When
you’re reorganizing your home, it’s important to
set aside some area for general storage, whether it is in a garage,
basement, attic, etc.
The most accessible technique, however, is
to set
up a spare closet filled with closet shelving to
hold all of those
items that you might want to get to on a regular basis.
You have a whole lot of options when it
comes to what kind of shelving to put in this space. Perhaps the most
popular is the straight ventilate (‘wire’) shelves
that are in your pantry when you first move into a home.
These shelves
are inexpensive, and they can fill a closet nicely. Their biggest
downfall, however, is that they aren’t adjustable.
Adjustable shelving is the perfect solution
in a storage space. Having shelves that you can stagger will give you
the utmost flexibility and allow you to store many different types of
items in one space, from large tubs of decorations and paper products,
to small things like books and stationery.
Adjustable closet shelving is typically
attached to vertical rails called standards. They attach with brackets,
and these brackets can be put anywhere along the vertical pieces.
These
vertical standards can either screwed directly into the wall, or they
may be part of a hanging system.
Hanging systems have horizontal tracks
that typically install up near the ceiling (or lower for closets with
very high ceilings). The vertical standards then hang from these
tracks, for a much easier installation process.
You can often get ventilated shelves like
these cut to fit your closet exactly. Remember that they will probably
be an inch or more shorter than the closet itself, because walls are
rarely built precisely plum, and it’s hard to fit a an entire
series of shelves precisely.
If you want to have sold shelving in your
closet, you have the same options. You can build in solid shelving on
brackets, but many of the adjustable shelving systems have solid closet
shelving that will fit on their tracks and standards as well.
Keep in
mind that solid shelving is usually more expensive and will create a
darker, more enclosed feeling in your storage space.