Sometimes, the only place we have any control over is our own homes. It is true to say that the furniture we choose plays a major part in how we live. The design of furniture from the imposing Victorian style to the more minimalist fashion of recent times is interesting, as is the way that our environment has influenced the design of all kinds of furniture. Some quite unusual items have been created.
The transformer robot steel desk, for instance, is similar to the robot in the TV series of the 1960s ‘Lost In Space’, although it was built in 1987. Its bottom section is constructed from steel and most of the top half has been built using painted plywood. The desk has two angled, open shelves above a roll-top section. Its writing surface has twin flaps and sits above is a filing cabinet and drawers.
In 1995, a fold-out table was built by two Japanese designers and is beautifully functional. From an upright side table, it can be folded down into a low coffee table by the use of angled sides and hinges.
In 1967 – a storage unit trolley was designed in order to show off a company’s newly developed laminate. It consists of four columns and 14 layers of laminate shaped in different ways. Mobility is achieved by four castors on its base. The bottom shelves are set at different levels some narrow to accommodate magazines and newspapers. The top shelves are more for cups, plates and glasses.
In larger houses, the kitchen has re-established itself as the heart of the home. It is where the meals are prepared and eaten. It is where the family can relax and guests can be entertained, especially when parties are being held, the table will hold the buffet and there will be room for the drinks as well. In smaller houses, however, the situation is different.
The living room tends to be a multi-purpose place where several functions can be achieved. As a formal living room, it is simple to arrange a sofa and a couple of armchairs around a focal point such as a media centre, a television, DVD player and CD player all stacked into a shelving unit. Collections of DVDs and CDs can be arranged in the unit itself or another low storage cupboard placed against the wall. There needs to be as much space as possible between items of furniture, which can be difficult if there is planty of items needed to be placed in storage.
Kitchens tend to be smaller so the living room needs to double as a dining area as well. A drop-leaf dining table is ideal for the purpose, since it can be folded down and tucked away in a corner or against the wall when not in use.
Part of the living room can also be used as an office. With the laptop computer becoming more popular, the dining table can serve as a desk and file and document storage is achieved with the use of a small bookcase, when the laptop can be stored when not in use.
When you sell your house, you will find that most of the people who are interested in buying will hate clutter. Even the things that nobody would give a second thought to seem to bother them. CD and DVD collections, kitchen accessories and so on are very distracting. Let us take this room by room:
• Living room – try not to create open storage for books, ornaments, photographs and so on. Keep your bric a brac to a minimum and if you have a pelmet, put some ornaments on there. If you have a large collection of books, store them away in a box
• Kitchen – a Welsh dresser overflowing with china or pots, pans and cooking implements hanging from the ceiling. While this may appeal to you, it may feel to some too crowded. Set out a few plates of similar design or colour on the dresser, store the other crockery and pans etc. away in a drawer or a kitchen cupboard
• Bedroom – store clothes out of the way, in a spare room if possible. If not, under the bed storage boxes would be ideal, just be certain they are hidden from sight using a valance
• Bathroom – make use as far as possible of ‘closed storage’, cupboards with doors in other words to create a sleeker look. Open shelves, no matter how tidily arranged, will still look cluttered
• Halls and landings – keep these as clear as you can, shoes and coats should be stored in an under stairs cupboard.
If you have made the decision to sell your house, there are many things to be organised. One issue that needs to be addressed is the appearance of your home and the first aspect of its appearance is the outside. A prospective buyer, obviously, will not be impressed by a weed-infested garden and a lawn that has not been mowed for over a month. Decent storage space for gardening tools will also be a bonus.
Basically, there are four different types of garden;
• Gardens for entertaining – their focal point will be a large terrace or an expanse of decking, providing room for alfresco dining. A small lawn and a couple of token flower beds will generally suffice as long as the terrace has a few planters.
• The ‘statement’ garden – consists of mostly grasses, bamboo and topiary. The focal point is often a small water feature.
• Low maintenance, country style – with minimal grass area and plant beds closer to the house, the majority of this type of garden will have wild-flowers and trees.
• The blank canvas type – little more than turf encircled by a fence.
The last two types of garden tend to be suitable for most people. A garden shed for the storage of a lawn-mower and other garden tools will meet with approval. If you have a greenhouse and the potential buyer is not that keen on gardening, it would be a good idea to point out its possibilities as a storage area for things like tents, skis and bicycles as well as garden furniture. Garden furniture racking will maximise the effectiveness of a good storage shed.
If you have storage cabinets you want to put against a wall, but find it blocked by a radiator, you could consider underfloor heating. This is usually achieved using a network of electrical cables or hot water pipes. The Romans designed a system of underfloor heating by tapping into hot subterranean springs in the area, especially in colder climes like Britain. With the recent need for more renewable energy sources, this particular idea has been used in new housing estates when it is feasible.
You may wonder whether this kind of heating system is really for you. Well, consider how much wall space is taken up by radiators. Placing any items of furniture in front of them cuts down on their efficiency considerably. With the radiators out of the way, you will be able to place extra shelving units or storage cupboards against the wall space previously occupied by radiators.
Underfloor heating is a lot more energy efficient than a central heating system using radiators. It is important to understand that its actual installation could be quite expensive. However, it would pay dividends if you decide to sell the house, you would probably be able to add quite a bit to the asking price when a potential buyer realises the benefits and cost-effectiveness of underfloor heating, as well as the extra storage space you will have created. This type of heating system can be installed under almost surface including terracotta, stone or wood. Each material will have its own limitations though, so make sure you speak to a contractor with experience in this kind of work.
Over the last couple of decades, architects have been concentrating more and more on making every inch of homes count as far as storage and living areas are concerned. In semi-detached and terraced residences in particular, there are restrictions on the amount of extending you can do. So you need to reach for the sky, to borrow a phrase.
Converting the loft into another room that can be used as a guest room, office, hobby or play area seems to be a good idea. However, if there is not enough room to be able to stand upright, then you need to consider a roof extension.
The cost of this kind of project will differ depending on the size and specification. However, undoubtedly, an investment in a well designed roof extension, particularly if an en-suite bathroom is included, will reap great benefits should you decide to sell the house.
For this job, it is wise to hire the services of both an experienced architect and builder. You need to remember that the appearance of the house will be changed significantly, and the extension must be completely watertight or you will have years of costly misery ahead of you.
Once the job has been completed, you must now consider the problem of furnishing the room. The sloping ceiling is best tackled by installing ceiling to floor closets or shelving units. As a home office, you could add to its versatility by adding a sofa bed for the occasional overnight guest.
Wherever you’re working, be it at home, the office or the factory, storage is at a premium. You may have storage cabinets for important documents, or mobile racking for tools, but it seems that you can never have enough, especially for things like office stationary.
The storage of pens, paper clips and pencils, for example, is easily achieved by using a desk tidy. These can be made from household objects or bought online.
Making a desk tidy is fun and individual to you. One idea worth considering is to use the lid from a spindle of DVDs, turn it over with the cover resting on the desk. A small, empty plastic bottle cut to the appropriate height could then be fixed to the centre or to one side of the lid, and you have a pen and pencil holder with a space for paper clips or staples in the inverted lid.
Alternatively, if your desk has drawers, it might be a good idea to use an old cutlery organiser to keep pens and so forth tidied into one place. The organiser would also be a good place for the storage of USB sticks which can be a nightmare to find once they have been misplaced.
Stacking books on the desk’s top may look fine, but when you want to consult one particular volume and it is at the bottom of the stack it can be problematic. Try to store them across the back of the desk, possibly with two small stacks of books as bookends.
Even small additions to your house can, at times, make a real difference to your lifestyle, and may be able to ease the finding of storage space inside the house.
A porch, for instance, serves more than one purpose, despite its comparatively small size. If it is well built and blends in with the décor of the rest of your home, it will add value to the property. Another benefit of a porch is that it will help to prevent cold air from getting into the house through the front door. This will also be a way of saving on your domestic fuel bills. The porch is also the perfect place to leave muddy shoes, wet raincoats and umbrellas, so the fixing up of storage racks to hold these items would be wise, as soon as its construction is finished.
If you need somewhere to store the kids’ bikes, for example, gardening tools and other implements, then building a garage is probably not the best idea. A garden shed would be a lot less expensive, and several sizes are available so that you can select one that will suit your purposes. Once the shed has been built, you will be able to use relatively cheap shelving, as long as it is still suitable for the job. Use one of the shed walls as a place to hang garden tools, and do not forget to keep them safe from rust by using grease and / or oil during the winter months.
If you have ever visited a library and browsed its shelf racks for a book to read, you may well have noticed a sticker on the spine of each book with a set of letters and numbers written on it. This alpha-numeric code is part of a cataloguing and referencing system, known as the Dewey Decimal Classification, and is sometimes referred to as the Dewey Decimal System.
The DDC method of classifying and keeping track of books in a library has been in use since the late 1800s. The method, however, has not remained static, but has evolved through the years as technology, and ways of classifying new genres of literature (such as Modernism and Post-Modernism) have come along. In the area of non-fiction books, computing sciences and other new developments have also made it necessary to revise this system.
As you can see, although it is believed by a good many people that the DDC system is only used for academic or non-fiction books, it is in fact used to help classify all books, and is an extremely useful method of ensuring that books are stored on shelves in such a way as to make them easy to locate, and to return to their correct position.
The reason it is known as a decimal system is that books are placed into ten classes to begin with. These classes are then divided down into ten subclasses. Since its advent in the 19th century, the Dewey Decimal Classification system has had 22 major restructurings.
Storage shelving in the British Library houses millions of books, maps, journals, newspapers. When you consider that every single book ever published in this country, as well as sound archives, patents, newspapers and so on are stored there, you begin to get an idea of how difficult it might be to actually locate manuscripts and books when requested.
There are also drawings by famous artists such as Leonardo da Vinci and some of the most famous books such as a Gutenburg Bible and ‘Canterbury Tales’ by Geoffrey Chaucer.
Since the British Library is what is known as a legal deposit library, it will receive a copy of every book published in Great Britain and Eire. If foreign books are sold in Britain, the British Library will receive copies of them as well. It will also buy a lot of items not published in the UK and Eire, but only published in other countries. On average, it will receive, or purchase, approximately three million books every year – which will take up many bookshelves.
As a research library, it is one of the biggest in the world, and contains over 150 million books, manuscripts, maps, patents etc. stored on its shelves. Anybody wanting to do any research should first obtain a Reader Pass. They must provide proof of identity, and evidence that they are a permanent resident in the UK. A passport or driving licence, and a utility bill or bank statement with their home address on it, should be sufficient. The library stores records of all its contents in a catalogue, which can be accessed online.