There are things in life that just seem to be a rule, make more money, have less, get a better job, work harder, buy a bigger house, have less room.
For the last one I have an answer.
Our new home is much larger and much less cluttered but our storage areas are much less. Our last house had a walk up ceiling ladder in the garage leading into the attic. It was useful for a lot of my spare parts etc in the garage. If I really wanted to I could carry all the same items upstairs into the access hole in my sons room and try to move them up a ladder into a much more limited attic. For now though I decided to try something different.
The front wall of my garage is common to the pantry and staircase in the house. The pantry occupies the area under the staircase landing and is quite big, but until Tania mentioned it, I never really thought about the rest of the staircase. With ten foot ceilings and another three feet of dead space, the staircase is rather long. So last weekend while I was buying wood for my mini deck, I bought a door and a few other items to go through the wall in the garage and on into the stairwell.
After measuring twice and still cutting in the wrong spot I now have an opening started in the right area. Right now it's slow going because I had no idea how it was laid out inside. It looks like I will be able to put in about a five foot tall door. Its much higher than that inside but due to the way the staircase is built I can only take it up that tall.
The amount of money I spent on the door and supplies makes this some very cheap stoarge and most of the large items I had in the attic of my old house should fit in this area, I may even put in some shelving.
