How would you use this awkward cupboard?

[VikingNorthUtsire]

We have a large cupboard space in our house which is really hard to make use of. It's one of the biggest storage spaces that we have and I would love to be able to use it better so hoping you might have some genius ideas. I am not good with stuff like this!

The features of this cupboard

• it's at the top of the house, just off a tight landing (there's space to open the cupboard door but that's it)
• the floor of the cupboard is about 60cm off the ground
• it's about 60cm wide, 1m deep and 2m tall
• The door of the cupboard is at floor height and is a normal 180cm door. so when you open the door you have the bottom 60cm boxed off, then 120cm of space. Then the top part of the cupboard juts up into the loft and doesn't line up with the door.

Hopefully this describes it well enough!

At the moment I have some lightweight plastic drawers in the lower front section, so when we open the doors we can easily use those. Then the back area is used for storage of stuff that we need less often.

The problem with this is that when we want to get to the stuff at the back, we have to lift out the drawer units, because there isn't space to get anything over or around them. This is tricky because of the tight space on the landing, and the 60cm step up into the cupboard.

The top part of the cupboard is 2.5m above floor height when you're standing outside on the landing, and not being used at all.

I've considered putting in shelves but it would all be so difficult to access given the height, narrowness, weird placing of the door and tight space on the landing.

Can anyone suggest anything that might work?

Ok I am usually not a Chatgpt person, but had to try it for this!

Yes — and I think the key is to stop treating this as a normal cupboard. The awkward 60 cm raised floor + narrow landing + high inaccessible section means conventional shelves will probably make it worse.
A few ideas that could work particularly well:

1. Make the whole lower section pull out

This would be my first choice. Instead of having removable drawer units sitting in front of the back storage, build a full-width pull-out platform/trolleyon heavy-duty runners. The plastic drawers could sit on it. So when you open the door: Normal position ┌──────────┐ │ │ │ drawers │ │ drawers │ ├──────────┤ │ hidden │ │ storage │ └──────────┘

Then the whole drawer section slides towards you and out of the cupboard, giving you access to the back without lifting anything.
Because the cupboard is only ~60 cm wide, you could potentially use very deep drawer runners or even a custom-built wheeled platform.
The important bit would be making sure the runners/platform can handle the weight and that it can't tip when pulled out.

1. A giant pull-out "pantry" / storage rack

An even better version might be to have the entire 1 m depth become accessible from the doorway. Imagine a narrow 50–55 cm wide shelving unit on heavy-duty runners: SIDE VIEW

   back
    ↓

┌───────────────┐
│ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ │
│ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ │ ← shelving
│ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ │
└───────┬───────┘
│
door
↓

You pull the entire thing out towards the landing. You'd effectively turn a 1 m-deep cupboard into a very deep pull-out cabinet.
I'd actually consider having two independently moving sections if the weight allows it: one for the lower/front area and one for the rear.

1. Use the 2.5 m-high space for "archive" storage

I wouldn't put ordinary shelves up there. You'd constantly be climbing up to retrieve things, which sounds like exactly the wrong use of this space. Instead, use it for things you need once or twice a year: Christmas decorations suitcases camping equipment spare bedding tax/house paperwork seasonal clothes luggage empty bags rarely used household items And make the storage removable boxes rather than fixed shelves. For example, put 2–3 large labelled storage boxes up there that can be lowered using a small step ladder. The awkward height then becomes much less of a problem because you're deliberately only accessing it occasionally.

1. A ceiling-mounted pulley system

This is the slightly "genius" option. If the construction allows it, you could install a small pulley/hoist system in the upper section. Storage boxes could be lowered to doorway height rather than you having to reach 2.5 m into the cupboard. Something like: loft ┌─────────────────┐ │ O │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ [BOX] │ │ │ ├─────────────────┤ │ │ │ accessible │ └───────┬─────────┘ │ landing

I'd only do this if the structure is suitable and the loads are modest, but for lightweight seasonal storage it could be brilliant.

1. Consider a "drawer within a cupboard" rather than shelves

Your current plastic drawers are actually pointing towards the solution. The problem isn't the drawers themselves — it's that they aren't attached to anything and block access behind them. A bespoke solution could have several large, shallow-ish drawers that run the full depth of the cupboard. You'd open the cupboard and simply pull out whichever drawer you need. That means the 1 m depth stops being "back of cupboard you can't reach" and becomes 100 cm-deep drawer space. I'd favour this over shelves for things like clothes, bedding, towels, wrapping paper, etc. One thing I'd not do I wouldn't install conventional fixed shelves across the whole thing. You'd gain a lot of theoretical storage but end up with: "I know it's in there somewhere, but I need a ladder, three arms and a blood sacrifice to get it." The geometry of your cupboard means accessibility is more important than maximising cubic centimetres. If it were my cupboard I'd probably make it a combination of: Lower 60 cm: A pull-out platform containing your existing plastic drawers. Middle 120 cm: A full-depth pull-out shelving/drawer unit, so everything can be brought out to the landing. Upper 80-ish cm: A few large, clearly labelled lightweight boxes for genuinely occasional items. That would turn what is currently a frustrating "storage black hole" into something much closer to a pull-out wardrobe/storage tower. And actually, your description is good enough that a photo would make it much easier to come up with a really specific design. If you upload a photo of the cupboard with the door open (ideally one from the landing and one looking into it), I can sketch out a couple of layouts showing exactly how I'd use the space.

The pictures didn’t seem to paste.

I can't really picture the layout at the moment (diagram please!) but I too was thinking of putting the current drawers on a base that slides out then swings to one side so you can access the stuff behind, but @Crowsinarow , (or should that be AI's) suggestion of full depth drawers is a good solution.

I've got an airing cupboard that I need to fit out properly that sounds a bit similar as the top bit extends above the door and it is difficult to get things up and down there.

100% AI.

It sounds like an old airing cupboard that used to have an immersion heater in. I'd put slatted shelves in and store spare bedding and towels and toiletries.

It does do really rubbish diagrams! I tried to get a garden plan out of it once and it was giving me layouts based on a grid that was made up of randomly sized rectangles.

What is the wall made of? If it is just a stud wall, the easiest and cheapest solution might be to increase the size of the opening and change the door, if you have basic DIY skills. Easier than AI’s suggestions…

Then you could have shelves with boxes or you might find a 60cm pull out larder unit that fits, or those freestanding frames with mesh drawers and shelves that they have in Ikea, or Dexion racks.

Going to try to do a diagram of the actual cupboard itself but this (attached, may take a minute or two to load) shows you where it is on a narrow landing at the top of a u-shaped set of stairs. The second set of stairs continue down underneath the cupboard.

The narrow access means unfortunately there's no real space for anything to pull or slide out. Possibly something that moves into the space directly in front of the cupboard door but could be accessed when standing to one side (at the moment that would mean while standing in the doorway of the adjacent room, unless we change the current door on the cupboard).

There's no way to increase the doorway space around the cupboard - the top of the door is the height of the ceiling. The top bit of it is above the ceiling and basically juts up into what would otherwise be loft.

We could block off the door onto the landing and create a new door from the adjacent room - that would make pull-out shelves possible but would be a fair bit of work (and loss of valuable wall space in the room) so I'd rather not. The room is the same height as the landing so the issues of the mismatched floor, door and ceiling would remain.

Have the cupboard door opening into the room.

Oh and diagram fails to reflect the fact that it's almost twice as deep as it is wide.

Hope the diagrams clarify rather than make it worse!

You could change the door so that it opens the other way, although I suppose it currently makes a bit of a barrier to stop you falling down the stairs!

I still think drawers that go the whole depth are the answer. You would pull them out and stand in the bedroom doorway to access the contents from the side.

For the top bit above the door, in my airing cupboard there are shelves which are full width but narrow depth so you can reach up in front, but they are at an awkward spacing and I am going to have to replace them to fit my needs.

Could you fit it with a radiator and then use it as a drying cupboard, including a pull down drying rack ?

Haha it does!

Trying to take the suggestions here and adapt them. Maybe some slide-out shelves that go right to the back and come about 2/3 of the way towards the front - that would give some space to slide them out, mostly within the cupboard itself so not blocking the whole landing. It would also mean that when they were all closed, there would be some internal space and it would be possible to access the higher area and use that for storage of things that are not often needed (Christmas decorations maybe).

I'm still hoping that there might be a genius solution to this that I have overlooked 😂

Possibly, yes (and the pull down rack idea had occurred to me). It's one of our biggest spaces though and I would ideally like to use it for storage if I can work out how to use it.

Sorry but all the AI diagrams aren't really helping me!

Could you take the door off completely and fit a full-length roller blind?

That would give you a lot more space and the option to have "pull-out" shelves (a bit like larder cupboards).

I dont know how much it would cost but I am picturing a sort of rotating shelf thing so you can pull a cord and bring the shelf you want to the front and the bottom for easy access.
ok found one like this storagemotion.com/shoeselect/

i would take photos and videos into ikea and see if they have any clever ideas (like carousel cupboard inserts/pull down shelves) that would make the storage more accesible.

why is the bottom bit boxed off? is it for ceiling clearance above the staircase?

We used to have a cupboard exactly like this. We built shelves in a kind of u shape so on the three walls of the space. There was just enough space to stand in the middle of the shelves, although it was a definite squeeze. There was probably about 40cm height in between each shelf.

They also extended up beyond the doorway opening, but at that height the shelves went around all 4 walls. There was maybe only one or two of these, with a much bigger height, like 100cm, we used to store our suitcases and things up there.

we also used to keep our hoover on the floor space, and other things would be kept on the floor space. The shelves all around were full of various boxes and baskets I had found, and I had various hooks on some of the shelves to hang stuff on.

it was a really useful space, we could store so much in there!

And just to say, the other thing id do here would be to get a folding step so you could get in and stand on the bottom of the raised bit to make it more useable (as long as the floor is solid). Then you could access the whole depth without having to pull things out

Hang on, 60cn wide is much smaller than I'd realised! Maybe shelf on one side and the back wall...

Yes, I also think this is an old airing cupboard. I have a cupboard just as described except it is mostly filled with the hot water cylinder.

Could you block the door and install some type of roll up shutter?

Does it back onto another room? Sometimes these spaces are better accessed from elsewhere or even split in two.

Two 50cm deep cupboards would be better.