10 Ways to Micro-Size Your Home

With rents getting higher while living spaces become smaller, it often becomes difficult to find ways to fit everything in to your home. That is where these home furnishings and gadgets come in.

[Read more in our infographic: Microsize Your Home]

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Land Peel

It can be hard to fit all a typical living room furniture set into many apartments — not to mention that once it’s all in place, the furniture itself makes it hard for people to maneuver around. Enter the Land Peel, a floor mat inspired by the tatami mat (a type of Japanese flooring) and origami.

The Land Peel is a flat three-piece mat set from which a table, seat or rest can be made simply by folding up the panels. When you're done with the table or chair, you can unfold it and the whole thing becomes a floor mat once more.

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Mini Cube Refrigerator

Refrigerators tend to be one of the largest appliances in the kitchen, which can be a problem if your kitchen is the size of a walk-in closet. Electrolux's NFridge offers a solution that doesn't involved attempting to cram all your food into a mini fridge.

The NFridge is a modular fridge composed of small refrigeration cubes which allow you to arrange them in ways to fit your personal needs. The refrigerator can also be divided into parts so it is more compact or so it can be relocated.  The clear casing of each individual unit makes it possible to keep better track of food as well, so you're less likely to lose food to the back of the refrigerator.

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Nesting knives

Counter space can be a precious commodity regardless of how large your kitchen is, which makes the purchase of a chunky object, such as a knife block, difficult to justify.

Mia Schmallenbach's set of Meeting Knives offers a solution to the knife block dilemma by turning the knives into their own block. Schmallenbach used the Fibonacci sequence  - and drawings of the golden spiral to determine the proportions and appearance of each knife.

The set contains a paring knife, a carving knife, a utility knife and a chef’s knife. All the knives nest together and rest in a flat block roughly the width of a person's hand.

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Steamer Trunk office

As more and more people have begun working from home, having a place to keep all the files, books and work-related gadgets has become more of a necessity. For those without the room for a large desk and other office furniture, the Steamer Trunk office can provide that space without taking up so much space.

Modeled after an old-fashioned steamer trunk, each “office” holds a pull-down desktop, multiple drawers, cubbyholes and bookshelves as well as a way to manage all your wires. The trunk has enough space to accommodate a desktop or laptop as well.

The steamer trunk makes it possible to have a home office without having to make space for a desk and shelves. When you aren’t using it, you can close it up and roll it into the corner.

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Convertible coffee table

Continuing in the vein of furniture that can transform, the convertible coffee table is a solution for those without much space but who still wish to entertain.

The convertible coffee table is designed so that when more is needed of it, it can morph from a standard coffee table to a ten-person dining room table. With the convertible table, you have the space for people when you need it, and when you don't, the table isn’t being wasted.

The coffee table features two inward-angled legs that lift outward to become leaves for the dining table. Hiding underneath the top surface of the coffee table are two hinged legs that pull out, and once locked into place, they create a surface height suitable for dining.

The question is where you’ll find the space to store all those extra chairs.

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Dror's Pick Chairs

To go with your transforming coffee table, try Studio Dror's transforming pick chairs, designed by architect Dror Benshetrit.

The wood veneer chairs are built over a hinged metal structure that hangs flat on a wall when not in use. The surface of the seat is engraved with an image that turns the chair into a decorative object when flat. To turn it into a chair, you take it off the wall and put it on the floor. The hinges do the rest of the work themselves, pivoting to form a base, seat and back.

Dror's Pick chairs are an easy compromise; they can be used to seat extra guests, and when they aren't in use, they can be hung on the wall as art.

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Modular kitchen

The kitchen is the focal point of most homes — the one room in the house in which people tend to collect — and as a result, it can be the most cluttered space in a home.

The new modular kitchen trend proposes a simple solution to this problem. Modular kitchens are a single unit that holds everything your kitchen needs. The difference is that it can all be neatly folded up and stored out of the way when not in use.

Most modular kitchens on the market have the capacity to act as a kitchen table, cooking surface, and wine rack while holding a microwave, drawers, a sink and other kitchen essentials.

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Matroshka living concept

When it comes to micro-sizing a home, furniture that can change size and shape or that can be used as storage is always handy.

The Matroshka living concept uses both of these concepts to fit an L-shaped sofa, double bed, dinner table, four stools, total seating for 12, a home office workspace, wardrobe and a lot of storage in a 43 square feet (four square meters) space.

With just the Matroshka living concept, it would be easy to furnish a studio or one-bedroom apartment with just one or two more pieces of furniture.

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BedUP

When it is not in use, a bed can take up a lot of much-needed space that could easily be used during those hours when you are not sleeping.

BedUP – and other systems like it – take the concept of a Murphy bed to a whole new level by suspending your bed from the ceiling. The bed can be lowered to an owner-specified height so unlike a Murphy bed, furniture can be placed beneath it. When the bed is no longer in use, the push of a handle sends it back up into the ceiling.

In addition, custom lighting can be installed into the bottom of the bed, so the space below is well-lit when the bed is not in use.

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Handheld espresso machine

As nice as it would be to have a full-sized espresso machine greet you ever morning, most people just don't have the space for one.

Luckily, for those without that space, there is the handheld espresso maker, which can make double or single shots from pods or freshly ground beans. The device is powered by the same cartridges of compressed air that are used by whipped cream dispensers.

As for space, almost all of the handheld espresso machines out there can easily fit in a kitchen or desk drawer.

This article was provided by InnovationNewsDaily, a sister site of TechNewsDaily.