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?

Could you change the single door to two narrow ones? That would give you more space on the landing when accessing it.

We've got a cupboard a bit like that. The raised floor is because it's above stairs isn't it so there's nothing you can do about that? Ours is about 1 metre wide and two metres deep so the dimensions are a bit different but we have deep shelves at the back that connect to narrow shelves along the side walls. On the raised floor we keep suitcases at the back, but we try to keep the front of the floor clear so that we can step onto it and access the shelves at the back which have big plastic tubs on them with stuff we need to access 2-3 times a year. Sometimes it gets a bit cluttered at the front and we have to remove stuff to get in there, but it works ok. The side shelves have things that we need to access more frequently and I can reach most of that by standing at the door. I can tell it will be a nightmare to access when we are older and a bit less flexible though!

Thanks to everyone who has replied. You are right, the bottom section isn't actually boxed in, it's just that the floor of the cupboard only starts at that level because of the stairs underneath (unlike the floor of the adjacent landing and room which are both lower).

I am reluctant to knock through to get access from the adjacent room for various reasons.

I think @highshelves suggesting of a folding step would help a lot. We do sometimes have to clamber up into the space and it's tricky because of the 60cm step up and the lack of headroom between the cupboard floor and the top of the door. But a step would help for those occasions when we have to do it.

The problem with the landing is not so much the door but the narrowness of the space. Even if we replaced the door with a shutter or two half doors, there would be limited space to manoeuvre between the cupboard entrance and the opposite wall.

It's actually a relatively new house so I don't think it was a boiler cupboard - I think they just planned it poorly and ended up with a weird bit of leftover space at the top of the stairs. But who knows 🤷

Could you remove the door and make it more of an alcove. Is it strong enough base to walk in. If so could shelve around the edges. The high bit in the loft area is more tricky..

could you somehow use a rolling door like "appliance garage" cupboards in kitchens?