Organizing Tiny Unused Spaces

I have had to move into a teenie tiny apartment.  I have gone from a 3,200 square foot home into a 900 square foot apartment.  Reasons why not worth talking about.....happiness quotient amazing!!!  It is brand new, it is closer to my movie theatre job, it is closer to the freeway, 5 minutes from the stores, next door to my daughter's school.  The brand new pool opened yesterday.....Hey....life is good again!    

BUT, it is tiny....and.... I have many years of collecting....I want my stuff around me.  I want organization, I want things easy to get to.  So, it has taken much thinking, stacking and re-stacking to get things to work in the most efficient and pretty IF possible manner.  IKEA has been a great source of ideas and inspiration....and they have their model homes on the store display floors.....they are lovely, but, where is all the stuff of real life.

I was doing O.K. except in my spice storage..... having a huge box tucked under my cutting table  all the way down the hall, was NOT working when it comes time to prepare food.  I went to all the stores like IKEA and others and no one had a solution.

I wanted to use the 6"wide by 70"tall by 25" deep space to store my spices.  I used to have them in a huge deep cupboard that I built with an antique screen door attached to the front.  This time I knew it would have to fit there and be unattached since it isn't my property, some day I will take it with me.  No one had anything like what I needed.  I also didn't have any huge amount of $$$ to spend. I came home discouraged.  I was sitting on the couch looking out the window to my porch and there stacked against the wall was the answer to my dilemma.  Scrap wood, shelf boards, and fiber board for the back wall of my contraption.  I began to sketch out an idea.  I have built things before and I do have some nice tools.

I have this cool Dewalt brand screw gun and saw.....which I love, love love!  I measured, cut, sawed the boards and built my contraption.  I spent $9.99 on wheels two spinning and one non-spin.  This created a better way to have movement without getting jammed against the wall.  I also bought a long drawer handle to pull it out and push it back in.  That was about $2.99.  So, for a total of $12.98 I had a clever hidden way to have my spices handy when needed and hidden when not.  I also attached some larger felt dots on the back side, so that when it is pulled back and forth leaning against the wall it doesn't scrape off the wall paint.

I used the same concept as a shopping cart, with my moving wheels close to the front and the one non-moving wheel at the back.  I put in as many shelves as possible to give me the most usage.  I needed to get it done and finished so I could use the cutting table space for sewing storage.  In about 1 1/2 hours it was done.

Got it all installed and loaded and pushed it back into place....big mistake.....I couldn't open the fridge, it was heart breaking.....now.... what to do, empty it, cut the end off...oh ugh!!!  Then, a thought popped into my head, pull the fridge forward a bit, so the doors could open all the way....it worked!  I was so happy!

 I think I will call it my: Secret Spice Slider.  It is NOT pretty, but it works and here are some photos of the finished project:

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=1532596&l=9996d765d9&id=1346574855

I hope this helps inspire you with another way to organize and improve your own lives....let me know what you think!