Useful Shelving

Here is a picture of the closet in Cheryl's studio. It uses the space under the stairs that lead up to the main living area of the house. Sister Joyce arrived to spend a few days here shortly after we moved in, and helped Cheryl unpack the studio. Joyce came up with this ingenious short-term storage system for the batting Cheryl still had in the original shipping boxes from the manufacturer -

The boxes stacked up in ever shorter rows to take advantage of all the space under the sloping ceiling. The system has worked for over two years, but when Cheryl added more weight on top, the cardboard boxes at the bottom tended to collapse at the front where there was nothing to support the sides.

Norris finished work on the first set of shelves we have been posting pictures of in the last few weeks, and we moved them in this morning. You can see that the design is based on Joyce's original concept. He'll build more boxes like these, making each row shorter. Norris is splitting the first couple of rows up to allow us to more easily move the shelves in and out of the closet.



It already helps having the sturdy wood boxes supporting the upper rows of batting boxes. Now that Cheryl is not quilting for others, some of the batting space will eventually be filled with other kinds of sewing supplies or household items.