You may well have some very good or even creative ideas about how to best accomplish your aims. No matter how good these ideas may be, it may prove unnecessary to re-invent the wheel. A large supplier may have already found a solution that you have not considered. An existing solution is quite possibly more cost effective.
Racking is extremely useful for maximising available space for either storage or display purposes or a combination of both. This extends from simple domestic shelving to more heavy duty shelving units, right through to commercial racking for warehouse facilities and pretty much everything in between.
The different types of racking available are almost as extensive as the choice of suppliers for racking and shelving solutions. If you were to stop and consider a world without shelving and racking, both your home and work environments would quite possibly look very different. Racking is commonly used in the workplace for document storage and warehousing. To imagine either of these activities without racking would lead to stacks of boxes and document folders littered over endless valuable square feet of floor space. At home, the capacity and convenience of the modest bookcase may soon be realised when the books are stacked in boxes on the floor.
Racking and shelving is a commodity product that fulfils so many different needs, many of which are exclusively practical whilst others are primarily aesthetic. As a result, these types of products are widely available in both furniture and DIY stores in addition to wholesale suppliers of such fixtures and fittings.
Considerations to be mindful of when purchasing any shelving system are whether the system is easily extendable. This could be the need to extend and existing unit upwards or along in the case of a functional warehousing setting or in the case of domestic shelving it may be the advantage of being able to purchase units that are complementary to existing furniture.
Designing a kitchen is not the complicated task some people would have you believe. In point of fact, there are some basic rules that only need simple adjustments to suit your needs.
If you have an uncomplicated design to work with, and not a lot of money to spare, then it is perfectly reasonable for you to deal with the job yourself. There are also plenty of Internet websites produced by suppliers of kitchen equipment, that will help you decide how to plan it.
The layout of the kitchen will be dictated by its dimensions. Do not be too restrained by the size if you are planning to build an extension. It may be a good idea to begin with a drawing of what you consider to be your perfect kitchen, in spite of the fact that it bears no relation to the available space you have at the moment.
In any kitchen, the layout should have an uninterrupted line between three areas for food preparation, cooking and serving, as well as allowing room for storage. Where possible, there should be little or no chance of movement between these areas being interrupted by anybody walking through the kitchen.
If you have enough space, try not to fit wall units or shelving units, they can make the room feel too enclosed. A large larder is ideal for the storage of fresh and tinned food as well as china.
The best place for the sink would be next to the window. Blinds take up the least amount of room as well, allowing more room for storage, perhaps on the window sill.
A lot of furniture owes much of its shape and style to the various art movements of the time. In the early 20th century, Cubist, Post-Impressionist, Italian Futurist all lent their styles to the birth of Art Deco. With all these styles, furniture became much more than storage and shelving units. In some cases they were more like sculptures or works of art, though many people today prefer their furniture to be practical as well as attractive, perhaps putting more emphasis on its storage utility than its artistic values.
In 1925 at the Paris Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratif et Industriels, Moderne, later known as Art Deco was first introduced to the world. The Exposition had originally been scheduled for 1912 but was postponed. American designers were invited to the Exposition but felt they had nothing ‘modern’ to exhibit.
Later, however, various museums and department stores across the USA held their own exhibitions of the new style. Thus began the American search for their own individual style of Art Deco. As with the Italian Futurists, the American designers gained a great deal of their inspiration from the inventions of the era, machines, cars and aeroplanes for example.
In Britain, several Art Deco designers were making their mark, including an architect, Sir Edward Maule, who, in the spirit of Frank Lloyd-Wright, the American architect and Modernist designer, had turned his architectural skills to furniture design. He designed and built work tables that were exhibited at the Exposition in Paris in 1925 and although it was rather an exotic style for English Art Deco at the time, it was considered to be one of the few storage pieces comparable to those of the French designers.
If you have space, turning it into a room dedicated for dressing has two great advantages. It will add to the value of your property, and the other is that your bedroom will be free of the need for wardrobes and dressing tables.
There are various choices that could be considered;
• The en-suite room – the perfect choice if the space is available. A room adjacent to the bedroom gives a wide storage range. Fitted storage would be preferable and a chest of drawers
• The walk-in closet – small, perfectly formed room with storage and maybe enough space to get dressed
• Spare bedroom / dressing room – if the spare bedroom already has plenty of fitted storage anyway, then it could be easily utilised as a dressing room as well
• The bathroom / dressing room – a lot trickier but if planned carefully enough, both functions could be combined. It might not be such a good idea though, if there is only one bathroom in the house
Fitted closets make the best use of available storage space. Good quality storage space will offer shelves for sweaters and shirts, drawers to organise socks and underwear and plenty of hanging space as well. Pigeonholes in which to store shoes are also a good idea.
Good light, natural light if possible, is vital in a dressing area. If natural light is impractical then try using low voltage spotlights. A dressing room need not be regarded as a luxury, since it creates extra space in the bedroom.