Creating Storage in an Open Living Room

These past few days have been all about finding more storage in your home – solutions that keep a home organized and keep items neatly tucked away and out of sight.

In Part 1, we talked about my friend Annie’s kitchen where we turned an old TV armoire into an organization station. In Part 2, we eliminated the clutter in her small dining room, provided a functional furniture solution, and designed wall decor that would feature her family plus clean up several other tabletops around her home. If you missed them, you can read them here:

Part 1:   Kitchen Organization
Part 2:   Dining Room Simplified

Today let’s talk about Annie’s living room.

Annie’s home has a typical New England Colonial first-floor, floor plan. The living room is open to her kitchen, has a fireplace, a large doorway open to the office, and a large bay window. These beautiful options also mean that her living room has very few walls on which to place furniture.

Annie’s living room is her “family room”. It’s where her family of seven gathers everyday to sit, relax, and watch television together so it needs to offer lots of seating. She already has a large 3-seat sofa, a loveseat, and a comfy chair. She also has two beautiful end tables and a coffee table with lots of storage inside. These all work in the room and will all stay.

Our goal throughout Annie’s home has been to find more storage for her. The living room is one place where we can easily replace a few pieces of furniture to give her just that.

STORAGE OPTION 1: TV Stand

She currently has her large TV in the corner by the fireplace. It sits on a small round table with a few, very small shelves underneath. The table is draped with a tablecloth to cover the cable box and DVD player underneath.

The solution is to replace this very small, round table with a solid wood corner unit that offers more storage. It will be large enough to hold the cable box, DVD player, plus video game systems and DVDs. The corner piece will be balanced perfectly by the comfy chair on the opposite side of the fireplace.

STORAGE OPTION 2: Sofa Table

Annie currently has a very nice bench behind her sofa. We’ve moved the bench into the hallway and may place a large, round, decorative basket beside it.

Behind the sofa, I suggested placing a long, low dresser. A low, 9-drawer dresser will give Annie an incredible amount of storage as a well as provide additional tabletop serving space during parties and holidays.  Here’s one particular unfinished dresser I have in stock. Painted with a low-lustre black, this would coordinate with the adjacent kitchen table which is also painted black.  The shape is generic, unassuming, and would blend in to the existing decor nicely.

Here are a few other options between 28 and 31 inches high and a maximum of 18 inches deep:

STORAGE OPTION 3:  Desk

Currently there’s an antique desk on the wall beside the sofa.   The desk has some very small drawers, but is primarily used as a surface for family photos and a lamp.  If additional storage is still needed after the sofa table/dresser is added, then there is an option to replace this desk with a 3-drawer dresser.

STORAGE OPTION 4:  Photo Galleries

Framed family photos currently cover the desk and the two end tables.   Clearing these from the tabletops and placing them in gallery form on two of the smaller walls will keep them in the room, add beautiful decor to the walls, and make the room feel less cluttered.

The key to a gallery wall is to make several smaller photos appear as one large focal point.  To do this, be sure all frames are the same color – in this case they’ll be black – and hang them close together (no more than 2 inches apart).

As you can see we used the wall space to showcase photos (rather the tabletops) and we chose furniture pieces that add storage to the open living room.

Note: This post contains affiliate links to products I love and would use myself.