Storage

At last: a book brave enough to confront the true enemy of civilisation. Not war, not plague, not moral decline, but where on earth to put the spare duvets.

Jennifer Lisle’s Storage is a Thames and Hudson volume devoted to that most quietly desperate of domestic arts: arranging one’s possessions so they stop behaving like an uprising. Shelves, cupboards, trunks, wardrobes, drawers, boxes, baskets, fitted units, ingenious corners, handsome containers, smug little compartments — all the noble infrastructure by which human beings attempt to persuade their belongings to form an orderly society.

The great irony, of course, is that storage books are nearly always bought by people who already have too much stuff, thereby adding one more object to the problem they are hoping to solve. But that is also their charm. A good storage book is less a manual than a fantasy of moral renewal. You open it and imagine a new life in which everything has a place, every place has a pleasing texture, and no mysterious cable ever again breeds behind a chair. The cupboard door closes. The hall is clear. The spare room is not a crime scene. For one shining moment, the world obeys.

Lisle approaches storage as both practicality and style, because hiding clutter badly is merely concealment, while hiding clutter beautifully is interior design. Here are ideas for making rooms work harder without looking as though they have been sentenced to office duty. Here are baskets that imply rustic competence, shelves that suggest intellectual control, cabinets that mutter reassuringly about symmetry, and built-in solutions that look as if the house itself has finally agreed to help. It is the domestic equivalent of diplomacy: delicate negotiations between space, taste, budget, and the large number of things one cannot throw away because they might be useful, sentimental, expensive, or still in their original packaging.

A Thames and Hudson book on storage has a particular authority. It does not simply say “buy plastic boxes and stop complaining.” It treats the matter with visual seriousness, as though a well-arranged linen cupboard might be the missing chapter in the history of civilisation. And perhaps it is. Empires have fallen for want of logistics. Households have done the same for want of a proper shelf.

This is a book for anyone who has ever looked at a room and thought, “There is a better version of this life, and it probably involves drawers.” It is for the person who appreciates that the most beautiful object in a home is sometimes not a chair, vase or painting, but a cupboard large enough to make an entire category of anxiety disappear. It is also for the realistic soul who knows the battle is never finally won. Storage is not a destination. It is a ceasefire.

This copy is in Good condition, which means it has survived the ordinary domestic shuffle without requiring its own emergency storage solution. Crappy Old Books offers it as a practical, handsome and faintly accusatory volume for anyone hoping to turn household chaos into something that at least looks intentional.

Keep browsing: See more Non-Fiction books Other books by Jennifer Lisle