Storage Tetris and the Salad Bar principle...

Tetris arrangement on the right, Salad Bar arrangement on the left

We are almost done moving stuff to the storage place. Estimating the adequate size needed for the storage place was a stressful experience. There is no "try out" or "do over". Once you get a particular unit size, and things do not fit, your next stop is a Garage Sale or Good Will.

Packing is an art form of sorts, we have been refining minimal packing through all our overseas trips. But packing the entire house has been different, almost the opposite: It is not packing the things that you need, it is packing the things that you will not need, at least for a good while, which begs the question: Why not just get rid of all of it? Go to the outskirts an have a bonfire and some roasted marshmallows.

We got rid of a considerable amount of stuff. Craigslist, Good Will, and other venues helped us pass the excess of belongings. For the things that we decided to keep, we had to come up with a strategy to fit it in the storage space, in a specific order: Non important things first, daily life essentials last, so we could function during the last weeks here.

Funny, besides the obvious essentials such as food, clothes and hygiene, such things as computers, music and tv and net access easily managed to claim prominent spots in the empty house.

To fit everything into the storage area, we followed two strategies:

• Storage Tetris
• The salad bar principle.

Have you played Tetris? If you have, then you get the idea. The trick is not to leave any empty spaces between boxes, and stack them vertically. For this is best to favor small to medium boxes of similar size and shape and avoid big bulky ones. We used this approach on one side of the storage area.

What is the Salad Bar Principle?
This so called principle has its origins in my college days at the school of Architecture, where my friends and I applied our newly acquired knowledge on structural design to pile high pizza and salad on our plates at the local "All you can eat" parlor. This approach consisted on using the flat pizza slices to create walls around the plate and then pile the salad bar fixings in the center.

We adapted this approach by disassembling all tables, shelves and stacked them vertically against the walls of the storage area. Mattresses and tall poles where used in the same fashion.
Then, used heavier irregular shaped furniture to keep all the tall vertical pieces form falling over.

So far, these two approaches have worked pretty good, and by now, we are living with just the bare necessities. I am typing this entry on a rigged desk made out of plywood and saw-horses as legs.


Next time I set up an office, I will make my next desk in a similar fashion. A good piece of wood or composite as a top, and mechanic tool chests as legs/drawers.