The Issue:

People living in small apartments frequently have to deal with a lack of storage space. While it’s possible to “just” add cabinets and bookshelves, these take up valuable floor space and make the apartment more cramped.

Proposal:

There is a surprisingly underutilized storage method that preserves your limited floor space: “just stick things on the wall!”

Unfortunately, not all objects are well-suited for being stored on a hook. For example, you usually can’t easily hang a flashlight, a hammer, or a laptop charger from a wall hook.

But thanks to the following two-part system, we can store generic objects on a wall regardless of their shape.

Part 1: attach a strong magnet to a watch-band-like strap, which you then wrap around the object you want to store (Figure 1).

Part 2: Attach some thin metal strips to the wall (ideally by screwing them into wall studs), as shown in Figure 2. You can then reversibly attach the magnetic bands from Part 1 to these metal strips.

Conclusion:

If this idea sounds vaguely familiar to you, it may be because it is similar to a common method of storing knives. However, for magnetic knife storage, the wall part is a magnet (and the knife is metal), whereas in our system, the wall part is just a regular sheet of metal.

PROS: Should legitimately help with storage!

CONS: Items might fall off the wall if you bump into them. May not mix well with electronic devices.

Originally published 2026-03-09.