Now that both of our apartments have officially been merged, one thing is for sure: we have a LOT of stuff. And living in a small downtown apartment doesn’t help this situation at all, neither does our lack of closets. So we’ve been having to come up with some alternative storage solutions. Being a photographer, Derek has a lot of camera equipment, light kits, tripods, etc. which needs to be easily accessed, but not visible 100% of the time. We also have a lot of books, lego sets, ceramic animals, art, etc. that has no where to go right now because let’s face it, my old our billy bookcases are now filled to the brim with books. We’ve already done a lot of organizing of our office, but there are still a few rogue drafting/crafting items that need a home.

The only spaces in our apartment that have room for any form of shelving are here:

As you can see the window in the bottom left corner of the floor plan goes all the way to the wall, therefore whatever shelving we’d put there would have to be an etagere to not block out the half of the sunlight we have in that room. Lately we have been loving the look of etageres. The word etagere gets thrown around a lot in the design world, but it basically just means a leggy form of open shelving, usually with glass shelves to display ornamental pieces. Here are some of my favorite uses for this type of shelving.

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This is actually an Ikea unit painted gold. Always a fun option!

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 Here are some fun options I’ve found on my etagere hunt.

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

At first we were leaning toward No. 1, but it’s only 5′ tall which is a little squatty for our 12′ ceilings. So right now we’re leaning toward the Ikea option, which is the most affordable, and it comes in two different widths which we could use in the area between the dining room and living room as well. I found this beauty at Restoration Hardware Outlet last weekend for $900 + my 20% off designer discount which would bring it down to $700, but that’s still a little crazy expensive. But isn’t it wonderful? I just love how tall it is.

I also loved this guy. I can’t remember how much it was at the outlet, but it’s only $579 retail, so it had to have been a steal!

Etageres are also something you could easily thrift. I always see them at junk shops and all they need is a little love to look brand new again. Maybe we’ll go that route. For the dining room we’re still looking for something longer in width and narrower in depth to serve as a bar and storage of linens, china, etc. We were thinking of using a pair of these in an L shape in the dining room, but I’m not sure they’ll really look right. And we still need something with doors to hide the more unattracive items like camera equipment. Ikea had some nice options, but nothing really captivated us. We’ll probably just hit up our favorite thrift stores this weekend to see what we can flip.