When you live in a city apartment, and particularly in New York, there is never enough storage space to hide all your stuff. In the suburbs people have basements and garages. In the city we hide boxes under the bed. I recently completed four small projects that involved storage, mostly for clothing.

STORAGE CABINETS CAN BE FREE STANDING OR BUILT IN FROM FLOOR TO CEILING

The first project is a free standing closet in a hallway that connects two bedrooms and the kitchen in a large apartment that had not enough closets. This Upper West Side prewar apartment has beautiful moldings, trim and baseboard that I didn’t want to touch. I also wanted to maintain the proportions of this narrow room so for these reasons we designed the cabinet to be detached from the walls and ceiling.

STORING CLOTHES: DRAWERS AT THE BOTTOM AND SHELVES ABOVE

A children’s room. The second project has drawers at the bottom, open shelves in the middle and doors at the top. The lower cabinet serves as a seat or a bench for the children not only to sit on but also to stand on and reach the shelves above.

THE DRAWER FRONTS ARE SHORTER SO YOU CAN SEE WHAT IS INSIDE OF THEM

An entrance hallway. The following cabinet was installed in a hallway entrance of another UWS residence in Manhattan. It has three cubbies for shoe storage at the bottom and hooks behind the doors at the top. The lower cabinet is also a bench where you can sit or tie your shoes.

THIS CABINET WITH CUBBIES IS MADE OF BAMBOO, A SUSTAINABLE MATERIAL

Bedroom cabinets. The last project includes three separate cabinets in a master bedroom. Again, an old apartment with few closets. My clients needed additional storage for clothes and also files. I also created additional counter top space by hanging one of the upper cabinets, spaced 20″apart from the bottom cabinet.

MADE OF MAPLE PLYWOOD, THESE BEDROOM CABINETS INCLUDE FILE DRAWERS

All these storage cabinets are mostly “boxes” with doors or drawers. Behind the doors there can be shelves or a hanging bar. The cabinets are very integrated with the walls and the space that surrounds them. They don’t need to “stick out” but rather blend and disappear as if they had always been there.

For more information on storage solutions please email to rg@robertogil.com