I’ve tried to formalize a few related strategies I use to limit waste of material and space in my living and working areas.
The most specific of these is “active storage”, or putting materials otherwise just sitting around taking up space to background use until they’re needed for a project with more finality.
The design-related planning that that goes into this is mostly about avoiding damage to the material that would limit possibilities for future use. I don’t say re-use because in this approach the future use is the primary one and what you do in the meantime is secondary.
This means strictly no alterations to the material, especially if the piece is of standard dimensions. Folding, rolling, stacking, and reorienting are the options for getting the material to the necessary dimensions and shape. This is most doable with soft materials, as I’ll explain with some examples later.
It also involves risk mitigation — planning the “actively stored” material’s interim use in a way that it doesn’t sustain significantly more wear and tear than it would sitting in “cold storage”. If you live in an old house like mine, this would be a consideration in any case, where most available storage space is in the damp-ish basement. With active storage, the material is nearer to you, and by using it day-to-day you can keep a better eye on its condition.
The best part of staying close to a material is that you can almost passively gain a better understanding of its qualities over time. I think this can inspire future use of a given material in a much more practical way than if you didn’t have some firsthand experience living with it, or if your only understanding of it was in a strictly planned context.
Of course, you need to be able to access the material without hesitation, pulling it out of its interim use as soon as it’s needed for something bigger where it will potentially be modified non-reversibly. Ideally, by maintaining standard dimensions, you will be able to easily find another piece to swap into the vacated interim role. Growing attached to things in their active storage role risks slowing you down later, but again, this can happen just as easily if you get too proud of a beautifully organized material stockpile that doesn’t have the benefit of being useful in the meantime.
Quite a while ago I got some two-metre squares of denim with the idea of making jackets. This hasn’t happened yet, and the squares were folded up in the basement for an extended time. I also had some chromed tube sling-style lounge chairs which weren’t comfortable enough on their own and some cushions with mismatched upholstery. I first tried wrapping a flannel bedspread around the cushions without any fasteners, which was fine if you sat with a certain poise but led to a sense that you had to be overly delicate to not break the illusion of a properly upholstered chair. Seasons changed and we ended up wanting to use the bedspread on the bed, so I brought a denim piece in as a replacement. Being a bit smaller, it didn’t stay tucked in as well, so I came up with a folding and pinning scheme that wrapped it more tightly around both the cushions and the chair frame.
In the summer, you generally don’t want as much carpeting on the floor as in the winter. Rolled-up rugs have turned out to be versatile building blocks around the house. In the living room, one of these works well as a support to set the couch to a comfortable angle. Compared to the bricks and planks we used before, it’s nice to have an entirely soft structure, plus the angle is precisely adjustable by changing how much of the carpet sits flat and how much is rolled.
With our latest dining room light fixture, we considered a few options for wiring the fixture, which needed electricity at two points, to the ceiling. Some important context here is that we like to experiment with the dining room lamp, so one configuration rarely lasts very long. One option would have involved much less cable, but would have necessitated stripping quite a bit of outer housing as well as cutting some shorter connecting segments in a way that they wouldn’t be good for much afterwards. The second option was to simply run two parallel wires from the ceiling. What was good about this option is that it left us with two segments of two metres — which happens to be the length I use to make my lamps. So when we decide to change this fixture, the wiring will be just as useful to me as it was before.
Books are the riskiest object for active storage. I’ve been in houses where people have stacks of books supporting shelves that hold other, presumably more important books or even other objects. I’m not accusing anyone of performativity but owning books that are rendered practically unreadable like this is where I draw the line — I’ll make stacks, sure, but preserve a modicum of accessibility by not putting stuff on top.
Aside from the aforementioned risk of stasis from getting attached to materials in their interim states, it’s true that this materials strategy reflects a somewhat precarious lifestyle that comes with many of us renting our living and working spaces and knowing we’ll have to pack it up and move on at some point. More specifically, I know in the back of my mind that living where I do as a foreigner holding a residence permit does not guarantee perpetual access and rootedness in a way that citizenship can.
I could see an argument that this materials strategy internalizes and potentially even enhances this feeling of uncertainty and impermanence. Paint things, drill holes in the wall, do whatever you need to do to feel at home for the period you’re legally entitled to. You could say that if I owned my house in a place where I knew I wanted to stay and could stay for the rest of my life, I wouldn’t be opposed to using up a bunch of wood constructing beautiful, nonstandard, built-in bookcases sacrificing flexibility for perfect specificity.
But mobility is the expected condition of life in the twentieth century and beyond. Most of us aren’t living in multigenerational ancestral villages, and whether you carefully dismount and pack up your Vitsoe shelves or leave your write-it-off-cheap Ikea chipboard to get soggy by the side of the road, most furniture is already designed to reflect and reinforce this. You probably don’t want to imbue surplus value in the place you’re leaving, you want it to be something you can bring with you.
Instead of buying into specifically adaptable systems or deluding myself with immovable hardwood anchors, I’m trying to take an approach of realism about setting up in a space for a while that practiced enough over time provides both comfort and flexibility.