One of my better ideas

One of the things I suffered from very badly in my old house was a lack of storage space. In fact there was hardly any to speak of and at the time I moved out there were still unopened boxes of items that I brought with me from England when I moved to France nine years previously.

I was determined to remedy this in my new house and some might say that I’ve gone overboard in creating new places to store stuff and maybe they are right, although my own view is that you can really never have too much of it – storage space that is. That’s why I put as many storage cupboards into the kitchen as I could fit in and also installed the floor-to-ceiling wardrobe and storage units in the two principal bedrooms.

I’m waiting for the floor and wall cabinets that I recently ordered for the utility room (the same style as the kitchen) and at long last yesterday I ordered the four doors for the cloaks cupboard which will also contain a full-width shelf and a bank of several more smaller ones providing yet more storage space. And I also ordered yet another cabinet which arrived today.

One thing that I did have in my old house that I don’t have in the new was a workshop. This was a boon because in it I had a sturdy bench on which I’d mounted a vice, a grinder and a drilling machine. I’d also installed racking for my tools and the materials that I’d accumulated for the various types of work that I was engaged in plus the maintenance of my aircraft and cars and although I’ve extracted several tools that I’ve used while working in my new house, much of this stuff is still in storage.

This situation can’t go on forever. I need to empty the storage and although I’ll inevitably end up chucking some stuff away, I’ll have to find new homes for the remainder. I’ll have my metal ‘abri’ in front of the house until I can get around to building a garage and that will be suitable for some stuff, but as it’s scorching hot in summer and cold and damp in winter, I won’t be able to store items like power and other tools in there.

I’ll be able to put some items in the floor and wall cabinets that will shortly be in the utility room but I didn’t think these would be suitable for the larger, heavier items like saws and drills and when I started looking for an alternative, I had the idea of using a metal office-type cabinet with internal shelves. I found one in white which was delivered in two cartons today and the following images show it after assembly and in place in the utility room.

I’m absolutely delighted with it. One of the businesses that I had before coming to France sold office furniture and equipment on line, including cabinets like this. Customers didn’t have to assemble those, of course, but the quality of this cabinet after assembly is certainly in the same sort of league. And it’s also lockable, which is handy.

I’ve already placed my electric Singer sewing machine which was always a problem to store on its floor below the bottom shelf and I’ll soon be moving many other tools into it as well. In fact, if I had more space in my utility room I’d probably even buy a second one but maybe on second thoughts it’s lucky that I haven’t because I’ve got to stop somewhere 🙂