As any science YouTuber or first-year physics student is quick to point out, the universe is mostly empty space. Not just space itself, but the amount of “empty” space between nuclei and their electrons is also huge. Getting rid of this empty space results in all kinds of interesting phenomena like degenerate matter and black holes. But the concept can be extrapolated into our daily lives as well; many things are so filled with air that we can get a lot more usable storage space by compressing them down a little bit. [Super Valid Designs] took this concept to a coat closet, building one that can hold an impressive number of coats.
He started by looking at an existing closet, which could hold around 21 coats but only if someone used two hands to cram the coats into the space. After a trip to a store which sells rugs, he saw a much better design that lets all the rugs pivot like the pages on a book, and took this idea to his closet using a similar mechanism designed for storing large blueprints instead of rugs. The closet he built around this mechanism has two hinged doors which allow a person easy access to the coats, and when opened the blueprint hangers pivot out like a book, allowing the coats to not only be easily accessed without disrupting the other coats, but also allow them to be compressed down by the closet door for storage.
For comparison, the original closet could only hold 10 coats when restricted to single-hand operation and 21 when using both. The new closet design is smaller, and can hold 24 coats with a single hand and over 30 when using both, a dramatic improvement of closet efficiency. To top it off, a set of cupboards on top and bottom allow for storing shoes and hats as well, and there’s even a garage for a robotic vacuum cleaner. Surprisingly, we don’t see many closet optimization builds around here. The closest we can come is another traditionally small space, a college dorm.
Was the book The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe? Did he discover how to pack it full of higher dimensions and use those to stash his tweed?
Shouldn’t that have been developed to look more like a police box?
Must be a JPL smallsat guru
i’m sure some of you have had the experience of buying a house and then obsessing about ways to increase or improve storage. for example, in my adirondack cabin, the internal walls all use two by sixes, meaning the wall voids are unusually massive. so when i put in an in-wall medicine cabinet, i was not happy with any of the ones i could buy. so i built a custom one to use all six inches of that space (yes, it is six inches, not five and a half, because you have the thickness of a sheet of drywall as well). other things i have done include putting pull-out drawers in the riser of every step of a staircase, various ways to access space under roofs too low for conventional human use in an attic space, and even voids under a platform supporting a woodstove. another thing i like to do is to fill stud voids of internal walls with time capsules of various things that happen to be worthless at the time, such as Palm Pilots or DDR2 memory sticks. it’s a good way to declutter while giving the retrotech people of the future unexpected goldmines.
I like that idea, thank you! Just don’t leave one open…
which reminds me, i put a very nice scientific calculator in a floor void in the Shaque i built on my parents’ land back in the early 1990s. i was the kind of loser who would’ve lived in my parents’ basement if it was climate controlled, wasn’t full of spiders and snakes, and didn’t have a dirt floor. because it was all of those things, i built a Shaque. it measured eight by sixteen feet and is an example of something a member of Gen Z could do given that housing is no longer affordable, assuming you have parents with a little land
Alternatively: give half of your coats to charity. That frees up space and the world would have one over convoluted utub maker video less. Well, he is more a talker then a maker, I blame the utub algorithm.
I think that you might be on the wrong website.
“Well, he is more a talker then a maker”
Then you haven’t checked out his other videos. I don’t blame you, you seem more of a commenter than a maker.
I do make a lot of stuff, I just don’t make utub videos about them. Mostly because I don’t want to deal with commenters that don’t get my approach to stuff. :grin:
you raise a good point. does anyone need more than one or two big coats and maybe a handful of jackets? it’s uncompressable shoes that are the problem, especially if your name is Imelda Marcos and you are fluent in Tagalog
Two words: vertical carousel
Something, something, possessions owning us, instead of us owning possessions. Something to be said for minimalism as a lifestyle.
Bunch of loners talking about the number of coats.
Kids or family. Some people have them. Even if they aren’t living in their mothers basement.
What would the world be like if people only chose to have things that were true necessities? I’m not knocking helping others, but implying that having something you don’t actually need is a bad thing is a rather sad attitude.
Tolerable.
Big coats maybe not more than a handful per person. Though some places do get pretty huge temperature swings across the year so having the pair of heavier winter, some middle weight and the really lightweight coats for as it warms up does start to add up.
But as you also tend to hang your jumper, the fancy T-shirts with printing etc you don’t want to fold, quite possibly the pesky monkey suit for weddings and the like along with some trousers etc. So its not like the solution to packing hangers tightly strictly requires you to have a huge coat collection.
You can also ask do you need more than one pair of shoes? Heck do you even need ‘uncompressible’ shoes at all! Flipflops or old school soft sandals and that wonderful leathery stuff that fixes itself called skin are all perfectly good options whenever frostbite isn’t a risk! Technically I think I do have 3 pairs of ‘real’ shoes, but dress shoes don’t take up that much space or ever get worn really, think I have a pair of more wintery/wet suited hiking boots still in the cupboard and then the steel toe boots that actually get worn for everything barefoot or the flipflops by the backdoor don’t get used.
People who don’t know how to layer up need multiple winter jackets. In reality you only need one good winter jacket and change the middle layers according to temperature.
If you want to go for minimalism, all you basically need is a windbreaker, a raincoat, and a winter coat with reasonable insulation – the rest is up to what you wear under it.
Use two hands..
That’s 34 more that I really need
and how is that relevant to anything? Do you actually need everything you own?
I hate videos like this.
I don’t want to hear his life story, I just want to see the closet mechanism. Show us, up front, what you made. Then, if you’re charming and interesting, maybe I’ll listen to how you got inspired.
Don’t bury the lede.
I like the idea of thinking about optimizing, and the video style is well made. But coats? They need to be able to breathe and dry!
Half way through the video he starts using a ready made pivoting wall rack. Thats a lot of story about putting that off the shelf thing into a cabinet.
Sure, but that doesn’t make this a bad idea. As you just have the hatstand/coat rack to hang up the one coat you just used till it is ready to put away again.. Once its dry and put away a more compressed storage probably helps prevent moths and humidity from becoming a problem I’d suggest.
With an automatic hydraulic press at the door you could put some more coats in the same space…
This might apply to clothes of all types not just coats. We have just had the first chill and I’m not thrilled to have to get that one jacket out of storage after 4 months of coat-jacket free weather.
COATS!
Loving the build.
I wonder if something similar could be made with only one door by using a telescoping rod mechanism. Good idea though and makes you think.