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Jul
18
2010

Van Racking Systems from STORE

Sunday, July 18th, 2010

STORE commercial customer Volt Air Marine Engineering kindly emailed some images of the first van in their new fleet to use our elfa shelving for van racking and storage. We were so impressed with the neat 30cm deep van racking configuration inside the test van installation that we thought we’d share the details of this neat storage solution here on the blog.

Whilst we know lots about storage products here at STORE we’d never really thought about using elfa as a van racking system before, however our friends at Volt Air Marine Engineering were so complementary after testing our elfa shelving system and plastic storage boxes as a van racking solution that we thought some readers may like to see the results:

Installed in the pride of Volt Air’s fleet (a 2-week old Vauxhall Vivaro long wheel base van), our elfa van racking and storage system cost £950 (incl VAT) in total  to rack-out the entire vehicle. This included all basket shelving, storage boxes, sparring baskets, and part bins AND (we’re told) was a third of the price of the last van racking system Volt Air installed.

Volt Air MD Adam White explained that:

“The total weight of the metal elfa van racking system is around 85kg which is a fraction of the weight of other metal and wood van shelving systems we’ve used in the past. The last thing we wanted was a van racking system that then limited the weight of tools and parts we could carry on-board and elfa has proved spot on…there’s even room to carry a fully laden Euro pallet on the deck without snagging the shelving and parts bins.”

Our elfa basket shelves and elfa sparing baskets have also proved ideal at minimising movement of tools and stock in the test van on motorway journeys making life more pleasant on long drives and tool and parts storage more organised and easy to hand for the marine engineers once on site.

Thanks to Volt Air Marine Engineering for sharing their van racking images and thoughts on our elfa system with STORE. Volt Air are suppliers of electro-mechanical engineering solutions to the fishing and shipping industry providing everything from general ship management to superintendant work.

Elfa van racking systems from STORE are available in component form online for easy DIY installation. For details of a bespoke and fleet installation , please contact Simon at STORE

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Jul
09
2010

Daily Mirror is Hooked on STORE

Friday, July 9th, 2010

The Daily Mirror featured our Photo Coat Hooks this week. The handy hooks are currently in our Summer Sale at only 50p, that’s 90% off the regular price of £5!!!

Our summer storage solution sale started only a week ago and we’ve already sold 75% of our allocated stock of these funky coat hooks so do hurry because at 50p they’re not going  to be hanging around for long!

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May
30
2010

The world’s finest designer of storage boxes?

Sunday, May 30th, 2010

Born Cesare Colombo in Milan in 1930 ‘Joe’ Colombo as he became known was in my opinion one of the finest industrial designers of domestic storage solutions. He had a real passion for storage & decluttering and I think his design and passion for storage is simply unparalleled. I hope my short biog of Colombo’s design work on storage products might convince you too:

1958 – As an architecture student at Milan Polytechnic, Colombo was already experimenting with product design in the new wonder material, plastic! He’d previously studied fine art then experimented with abstract art, stumbling into design in 1953 when he was asked to design the ceiling and three open-air seating areas of a jazz club.

1963 – Obsessed with storage, Colombo creates the Combi-Centre. This mobile storage unit (see image left) consisted of a series of cylindrical units that slotted into each other and was designed to store books, drinks or even used as a tool storage cabinet.

In the same year he also produced The Mini-Kitchen, a wheeled storage container just 90cm high and 75cm wide with a hob, oven, grill, fridge, work-top and which still had storage for cookbooks, kitchen utensils and foodstuff.

1964 – Colombo designed the famous Man-Woman Storage Container. He saw this as a modern take on the Victorian travel trunk or perhaps the seaman’s chest but for a couple.  The Man-Woman Storage Container had enough shelves, clothes rails, storage drawers and a mirror for two people all inside two storage boxes.

1967 – Colombo’s experiments in the design of modular furniture culminate with his space saving chairs – Additional Living System. He loved product that could be adapted to the users own environment and needs and then perhaps stored away to save space when not required and this was just that.

1968 – Box 1, Colombo’s “night and day facility” was manufactured. The Box 1 contained all the requirements of a bedroom within a series of interlocking storage boxes which when required divide to become a bed, wardrobe and shelves.

1969 – VISIONA1, a more luxurious version of Box 1 was designed which Colombo described as his “habitat of the future” and which contained the contents of an entire house within a series of mobile storage units with no dividing walls, (perhaps inspired by Le Corbusier’s Transformable Double-House).

Back with kitchen storage, Colombo designed the Roto-Living Unit in 1969 for his own kitchen which also had a small production run. The unit consisted of a storage cube with a central rotating table which could be adjusted to different heights surrounded and enclosed by kitchen storage units.

‘69 can’t pass without mentioning his CABRIOLET-BED. Whilst this item wasn’t a product designed with storage in mind it’s an absolute design classic of the 60’s. The bed had a hood that closed like a convertible car to provide total privacy for the user(s), and a lighting system that could simulate day or night time lighting alongside a stereo system.

Colombo's Boby Trolley

1970 – Colombo’s design work with storage products culminated in 1970 with the famous Boby Trolley. Made from ABS it had rotating drawers and shelves and 40 years later is still now in production with Bieffeplast.

1972 – MoMA New York exhibits Colombo’s Total Furnishing Unit, a 1971 designed giant storage box that has all the essentials of modern living, a kitchen, bathroom, bed and storage cupboards all contained within a single storage box in classic Colombo colours of white, yellow, red and black.

Sadly Colombo died on his 41st birthday 30 July 1971 so did not get to see his masterpiece of storage design in MoMA.

Colombo’s 1971 Total Furnishing Unit

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May
28
2010

Festival Season Storage Solutions

Friday, May 28th, 2010

With festival season shortly upon us and predictions of another scorching hot British summer (!!), the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has launched a campaign called Just Tick It aimed at increasing awareness of fake ticket websites and providing ticket buyers with helpful & practical advice on how to avoid being scammed.

Apparently 1 in 12 of us are scammed by fake websites when purchasing festival tickets. That’s 5,000 people loosing an average of £80 each this year. For detailed information about scam ticket websites and how to protect yourself visit: www.consumerdirect.gov.uk/ticketscams.

The OFT site also has a neat video section too including this amusing bootleg Florence and the Machine video:

If you are off to Glastonbury, V or The Big Chill this summer we’ve plenty of neat ideas storage ideas here at STORE HQ to help organise your trip and keep the tent decluttered. Here’s a few of my favourites:

Weekend Wash Bags – A great little storage box with everything you need for a weekend away including make-up remover, toothpaste, deodorant wipes, cotton buds and pads etc. Choose from a his or hers storage boxes.

Card & Money Wallet – Neat waterproof storage box to hang around your neck and store money, cards and other valuables you wouldn’t want to leave in your tent.

Über Cool cool bag – Trendy yet sensibly priced cool bag to store your cool drinks or how about make-up so it doesn’t melt in the hot tent.

Sun Protection Kit – Another neat little storage box with all those essentials to protect you from the sun including a handy UV Monitor Card, Moisturiser, Sun Cream, Tissues, Plasters, Hair Band, and a Refreshing Wipe.

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May
26
2010

The Original Space Saving House

Wednesday, May 26th, 2010

The German Weissenhofsiedlung housing estate was one of the most significant architectural landmarks erected by the Neues Bauen movement. Within the Weissenhof Estate is an amazing semi-detached house designed by the Swiss-born architect Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris who preferred to be known as Le Corbusier.

Weissenhofmuseum Copyright:DaimlerChryslerApart from it’s striking exterior that was pretty much at the vanguard of modern architecture, La Corbusier’s house is as amazing in its clever use of internal space and storage.

Known as the “Transformable Double-House” (it doesn’t have such a ring to it when translated into English!), Le Corbusier designed the interior with flexibility and efficient use of space in mind. Each internal area was carefully thought-out to allow adaption for different uses of the space at differing times of the day and indeed also offer multifunctional roles at the same time for it’s occupants without the feeling of being surrounded by clutter.

Family space in the Le Corbusier house is axially arranged on a single floor. During the day the space is not delineated by walls, only by columns.  By night, sliding partitions sub-divide the space into “sleeping cells” which can be configured as the resident wishes.  As in a steam train sleeper carriage of the time, the beds fold away during the day into multifunctional storage cupboards. Le Corbusier also planned to add a range of compact bent wood space saving furniture that would equip all areas for both day and night use but was sadly compromised by budget and time.

Le Corbusier’s vision was for a modular house to which more bays could be added as and when additional space was required (sounds rather like our elfa shelving!). The addition of extra space could be easily achieved as the stairs were placed perpendicular to the main body of the building. To save further space this in turn backed onto a shared garden.

This visionary house was flexible both in design and in social relations but at the time Le Corbusier was criticised for his “romantic use of technology” and the “focus on a bourgeois clientele” which I think was a tad unfair.

What I find amazing about the interior of this 1920’s house was the visionary thinking when it came to multifunctional use of space. Today we live in much smaller houses and often have to make our rooms and family space work much harder for us by giving them multifunctional uses, e.g. a modern living room that may also have a small desk providing a quasi home office in the corner. Le Corbusier was way ahead of his time when it came to how we actually use our space rather than what we officially designate it for and lovers of modern architecture & interior design plus storage & decluttering geeks like me would find the Weissenhofsiedlung  estate and the preserved 1927 Le Corbusier house well worth a visit.

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May
22
2010

The world’s oldest fitted kitchen

Saturday, May 22nd, 2010

Back in July 2009 I wrote about the world’s oldest storage solution, a 14th century BC Japanese kitchen storage pot and sitting on my laptop here in the STORE staff kitchen full of natty kitchen storage ideas I started wondering about the origins of the fitted kitchen and just who came up with the idea of built-in storage cupboards etc.

Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky

I think the world’s oldest fitted kitchen is probably The Frankfurt Kitchen which was designed by Austrian architect Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky in 1926 as an ergonomic low cost ‘one design fits all’ kitchen for the masses & which sought to provide adequate work and storage space for both cooking and laundry.

It seems to me that Schütte-Lihotzky was way ahead of her time, effectively inventing the modern fitted kitchen in a Eureka moment but her ideas were not just about good design, there was a lot of scientific thought behind the layout.

Perhaps influenced by the American Fredrick Taylor’s turn of the century papers on the scientific management of workflow (the process now commonly referred to as Taylorism), Schütte-Lihotzky careful studied routine kitchen tasks and designed the Frankfurt kitchen around the space and storage required for each chore.

The result IMHO was a masterpiece of decluttering the traditional domestic kitchen and included items such as food storage containers and jars that were always close to hand (near preparation areas) yet neatly tucked out of site.

At only 1.9m wide by 3.4m long, Schütte-Lihotzky had to be very clever with her use of kitchen storage and she incorporated a sliding rather than traditionally opening kitchen door into the design to maximise the space she could then use within the kitchen area.  Shown in the photo (on the left hand wall) there’s also a neat use of vertical storage space with a fold-down ironing board.

The right hand wall housed most of the food storage cupboards and included dedicated labeled storage bins/scoops for rice, flour, sugar etc. Amazingly (and don’t forget we’re talking 1926 here) this unit also container a recycling bin (actually it was a drawer) that food scraps could be brushed into and emptied afterwards.

The narrow galley-style layout, not so unfamiliar to lots of us today was not solely a result of space constraints, it was a conscious design decision on Schütte-Lihotzky’s part to minimise the number of steps needed when working within the kitchen….how very Tayloristic!

Perhaps however, the Tayloristic approach was in the end the downfall of the Frankfurt kitchen. Like Taylor himself who received strong reaction to his scientific management methods from factory workers who found the repetitive processes boring and “requiring little skill”, the Frankfurt kitchen was often described as not flexible enough. In developing a standard method for performing each kitchen or laundry task perhaps Schütte-Lihotzky had forgotten that we human beings are not all the same and operate in different ways. Another issue often cited was that the storage bins were too accessible by small children.

Despite these criticisms, the Frankfurt kitchen became a model for the modern fitted kitchen. Some 10,000 units were installed Frankfurt’s high-rises and as such it was a massive commercial success.

I love the look and design of the Frankfurt kitchen and the idea that way back in 1926 Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky was thinking about efficient use of space, decluttering the kitchen environment and kitchen storage solutions.

Four years ago the Victoria and Albert Museum acquired a Frankfurt kitchen for its traveling exhibition. The same year another sold for nearly £35,000! Sadly at the time of writing the V&A’s Frankfurt kitchen is currently in store but if you search the collections area of the V&A website there’s some great photos of their Frankfurt kitchen although I have to confess I think the V&A may have sourced the wrong kitchen chair as Schütte-Lihotzky original design had a revolving stool on castors for maximum flexibility!

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May
06
2010

100% Biodegradable Plastic Storage Boxes

Thursday, May 6th, 2010

Recyclable Plastic Storage Boxes

If you haven’t spotted our new range of plastic Nick Nack storage boxes yet they went onto our STORE shelves a few days ago. These neat little plastic boxes have a bigger story to tell than perhaps is offered at first sight. Apart from being a great little storage box for all those trinkets and bits & bobs that always seem to clutter-up your drawers, they’re actually made from the world’s first 100% biodegradable plastic. Each storage box is manufactured from a combination of polymer and corn starch which when disposed of in compost or soil will TOTALLY biodegrade in 6 – 9 months. Still not convinced? Here’s the science bit:

To create our new plastic storage boxes, naturally occurring bacteria are fed sugar that is obtained from corn starch. The bugs digest the sugar and store the resulting PHBV polymer much as the human body would store fat. The “fat” is then extracted and becomes an injection mouldable polymer called poly-3-hydroxy butyrate-co-valerate…a derivative of the molecule that Forbes magazine declared “one of the five molecules that will change the world.”…and guess what, it was first developed right here in Blighty in the late 1980s

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Apr
28
2010

Wasps eating your garden furniture!?!

Wednesday, April 28th, 2010

BBC Radio 4’s You and Yours programme today with Winifred Robinson had a feature on why poor Robinson’s garden furniture is currently under attack from wasps. Apparently as our April has warmed-up, bigger inserts such as the eight species of wasps that live in UK are emerging from hibernation and the pesky wasps are stripping garden furniture of their wood to recycle and use to make their nests.

Wasp expert Dr Stephen Martin from Sheffield University Department of Animal and Plant Sciences suggested that there was not much that could be done to protect your wooden garden furniture from wasps but we think we’ve a great idea:

“Oh, what a wonderful thing to be, A healthy grown up busy busy bee; Whiling away all the passing hours, Pinching all the pollen from the cauliflowers”

Our Wasp Trap Pots have already been the saviour of many a Danish summer according to our friends and makers Kim and Ellie and now they’re available here in UK. The pot can either be hung from the cord provided or simply sat on a table to provide effective protection from wasps.  Add a splash of beer to the internal reservoir and wasps are attracted through the small hole at the base (that incidentally is too small for bees) into the sweet beer. Remove the inebriated wasps at the end of the night or simply leave them to carry-on partying.

As an alternative (and in line with Dr Martin’s thinking)  why not simply protect your garden table and chairs with a cover. Our neat Camouflaged Circular Table Cover makes for a tasteful protector for your garden furniture to keep your table dirt and bug free. We also have matching items for your chairs and rotary washing lines.

Finally, not wishing to be too hard on our insect friends we do also retail our award winning Bee House. This lovely idea will help protect our native endangered humble bees. The lovely little chaps will quickly take advantage of this des res at the end of the summer and hibernate safe and warm until next spring, sealing off the end of each tube themselves to keep warm until next spring.

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Nov
27
2009

Traditional Canadian Storage Boxes, elfa & Gossip Girl!

Friday, November 27th, 2009

I don’t watch an awful lot of telly these days, especially with new arrival baby Will in our household but I did manage to catch a couple of old favourites this week.

Ray Mears visited the Canadian Pacific coast in his BBC2 show Northern Wilderness this Sunday evening and even had time to make some storage boxes during his trip.  Ray was invited to try his hand at a traditional Canadian technique to make a cedar lidded storage box from a single piece of wood.

Ray Mears prepairs for a game of squash

The amazing technique involved taking a single plank of cedar and chiselling out a channel where each corner of the storage box will eventually be, but at the same time leaving a thin slither of wood at each corner intact. The plank is then gently steamed for several hours and this thin skin of wood becomes pliable and can be bent into a right angle to form the corners of the storage box. When dry the malleable steamed cedar becomes very had and forms a very sturdy and beautiful storage box which is graced with traditional eagle, fish and wool symbols.

In search of some decent trashy TV, I also settled down in front of STORE Distribution Manger Julie’s favourite ITV2 show Gossip Girl this week. Sad and mad as I am about clever use of space for decent storage I was delighted to see that Gossip girl’s Patrick Roberts had a walk-in wardrobe full of our lovely wooden elfa decor shelving or perhaps in the vernacular of Gossip Girl herself I should say:
“Spotted! STORE’s very own elfa decor shelving gracing the walk-in wardrobe of bad boy Patrick Roberts, XOXO”

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Oct
30
2009

Harrison Ford loves Shelving too

Friday, October 30th, 2009
My favourite film as a child was Raiders of the Lost Arc with Star Wars coming a very close second. As a big fan of (IMHO) the star of both, Harrison Ford, I was pleasantly surprised to hear that he shares my passion for storage and shelving!

A quick ‘Google’ reveals that there’s many a tall tail floating around Hollywood suggesting that Ford got his big break when (working as a carpenter) he was installing wardrobe shelving at the home of George Lucas. The LuscasFilm boss offering him the part of Han Solo in Star Wars off the back of an impromptu on the spot audition in his newly fitted walk-in wardrobe!

Ford was quick to dispel this longstanding myth recently saying in an interview with Mark Lawson on BBC Radio 4 that,

“If I’d have done all the shelving jobs I’ve been credited for in Hollywood I’d be a very rich carpenter”

…instead of a very rich actor of course! So what’s the true story and why does Ford have 27 years’ worth of Fine Woodworking Magazine on a shelf in his home office?

"...and we''ll put the first shelf in about here"

Well Ford was in fact a struggling actor in the early 1970s and yes he was supplementing his income by installing (office) shelving when Lucus bumped into him in a reception area of a Hollywood film company offices. Having worked with Ford previously, Lucus invited him to audition for his new film American Graffiti. Ford went on to work for Lucus as Han Solo in Star Wars and the rest is, well in the words of Lucas, all  “a long time ago in a galaxy far far away”.

Harrison Ford is currently starring in the film Extraordinary Measures which is released in UK on Friday 26th February and doesn’t I’m afraid have a plot centred on shelving and storage.

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