Living in a Remodel - It's Not For Sissies! How to Survive a Home Renovation (part three)

Living in your home while renovating is hard!

But there are ways to make it a little easier.

Today is all about

IMPROVISING STORAGE SOLUTIONS

When our house is all done, we will have a ton of great storage. But for now, we have to live here and we need places to put things. So where do we put all our stuff?

Here are some creative storage ideas we have come up with that work for us while we are living in a remodel.

No Pantry?? No Problem…

Antique Armoire

This is an antique armoire we’ve had for about 25 years. It makes a perfect temporary pantry. We even put the microwave in there to free up more space on the kitchen counters. The trick to making this work is to organize with bins, risers and turntables.

There’s even a drawer at the bottom for dish towels.

Microwave Storage Ideas

Here is another antique armoire that we have in the living room.

Antique Armoire in Living Room

This is where we store bulky items like paper towels, bath tissue and paper plates. And extra rolls of foil. And the large containers of Protein Powder. And full bags of chips. Our electric roaster oven is in there too. And the Food Saver… hot air popcorn popper…. dutch oven… You get the idea.

This is an old dresser we have in the entry way right now. I don’t love it but it’s really practical for storage while we’re in the middle of our remodel.

Antique Dresser

We keep our car keys in the two small top drawers. In the other drawers are reading glasses, lint rollers, tape measure, flashlight, earbuds… The trick to using a dresser for this kind of storage is to use bins inside the drawers to organize everything. Otherwise it just becomes one big messy junk drawer.

And this trunk in our guest room holds board games.

Antique Metal Trunk

I live by the motto ‘A place for everything and everything in its place’. Keeping things put away is half the battle in keeping a neat and tidy home. But it’s especially important during a renovation because there’s so much chaos already going on.

So look around your house. Think outside the box. And see what you might be able to come up with for temporary (or even permanent) storage.

Vintage White Dresser

Dressers, hutches, chests, trunks, armoires and buffets are just a few of the pieces that have the potential to be that ‘place for everything’.

Hope you didn’t miss any of the other parts of this series. You can read them here if you did:

(part one) CREATE A SANCTUARY SPACE

(part two) THERE WILL BE DUST

(part four) YOUR SLOW COOKER AND MICROWAVE ARE YOUR BEST FRIENDS

(part five) TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF