Slashdot Mirror
Space Saving Technologies for the Home?
An anonymous reader asks: "My wife & I are moving from an 1800 square foot apartment to a 900 square foot apartment this weekend. In order to keep our one size extravagance, a 6' x 6' table, we need to make some compromises. What can I do to solve this problem? What other great space-saving solutions with technology are there?"
"The first compromise we've made is books. All of my O'Reilly books, and any other book that we can access on Safari is being given away or sold. I've also gotten rid of my outdated tech manuals, except for the VMS books, and historically significant UNIX books.
I've also disposed of all my desktops. My wife is keeping hers, but all I really need is a portable laptop stand which can mount an LCD screen, and my PowerBook.
Now comes the Living Room -- our entertainment center takes up way too much space. 400 DVDs, 100 videos, and countless CDs. We're going to rip all of the CDs, for sure. We're also going to get rid of our television and replace it with a wall-mounted LCD.
This leaves an important question: Digital Media Centers. I've seen a lot of half-there DIY digital media centers involving MythTV or Windows Media Center Edition. I just haven't seen the right solution. The right solution to me needs to allow me to easily rip and encode (though I'd be happy just ripping, because I don't want to sacrifice quality for space. I have 10 400GB hard drives laying in my office waiting for a use)."
I've also disposed of all my desktops. My wife is keeping hers, but all I really need is a portable laptop stand which can mount an LCD screen, and my PowerBook.
Now comes the Living Room -- our entertainment center takes up way too much space. 400 DVDs, 100 videos, and countless CDs. We're going to rip all of the CDs, for sure. We're also going to get rid of our television and replace it with a wall-mounted LCD.
This leaves an important question: Digital Media Centers. I've seen a lot of half-there DIY digital media centers involving MythTV or Windows Media Center Edition. I just haven't seen the right solution. The right solution to me needs to allow me to easily rip and encode (though I'd be happy just ripping, because I don't want to sacrifice quality for space. I have 10 400GB hard drives laying in my office waiting for a use)."
Having just moved from a three bedroom house to a one bedroom apartment, I can tell you that you best choice is to just get rid of as much stuff as you can.
,more fun it is.
Books, records, old software, old computers.... there is no end of stuff that seems too good to lose that in fact you can toss easily.
If it can be easily replaced, sell it at a yard sale, on e-bay, or just give it to friends with less means that yourself. If you haven't used in it in a year, toss it out.
Hell, I've given away cars in the past, and a seven foot aluminum stepladder today. The more that you do it, the
Really, any of us have about 300% more stuff than we really need.
Three Squirrels
make as small a footprint as possible, and then stack as much shit as you can. Drawers are you friend.
Show this to your friends and family that don't know what a real hacker is
Okay... think logically here.. What do you need a 6x6 table for?
I specifically avoided having a table or a sofa in my (1,100 square foot) apartment. Those two items would take up the whole damn place. Instead, I have a treadmill, widescreen projector HDTV and a huge cheap desk with rows of computers.
I can't figure what you'd use a table for that you couldn't use something else (that takes up less space) for...?
When I got my divorce the ~2200 ft^2 here got a lot bigger. Food costs went down by about 80% too.
Trolling is a art,
Put this on your action item list:
THE THINGS YOU OWN
THEY END UP OWNING YOU
Just blow it all up.
How we know is more important than what we know.
See, we're here to help!
If you want to keep some of your stuff but don't necessarily need access to it on a daily basis you might want to get a public storage locker.
Another thing you can do is put stuff up on ebay and make money while you gradually clear out your stuff.
Lose the 6x6 table (or uncrew the legs and put it in the aforementioned storage); a 3x5 footer can fit against a wall when you don't have company over.
When I do spring cleaning I look at something and try to decide if I've actually used it in the last year. If not, out it goes.
Look into a new invention called a "dumpster". I hear that its a great way to make room!
I got some steel shelving at Sam's Club for about $60. It's got 6 shelves and each are supposed to be able to support 200lbs.
It also has wheels. Wheee!
Direct away from face when opening.
A $30/mo storage locker and a push cart.
Stick all you can in the storage locker. Anything you haven't gone and retrieved in a year's time goes on the push cart whenever the Salvation Army is ready for you.
Measure the table in meters to make it smaller.
Measure the apartment in centimeters to make it bigger.
Umm...Profit?
Stop the world; I need to get off.
Yup, that's the ticket. Variable gravity!
Having slowly moved in the other direction - dorm room to apartment with roommmates to 700 sqft "1+den" aparment to the 850 sqft 2 bedroom condo that I own now - I can tell you that it's all just a matter of planning and organization. Living in small spaces is a matter of efficiently using the space that you have. The gotcha, of course, is doing this while not making your place feel cramped.
Everything has a place. Make sure that everything you own has a place. In small spaces, sometimes you have to sacrifice a little bit of "logical placement" for some "practical placement". For example, I have my pile of extra batteries and spare lightbulbs in a drawer in the nightstand of my bedroom. Does this make sense? Not really; they should probably be in a utility closet or something, but, they fit well there and there was nothing else using that space. The important part is that they've got a place and they're not cluttering up another area.
Efficient use of furniture. When possible try to use furniture that has built-in storage. For example, an end table with a drawer or two can be really useful for storing all sorts of things. Think in 3D. If a piece of furniture is occupying some of your precious square-footage, try to make the best possible use of that space. Storing infrequently used items in drawers or underneath an end-table with a table cloth over it (for example) can make a big difference.
Shelving. You'd be amazed how much you can store on a couple of rows of shelves. If you're not storing books/trinkets or other "decorative" things, you can find wall-mounted book-cases with doors to hide your crap.
Density. In areas that are more-or-less designated for storage (closets, etc), pack densly, but wisely. Well-labelled boxes (like shoe-boxes) can be great for storing all sorts of stuff in a dense manner.
Organization. This one is a big one. Keeping track of where all your stuff is can be tricky. I highly recommend labelling storage containers and remembering to put back what you took out when you're done. When you're stuck in a small space, you'll be amazed how many things you own that you just don't use regularly. Keeping these things accessible but out of the way allows you to retain what you own and now feel too cluttered.
My wife and I did the same thing about 6 months ago.
For a media centre we kept our VCR, and bought a Mac Mini for playing DVD's and ripped all of our audio on it. As a side benifit it also doubles as our webserver and email server.
works great and is cheap!
Seriously they make stuff designed for small rooms or apartments.
The furniture you buy can make a huge difference in how much space you have. I live in a small apartment, and have way too many tables (because I write, do homework, tinker with electronics, have multiple computers, etc.) I made room by getting a bunk bed that doesn't have a bed on the bottom. I have my main computer desk `under' my bed, and I sleep on top.
d uctDisplay?catalogId=10101&storeId=12&productId=11 534&langId=-1&parentCats=10103*10144
d uctDisplay?catalogId=10101&storeId=12&langId=-1&pr oductId=15923
You can find the one I have at IKEA for $200:
http://www.ikea.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Pro
I also have other helpful pieces of IKEA furniture, like a $39 desk-on-wheels for my Linux desktop. It is really easy to move around, so when you have to rearrange furniture, it's not too much effort. Other things I've found helpful are shelves with partitions and things like:
http://www.ikea.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Pro
This lets me store my junk somewhere but not have to look at it. Very helpful, and a very good looking coffee table.
My other car is first.
...ask yourself, "Do I really need this?" If you don't, don't pack it. Dump what is worthless and give the rest to the salvation army. The tax write-off will probably equal the cash you could get for selling everything less all the hassle.
My wife and I did this when we bought a house even though we were more than tripling our space. We got rid of a lot of stuff. We still periodically go through most or all of our possesions looking for useless or redundant crap to get rid of. It's refreshing.
Don't misread me though, I'm not a minimalist. I still have loads of stuff, just not loads and loads and loads of junk I'll never use. Except for computers. And 1 gigabyte hard drives.
>...except for the VMS books, and historically significant UNIX books.
...except for the VMS books, and *other* historically significant UNIX books.
Ah, typo. That should read :
Not sure if it shouldn't read, "*in*significant" too.
Max.
First up, media center. If you can put the drives together into a server (or at most two) that you can keep in a closet (remember to make sure it has good air circuilation) you can use a very small front end, such as a Haupauge MediaMVP that plugs into your TV and audio system to deal with most if not all your TV and Sound needs. I can't recomend it as a complete solution, as I am running into limitations with this, but you could alternatively use a laptop with s-video or dvi out, as well as an Audiology SB pcmcia card to work as a front end. There are even solutions that make use of an X-Box to be a front end for MythTV, which means that you would also have a DVD player you can use as needed. The upcoming Sony PS3 may provide you with the hardware you need to do most if not all of your Media Center, including being a game station if you don't like the X-Box for some reason.
For tips on how to make use of a small space for storage, start watching H&G TV, particularly Mission Organization, and This Small Space. Both should be used as 'idea' generators for how to par down, as well as re-organize your stuff to make your place feel larger than it is.
If the 6'x6' table is a family heirloom, you may want to check with family to see if someone else may get better use of it. At the same time if both of you are happy with the decision to hold onto it, pretty much ignore the other comments here. It's only 36 square feet, and should not be taking up a significant percentage of your place. You will be better off finding replacements for other furniture.
That's just my views though, and I am hardly the paragon of good use of a small space. Moved from a fully furnished and cluttered house, to a fully furnished and cluttered house, into a 1 bedroom apartment in under a year. I still have furniture I need to get rid of.
-Rusty
You never know...
Spend quality time meticulously planning shelving in your closets. You can get far more shelves in than you initially suspect, if you're careful about the layout. Check the "ShelfTrack"-based shelving from Closetmaid (the white wire shelving available at Home Depot) -- http://www.closetmaid.com/ . You mount one horizontal bracket near the ceiling (i.e. on the wood of the header behind the wallboard there), and the vertical supports hang on that -- hence no searching for studs.
Plan on shelves closer than you normally might: you won't want things stacked more than a foot deep on the shelves, anyway, so you can get them 18" apart (vertically) for almost all things.
Another advantage is that the wire allows for air circulation, keeping things from molding (if that can be a problem for you).
Okay, sit back and think about this. If it takes you five minutes per CD ripped, you can rip twelve in an hour. Guessing that each CD case takes up 9 cubic inches, you're saving yourself a whopping 108 cubic inches for every hour you put into this project. You can't pack three t-shirts into 108 cubic inches. If your primary goal is to save space, this is a very inefficient way to do it.
You can get most of the same benefit much more quickly by getting rid of the ones you're not attached to, throwing the rest on an old CDR spindle, and ripping on an as-needed basis. Not nearly as sexy as having your entire CD collection filed away, but my rule of thumb is that 80% of the average digital music library is stuff the owner wouldn't want to listen to anyways. 95% for me, but I'm the shameless packrat who kept all those SXSW tracks around "just to be safe".
In summary, your media collection (books/movies/CDs) is just one of many things you should be looking at in your quest to unclutter your lives. I have to wonder what makes this table worth all the trouble. Unless it flies around the room granting wishes, remind yourself, "There's just the two of us, we don't need a huge table", then whittle it down with a bow saw.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
400 DVDs, 100 videos, and countless CDs. We're going to rip all of the CDs, for sure.
(1) Junk the videos (unless they're home movies), buy a DVD version of the movies you still want a copy of (since you had the VHS, the DVD version will be cheap - but make sure it's available first).
(2) Get a 400-DVD capacity Sony or Kenwood jukebox player. That way you won't have to worry about ripping the movies, and you'll still have all the DVD features available (captions / alternate soundtracks, etc). I believe some models can be daisy-chained together - with the Kenwood you can daisy-chain 3 to have 1,200 disk capacity (possibly enough for all your DVDs and CDs without having to rip anything).
(3) If you have an Xbox, I'd look at the Xbox Media Center Extender (it'll be standard on the Xbox 360) for playing sound and movies on your TV from a central computer. This way you can organise everything on the main computer and keep the living room for leisure and entertainment.
And if in doubt, throw out / recycle / eBay everything you absolutely do not need (clothes, books, toys, furniture). Chances are that you've not used most of your stuff in several years (and never will again), but it would be easily replacable should you have a change of heart. I can't see that old unix books have any value other than sentimental, so get rid of 'em.
Dilbert Cubicle
Just pile everything on the table!
Graham
Come on, they'd be better than the crappy "Ask Slashdot"s tonite (If this looks familiar, I crossposed it to the other crappy ask question tonite.)
ACHTUNG! Das computermachine ist nicht fuer gefingerpoken und mittengrabben. Ist nicht fuer gewerken bei das dumpkopfen.
Do you have a stool, or two or three step, step ladder? Then you could mount some shelves at that height.
I recently went through a similar experience. I moved from a 2500sqft apartment to one just under 800sqft a few months ago.
I have 3 recommendations:
-think vertical. i know IKEA has been recommended to death, but really, they are a good option there. Cheap stuff, modular, and most of their collections can give you storage units that are 7-8 feet tall. Besides, it all looks fine from 10 feet away.
-rent a storage unit. I rented a 10x19 for $75/month and I think of it as a second closet... that I have to drive to. Anything that doesn't get used at least once every 2 weeks ends up in storage. So now, if I want to bake some bread, I just have to remember to go over and pick up the bread machine before the storage place closes. minor inconvenience.
-any pets? send them on vacation to mom and dad or a close friend. Pets do really poorly in a small apartment. When you've got only 2 rooms, the cat can't hide from the dog, and the dog will jump on your head every morning. Plus, where on earth do you put that litter box? There's no space for stuff like that.
I just saw a commerical for those gimmick-y space bags. Anybody ever try them? Do they work? -Matt
We're going to rip all of the CDs, for sure.
Shameless filthy hippy pirate detected. DEPLOY LAWYERBOTS.
Mr. Anonymous (if that's your real name), prepare to be sued. I'm sure our settlement proposal will help you decrease the number of possessions you have to deal with.
Mwah ha ha ha! EVIL PIRATE!
Don't buy those fancy grooved CD towers, get one that goes up six feet or more and only has rails and shelves to store all your music and installable medium (no wasted space, minimum footprint). You can get thin jewel cases for single disks and you can also find up to 4-CD standard size jewelcases for your multi-disk software sets.
Ceral boxes are great to store your comics and magazines (that tip from the Tick comics)
Microwave is a must. the George Foreman Lean Mean Fat Reducing Grillin' Machine is the best for hamburgers.
That's all I can think off right off hand.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
Not long ago we did the same type of move. We also got rid of a lot of stuff.
But after we settled down, we realized it wasn't as cramped as we had been expecting. Now there are things we got rid of that I really miss. Like we had a huge 6-person tent, and I thought, where are we going to store this thing -- turns out it wouldn't have been a problem, and now we don't have it. Suckage.
If I were you, I would hang on to the ORA books and the beige metal/plastic/silicon boxes. You can always toss them later. Give yourself a cooling off period before you panic and get rid of stuff that serves you well. But yes do dump the large empty velvet lined box you've been saving because it might come in handy someday, and anything else in the crap category.
milk crates, put stuff in 'em and stack those bitches up. very little overhead for how much space they take up and free if you take them from behind a 7-11. also great for organization, just use a label maker over the logo of the company of who it used to belong too. sturdy too!
Put the CDs and DVDs in large storage binders. Recycle the plastic cases. If you want to keep the inserts/sleeves, just store them in a box in the closet. You'll be able to compress your whole collection into a couple of cubic feet.
For the tapes, I think the best thing to do would be to throw them out or convert them to DVD.
"The newly born animals are then whisked off for a quick run through a giant baking oven." --heard on Food Network
This is a non-serious comment.
Pack your bed inside your cupboard. At night, fold away your table and take out your blankets and put it in the middle of the floor. Then you can sleep on your floor (It helps if the floor is tatami).
There's a lot of benefits of such a system. For one, you keep both your table and your bed tidy. You can't use the other unless you've packed the current one away.
---
Personally, I figure if I have that much stuff to sell or give away, I might as well get a bigger apartment, or buy a piece of land design my own home.
I'm currently living in a 1400 sq. ft 3 bedroom house, and in many ways, and it in many ways, it seems smaller than the 500 sq ft studio where I lived in college (less closet space, if nothing else)
... then give them back when you're done. DVDs? Netflix is your friend.
... go shopping at IKEA or SCAN, as europeans are much more used to living in small spaces than americans (and by that, I mean those in North America, to include Canadians) If you need the large table for entertaining, try looking into a table that pulls out (I hate leaves, as you have to store them somewhere ... although some store inside the table these days)
... of course, you could transfer them to books, and it'd take a whole lot less space) You can also place a shelf about 18-24" from the ceiling in your bedroom, and place out of season clothes, or other infrequently used things there. A cabinet above the toilet can hold towels and toiletries.
Part of it is thinking about things differently -- need books? Hit the library
What I can't understand is the 6x6 table -- 6x4, I can see
Remember to use vertical space -- I have a about 24 linear feet of shelving above my couch (3 8' 1x6's, and a few shelf brackets), which would probably hold 500+ dvds in cases
Of course, I've also made furniture out of a reel-to-reel tape drive, a Wang mini computer, and an IBM terminal server, but those weren't particularly space saving, even if they were technology.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
I have about 300 cds taking up 70% capacity of three 6' IKEA cd towers. The empty space is staggered in the towers, and each is filled with a little "pretty". A bright red little box holds matches, another holds carving from my trip to Italy five years ago.. you get the idea. The cds add to the look.
0 2/15/
:)
I'm biased against DVDs, but I'd still say lose them. How many times can you watch a DVD? How many times can you watch 1000 hours of DVDs? (the horror!)
I imagine you want the 6x6 table for projects or gaming. Could you replace it with a fold-away or an extendible table? We're all curious, what it's for?
A single shelf near the ceiling, going around the room can look very nice, and feel comfortable. Ditch any books that you haven't cracked the cover of in three years. (be honest) You can buy or borrow the two or three books of the lot that you find you need a couple years from now. Ditch the ugly ones, the old and fading 8088 instruction set manuals.. keep the rest arranged neatly on the shelfs and use the extra space for decorative storage or photos. You can use colored boxes for in-view storage.
IKEA shelves have optional frosted or solid doors that you can use to hide tools, tech stuff, and camping equipment.
Don't stack boxes. You'll never open the bottom ones, so why not just donate their contents? You can get bin racks for the same purpose.
Trying to find the brand of my laptop stand (Travelrite), I came across this, which has some interesting hidable laptop desks: http://www.macopinion.com/columns/roadwarrior/05/
You can easily replace the DVD and CD players with a Mac Mini. A digital wall projector (if you have the money-- only about 100 DVDs worth) can replace a bulky TV, and looks really sharp at night for movies or gaming. If you don't have the wall space, set up a retractable screen. Mount the projector on the wall above the sofa, and for god's sake hide the cables!
Watch a couple of the Queer Eye shows for inspiration; every once in a while they do up a one-room home for a work-at-home artist type-of-show.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinions, but not his own facts.
Depending on your building, you may want to use your basement or cellar as a server room.
...) that you have to take into account.
Few will let you pull your own cable or provide with cable from the start, so you'll probably need a wireless bridge.
There are also some other problems (dust, floods,
In any case, you don't want more than 1 disk in your PCs, there's not only space, but also noise consideration.
#include "coucou.h"
Using all available dimensions is the main point, and get furniture that doubles as storage, trunks are your friend.
Before you do that though, get rid of everything. Except that which you really need/want/use. If I haven't thought about it in a while and I don't need it when I find it then I usually toss or sell said item.
00010111 always try everything twice
If you have '10 400Gb hard drives lying around' and are going to be getting an LCD TV and LCDs+docking stations for laptops, then why move to a house half the size - presumably not to save money?
As for getting rid of the desktops - definitely keep one of them as a fileserver/Myth backend and bung it in a basement or cupboard somewhere, maybe with wireless if you're not a speed freak.
There's also the option of getting a LCD monitor with built in TV tuner - to be used as a TV and docking station for a laptop - two birds with one stone and all that.
I wouldn't bother with Shuttle cases if you're thinking of that, they're just not expandable enough, so you'll end up hanging USB/1394 drives off the back of them so you might as well just use a laptop.
#include <sig.h>
Here is something I've been thinking about for some time: We always have too little room, but just consider how much space is unused when you're looking up. If there was an easy to use system to store stuff against the ceiling, we'd have a lot more space. How about mounting some sort of box to the ceiling and store little used stuff there? Or mount the PC there? IMO we're very inefficient with space in our houses.
Put your bed up on blocks to get another foot or so of height for more storage.
Get a light weight thin mattress and use it on top of the huge table, and dump the bed. You can use those side tables as a step up, or as a coffee table for entertaining. The rolled mattress can make a (very) low sofa like __O.
Done!
Trouble, a mistake or fun, your choice
The right solution to me needs to allow me to easily rip and encode
You mentioned MythTV and said it wasn't quite right, but it actually does exactly what you say, and does it very well. Want to rip a DVD? Here's the process:
The only problem with MythTV's DVD-ripper is that it only grabs the main title, not all of the extras. That's an advantage for most people, but you have enough storage that you might prefer just to grab it all. In that case, it would be easy to hack a solution that just uses 'dd' to copy the entire DVD image. Then playback would give you all of the menus, etc. If you'd like, I'll gladly build you such a solution for a couple of those 400GB drives :-) (my own Myth box is limping along with only 1TB of disk space... it ain't enough).
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Seeing that your married I am going to assume that you and yours have a queen size bed? A full at least? Anyway the foot print of the bed is a huge amount of unused and potentially un discovered space.
1. Lift the Bed on blocks as high as you dare go with it. My wife and I have two queens in our house One of which is an antique cast iron frame. That bed as a good 1.5 feet of clearance under it Alot of stuff fits in that space. (or at least when we had a 1200sft house it did, with nearly 4500sft including the garage and basement now under bed storage space isn't nearly so as important.) The other bed was once upon a time before I meet my wife the one I had in my 1000sft house, at one point I had a 2.5 foot lift goinf with that one practically needed a ladder to get into it. LOTs of storage space there.
2. Use all the typically wasted space. Get those wire (usually closet) shelf setups from Lowes run the around the top of the walls in whatever rooms you can stand them. They have a width thats perfect for CD's/DVD's/VHS (hint laying a strip of cardboard on then putting the objects on works best.) If you have the space do more than one row. That gets the media out of the way.
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
...is the perfect space saving technology. Get rid of whatever you can.
Honestly, are you keeping the table because there's an emotinaly attachment to it, or do you regularly have 10 guests around the table on a nightly basis?
I mean, it's a 6x6' table, plus you'll need to leave about 3' of freespace around the perimeter for people to get in and out of chairs, so you're talking about a 12x12'=144 sq ft chunk of space devoted to this table, or 16% of your total living space.
If you need storage shelving in the closets, etc. ClosetMaid shelving is very lightweight, modular and flexible system that had for pretty cheap at most Lowes/HomeDepot type stores. A lot of it needs to be bolted into the walls with either stud screws or drywall fasteners, so check with your landlord first.
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
So you're moving into an apartment half the size of what you've currently got, but you're shelling out all this money to cram your lifestyle into half the space.
Have you thought about keeping the old apartment (or getting a new one) with more space and not spending so much money on tech (ten 400GB hard drives?!) and other stuff (400DVDs?!).
Gabriel Ricard
I offer the following:
1) Unless the table is an antique with a family connection (grandmother's, etc), ditch it. It is taking up 4% of your living space, and the effect is even greater - it effectively takes up the volume both above and below it.
2) Ditch the laptop stand - doesn't your machine already have an LCD? At least use a KVM.
3) Shelves, and shitloads of them.
4) Ditch as much stuff as you can.
5) DO NOT get storage space; it will only serve as a crutch (ask me how I know...)
6) Do the tasks you mentioned before you move. It will be a lot easier to sort when you have space to do it, as opposed to when it is in boxes stacked 3 deep in an apartment into which you are trying to move.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
For the love of God, rip to a lossless codec. I just re-re-refinished ripping my 1200 CDs to flac, and I've never been happier. I don't have the network space you do, but they sit happily on 60 or so DVDs, and, thanks to a quick donation to dbPowerAMP, getting them into whatever mp3 format I want is just a matter of processor time.
I'm not married to flac, but just the convertability of the lossless codec is easily worth the hassle. Pick one, stick to it.
ceci n'est pas un sig.
One designer's approach to having DVDs take up less space is to lose the boxes. Apparently there are photo-album sized binder that will take either DVDs in sleeves or the backer cards in pages.
Another method is to get a DVD jukebox, made by Sony, among others. This holds 300-400 DVDs, and any can be played by pressing a couple buttons.
It's not what you Warg, it's how you Snarf
If you plan to move again, scrap the Ikea idea.... the crap can be assembled in a snap, the first time! Try taking it apart and moving, and then re-assembling the Ikrapa again. I live in Europe now, and I have too much Ikea stuff to move again(have moved twice, I am an Ikrapa engineer now;->) with out buying another round, or upgrading. However, if you have a cordless drill with appropiate bitsk and screws, a big hammer and nails, you could make a go of it..... but it sound like you got cabbage, so buy good stuff, your wife will appreciate it in a few years.
Sig Hansen?
Its extreme, its radical but with a large bed its like adding another small room to the apartment.
Bottles.
For a media center, try a modified xbox with XBMC. Unfortunately I don't think that XBMC can rip movies yet, so you would still need to do the ripping on a computer. I use AutoGK to do my ripping on my windoze pc, and store the files in numerous places, like the windoze pc, a linux box, or on the xbox itself.
I'm sure there has to be some ripping software for a Mac as well... A friend of mine does his ripping on a Mac, and has mentioned a program called Mac the Ripper.
Place sig here.
- get a bedframe with storage. i've seen bedframes that allows you to lift up the mattress for storage underneath, or bedframes with drawers (those are cheasy). i have a queen sized bed with boxes underneath.
- shelves. shelves for your everything. folders and files, to towels, books, etc.
- clean and organize! keep everything and everywhere clean and organized. pick up your clutter. learn to put things where they belong.
- hide stuff in corners. my dinner table sits on a corner with food stuff and a microwave on it, and my servers underneath. it hides them from view.
dont buy stuff. stuff you want to buy - dont. think about it a week later and if you still want to add to your clutter, then buy it.
of course, i agree with everyone else who said to throw out all the old stuff you do not need. you cant clutter the house if you have no clutter.
http://www.rayn.net . Funny. Stuff.
Your huge table can double as a bed.
Headers are only found above windows and doors. Otherwise there's just the top plate and the tie plate, a total of 3 vertical inches of wood running horizontally and part of that 3 inches is covered by the thickness of the ceiling sheetrock. There's a reason why the screw holes in the horizontal piece are 16 inches apart. It's so you can mount it to wall studs. Then it is used, after making sure it was installed "level", to hang the vertical brackets "plumb". Those verticle brackets still need to be attached to the walls, preferably directly over the studs so that you're running screws into wood instead of wallboard. If you do it that way you can put a lot more weight on the shelf supported by the horizontal brackets that hook into the vertical brackets that hang from the runner.
There are at least 2 other companies (Spur, an English import, and K&W) that make a similar line of products which are partially interchangeable with the ClosetMaid line, but be forewarned, some of the shelf brackets attach to the vertical supports at exactly 90 degrees, making for a shelf that's level front to back, but others are designed so that the shelf slopes up from back to front a few degrees. This causes problems if you want a shelf that turns and continues at the corners.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
LG Electronics makes a combination washing machine and dryer, not stacked, but all in one washing machine sized box. It's a front loader, so it'll fit under a countertop, too.
That will save some space, including space not used to store dirty clothes.
I stand corrected: we're talking the top or tie plate here. But it really does beat having to find the studs for all the screws, and you can get enough screws in a top bracket to hold a fine bunch of shelves (recalling that the weight of the shelving puts screws in shear, not tension, so they can really hold a lot).
In the shelving we used there are no horizontal brackets -- only the shelving itself. Though in theory it's nice to put the other screws on the vertical members into studs, it really doesn't matter much. Those screws are there mainly to keep the vertical members from swinging sideways (something they're unlikely to do once the shelves are loaded, anyway). If you find studs, go for it, it's a win. But if you don't, it's not really a problem. The beauty of this system (as compared with the simpler vertical-supports-only system) is that you can get away without finding studs first -- you're nearly guaranteed to find wood under every screw at the top or tie plate near the top corner of the closet.
As cheesy and ungeeky as it sounds, take a look at some home organizing magazines or walk around IKEA or Linens and Things or Bed Bath and Beyond or The Container Store, and you'll get ideas. There's no one list of things that can be done because everyone's space and everyone's stuff is different.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
I'm using a mix of ClosetMaid, Spur, and K&W parts. I'm not using the wire shelves, I'm using the "arms" that hook into the vertical members and putting wood shelves on the "arms". By mounting the horizontal member that the vertical members hang from (what I call "the runner") about 8" down from the ceiling instead of on the top and tie plates I get to use more of the length of the verticals. Using the uppermost slots gives me a shelf about 12" down from the ceiling instead of the about 4" I would have if I mounted the runner to the top and tie plates. Besides, the studs aren't that hard to locate and screwing both the runner and the verticals into the studs lets you support a lot more weight.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
I've seen the test where they simulate someone sitting on a chair.
But I didn't realise they had a bed that was used that often!
If I didn't touch it in 30 days, it was gone.
I guess that means goodbye to the wife, all of her feminine things, and hello to those college girls from last night.
My God, I hate IKEA.
:)
:D
Don't even get me started
When I want a bed made out of plywood and that warps and wobbles when I pull out the draw underneath it - I will build one myself!
Seriously though, I broke one of those things when pulling it out. Not to mention the whole follow the arrow things is goddam confusing
I also eschew wall decorations, save the ones that friends have given me, which I only put up to be nice. Honestly, I get a much better aesthetic "high" from a clean, bare wall than I do from anything I could hang on it.
Except for my toy collection, which is mostly in the basement, I try not to let anything into my place that doesn't serve a useful function. No artwork, no fancy window dressings, no twig wreaths or baskets, no decorative lamps, no decorative anything.
And I don't replace something that still works just because there are more expensive versions out there. I'm using an old sheet as a curtain in one room. Hell if I'm going to spend money on "real" curtains that won't even keep out the light as well.
My place has been described as looking like a dorm room, which pleases me. I'm quite proud to be one of the few Americans who hasn't been brainwashed into mindless consumerism.
So, I run a small tech company. That is why I have 10 400gb hard drives laying around. We buy them 50 at a time to get a better rate. We'll buy 50 when we have a need for 20, then sell off another 20-30 at a profit. I kept 10 around and broke even this time.
I'm upgrading my lifestyle in several ways:
1. We are trying to get rid of our material posessions that we don't use, and be less wasteful.
2. We are moving to a far nicer and safer neighborhood
3. We are moving to a quieter apartment, so that we can get more work done.
The above poster definitely had one right idea, cost. We were lucky to have an 1800 square foot apartment in San Francisco.. Attached to that 1800 square foot apartment was a very loud and violent bar on one side, a very loud and busy art bar on the other side, and a neighborhood which has been deteriorating. The reality is in san franciso, $2000 a month either gets you a huge space in the ghetto, or a nice closet in a good neighborhood. We ended up settling on $2000/month for a 975 square foot apartment in a nice neighborhood (with a parking spot, which means we're spending $50 more per month for 925 sq ft less.. It also means I don't worry about my wife walking home alone)
And the table has sentimental value, yes, but also functional value. As we are a company with no real offices, that table is where all of our employees and founders get together twice a week for dinner to keep everything going.. We like to entertain.
Oddly enough, the space issue has not been too much of a problem. The table fits into our 20' x 20' "living room" just fine. with quite a bit of room around it.. It's the same room as our kitchen as well. Here are some of things we did :
1. Tossed our huge L-shaped desks. I now have a laptop cart. My wife has a small desk in the second bedroom (office)
2. Gave away the 15 old dual p3 workstations we had as our testing lab. Replaced them with 10 1U servers from Dell which we purchased over the summer, and decided not to use due to poor hardware design. They make EXCELLENT lab machines, and take up a tiny fraction of the room
3. Purchased a 30" Apple LCD, mounted it on our bedroom wall gave away our television.
4. Hung up a rack above the console in our kitchen, hung all of our pots & pans there.
5. Got rid of our livingroom furniture (We no longer have a livingroom, and would rather guests came to eat and talk in our diningroom, rather than watch movies and be anti social)
6. Put our table and benches on felt-covered plastic disks, and pushed it into a corner. We can pull it out when we have more than 4 people eating, and put it out of the way afterwards for more space.
7. Disabled all water in the 3rd bathroom (San francisco apartments are usually built expecting roommates to rent, not families), turned it into an extra storage area.
8. Freecycle and Craigslist! Got rid of all of our CRT monitors, replaced them with 19" LCD monitors.. Much nicer. Got rid of the massive pile of old hardware we didn't use (drawers full of hard drives, old scsi raid controllers, modems, memory, processors, motherboards, etc... Crap basically). That was hard, but logical. If it's not sentimental and you haven't used it in 2 years, you're not going to use it in 3.
9. Sold off my 80 oreilly books. My safari account is much more useful, I can search it. I rarely open up a tech book just to read it.. When I do, it's never an oreilly book. Oreilly books are for reference, not reading. The only tech books I've kept are those with historic value like unix books from the '70s, and a complete set of VMS manuals from the early '80s.
It seems like we have almost as much space in this 1800 sq ft apartment.. Also, there hasn't been an arguement, fistfight, or stabbing outside of our window yet this month.
We're still looking for a good solution for the 400+ dvd collection, CD collection, etc.. Hardware wise, I just found out that a closet on our first floor has multimode fibre in it. We're going to use that for video into our amplifier in our bedroom (once we figure out how to get it terminated).
Good ideas herre. Oddly enough, my dvds and cds took up so much space because of Ikea! I had 15 Ikea "Kaxas" DVD/CD holders for my approximate 400+ dvds, and 750 CDS (ignoring the rest of my cd collection, which has been stored in a box for several years). Displaying my DVD/CD collection took up a massive amount of space.. about 6' high, 8' wide, and 9" deep. My hope is to put ALL of my music and DVDS into a workable, catalogued digital solution. I found that I can fit all of my cds and dvds into 5 small boxes. These 5 small boxes can then go into a closet which currently has space for 8 small boxes (expansion room). I can then have my media in a friendly format I like, but still be legal in case RIAA or the MPAA harrasses me (which they have several times in the past because of companies I have worked at in the past)
1) Get some gasoline.
2) Dump it on your posessions.
3) Light zippo from 40+ feet away and toss towards the gasoline soaked posessions.
Alternative: rent a storage unit until you move into a larger place again.
As for the all-in-one ripper/etc., I hear that MythTV works great, though I've so far been happy with my TiVo for time shifting, and an old PII-450 for archived movies and other stuff.
You have any stairs? They're good place...drawers underneath each step, etc.
One that hath name thou can not otter