25 Tiny house storage ideas for any size home

Living in a tiny house on wheels or a smaller space can be a newer concept to most but luckily some people are seeing the benefits. People want to simplify their life with a minimalistic approach and view this lifestyle as part of that solution. When choosing this type of tiny house dwelling, you have to be thoughtful about the interior where space is at a premium. Every inch counts in a typical tiny house. No matter what size you build or live in, you ultimately have to fit everyday items in the available area without crowding. How do you achieve this?

Smart space saving ideas for tiny houses can provide some relief about the storage for any size house. Here is a list of 25 tiny house storage ideas to refer to and implement so that you can optimize the use of each nook and corner in your tiny house or even your traditional size home!

Tiny Home Space Saving Ideas for Kitchen 

Whether it is a 500 sq ft or 50 sq ft kitchen, you would need this area to prepare tasty homemade food. You cannot afford any clutter in this part of the house. To achieve this, you can rely on the following features:

1.Cabinets with side shelves

The common practice around maximizing storage in tiny houses includes building full-length cabinets for walls. In your kitchen, you can use the sides of these cabinets for shelves or “wall storage”. It would allow you to store your cups, plates, pictures, or grow indoor plants, etc. I personally use a basket on the side for chips and bars.

2. The reverse side of the shelves

While the cabinets' sidewalls can come in handy as shelves, you can increase the shelving capacity by using the surface below. It always goes neglected and unused. You can use this area for hanging glass jars to store spices or items like sugar and flour.

3. Overhead shelf

You can look at the space over your stove for adding some cabinets. Overhead cabinets always provide much needed extra storage space. However, you can keep them wide and open as the cubes if you’d like. It expands the storage room and creates an illusion of openness in the kitchen, which can be a nice thing for your tiny house.

4. Tiny House Fold-out table

Adding a fold-out table in your tiny house kitchen is one of my favorite features in my tiny home. It can be one of the best tiny house space saver ideas in the sense you can open it whenever you need to extend your kitchen countertop area or workspace. I find myself doing more computer work here than anything.

5. Sink as a counter space

You can use your extra-large cutting board to fit over the sink opening, creating an additional place for chopping. Tiffany has this feature and it also can fit over the burner section of the oven

6. Hanging storage solutions

You would have seen those backsplash rails in a lot of updated kitchens. These are trendy and I believe from Ikea. But people often use them for baskets and utensils only. In your tiny house kitchen, you can use this feature to hang your pots and pans too. It would look clean yet functional. Win-win!

Tiny House Organization Ideas for Bathroom

While a spacious bathroom can be a dream in a tiny house, you can very well imagine how difficult it can be to find adequate room for storing your essential items there. Still, there are ways to utilize every single inch.

7. Corners

As mentioned in “How To Drawer Tiny House Plans” corners are the most underutilized things in bathrooms. Being able to use that space for a sink, shower, or even a toilet really opens up any bathroom.

8. Mirror with shelf

When you search for organization ideas for a tiny house, you will encounter plenty of sources talking about the bathroom. Most of them will tell you where to place your mirror. However, while it should have a proper location, you can turn this feature into an additional storage space too. A mirror is a must in the bathroom; include a shelf behind it or under it where your toiletries can go.

9. Over-the-toilet shelf

You can take a board and a few nails to create a shelf over the toilet. Since this area mostly remains vacant, you can incorporate it to keep paper rolls and other things. The same approach can be done for the space above your sink if you crave some more storage.

Tiny Home Storage Space for Bedroom

This specific part of your tiny home would store maximum stuff, usually, people have more clothes than they actually wear. Hence, you would need some clever tricks up your sleeves.

10. Smart window storage

Doors and windows eat into a lot of space in your bedroom. You can choose custom furniture to use the free area around your windows for storing necessary articles. Even use the window sill for storage for plants or placing your phone/remotes.

11.Folded beds and overhead shelves

Organizing a tiny house bedroom requires a mix of creativity, imagination, and vision. You can go with the folded beds to save space and have some more storage. Above it, there can be high shelves where your books and other materials can cozily sit. This allows that floor space to be utilized during the day or when not using a bed. Always thought it might be clever to building a foldable desk on the bottom side of the bed.

12.Hidden drawers

If you use a spacious larger bed, think of customizing it with a couple of sliding drawers below. You can turn the whole bed into a storage piece.

Tiny Homes Storage Ideas for Living Rooms

You spend a significant amount of time in the living area in any size home. That’s why you may want to keep it airy and clutter-free. You wouldn’t want to have too many racks and shelves in this area. Still, it doesn’t mean you can let go of the storage opportunity.

13. Couch storage

Keeping up with the living area's aesthetic appeal and spaciousness, you can transform your couch into a storage unit with sliding drawers. Space underneath can fit in many things, helping you eliminate the thought of adding additional shelving in this space. For this, maintaining a decent couch height is essential, though.

14. Floor storage systems

If you need ample storage room, you have to think about all the options before constructing a tiny house. At the planning stage, you can do a lot of things to gain an advantage. For example, you can use the floor throughout the living room and the house to build storage units. These can contain a lot of items without being visible or occupying an open space. I’ve even seen that wasted loft floor used as storage like the picture below!

Source/ photo credit: Tiny House Basics

15. Underneath dining table solutions

Since you cannot have dedicated space for everything in a tiny house, you can look for ways to include certain unavoidable features to continue to live your life without any compromise. For example, you can convert your living room into a bigger dining room with the dining table hiding under an elevated space there. Just some assembling work and your table would be ready where you and your guests can easily indulge in a delectable spread. Typically see this in vans a lot!

16. Lounge sofa under the sleeping loft

If you have a sleeping loft, you can use the space below for your living room activities. After all, you spend most of your time sitting down here. So place a sectional lounge sofa covering the whole width of the house.

17. Ceiling shelf

You can save a lot of space when you pay special attention to your tiny house organization skills. For example, you can build a custom drawer in the ceiling for your items. It can be a sensible idea in terms of visual beauty and functionality. I typically see this in a low ceiling kitchen for spices and such.

Under Stairs Storage Ideas for Tiny Houses

It can be the most common corner of the house where you again get lots of opportunities to build more storage. Tiffany has what I call a “walk-on closet” and utilizes the stairs as drawers for my clothes.

18. Staircase cabinet ideas

You can turn the hollow space under stairs into cabinets to store your clothing, footwear, and books. Or, the sides of the staircase can quickly transform into cabinets to accommodate your belongings. I used this idea for Oliver's cat litter box and the instant hot water heater. You can see the cat door in the above picture!

19. Hollow staircase storage units

You can keep the hollow part of the staircase like cubby holes and allow toys, shoes, and other articles to fit into there. If you have kids, allot the lowest ones to them for ease of access. Tiffany utilizes a cubby hole in the stairs but up high and it’s in the bathroom. I put all my toiletries in there.

Office Storage Tiny House

There is a trend on larger homes with buyers looking for office space due to COVID work from home related jobs at the moment. Any tiny house with office space has some clever ways of organizing office-like items. 

20. Vertical shelves

You can opt for a vertically-aligned shelving system to store all the necessary items. Open shelving would have an inescapable contemporary charm and make the space feel a bit more light and open.

21. Bookshelves

You can pick any empty corner of your tiny house for your office space. The walls in that area can turn into bookshelves helping you to spare some more space while being aesthetically pleasing by hiding some of the cluttered looks of in-office materials as well as utilizing empty corner space if possible!

22. Corridor

Tiny homeowners and designers often use it for closets, storage, etc. The larger RVs I see play with this space very well. But you can convert this into an open office utilizing its surface space.

Other Storage Options from Tiny Homes

There are numerous ways to capture every inch of available space for additional storage. You can choose and embrace a few to give it a shape and form.

23. Hanging baskets

It can appear to be a simple idea because most kitchens or living rooms would have them. But you can bring them to your bedroom also for books or even as hanging “nightstands”.

24. Hanging closet

You can have a couple of extra pieces of clothes to keep somewhere. For them, you can add a hanging closet. The closet in Tiffany’s bathroom closet has a rod in it where I hung fabric cubby holes half down it and use the other half of the rod for suits or jackets! Speaking of rods, the shower rod area in your tiny home bathroom can be used to help dry damp cloths or steam the wrinkles out of my shirts. Love multi-uses!

25. A narrow shelf at the foot of the staircase

Another interesting choice that can emerge when exploring tiny house ideas for storage is adding a narrow shelf beside the staircase's foot in one small corner. 

Like these, you can sift through plenty of storage ideas and solutions to help your tiny house store more than a standard size traditional home.

-Tim