03.09.2016

0700

Materials:

• Cloth bags
• Short screws that will hold the bags in place

Tools:

• Screwdriver

With no coffee table as a furniture piece, means that I have to manipulate the uses of my ottomans. Coffee tables do provide a flat and even surface to place our items on but storage is also necessary. I personally need a place to keep my remote control and reading material. Sometimes that  storage is also where I keep a small pile of papers for sketching when I’m watching TV or my cell phone when I want it off of the couch when I’m sitting on the couch.

Since my ottomans have storage space under their lids, I decided to solve my  problem by attaching a few canvas bags. These bags are old bags that I’ve had for awhile and I thought they would work great here. I picked my canvas bags due to the strength of canvas itself and the colors are neutral enough that they won’t stand out too much from the ottoman color. I attached the smaller bag with a safety pin and the larger bag with two screws. If you’re going to try this method of attaching bags to an ottoman, I suggest you put a sample weight in the bag as you measure the height that it should hang above the floor. All bags are designed and sewn with different stitches and will fill out in different capacities. Some bags are designed to fill out more on the bottom half of the design and some will not. By placing a sample weight in the bags (ie. remote controls, some papers, a magazine), you will be able to see how the bag will sit against the ottoman with the tension relying on the screws or safety pin(s). If you decide to have a bag for magazines or papers, make sure that there is enough room on both sides of the object so that you can slide it in and out of the pocket with ease. This may take some adjustments when you’re trying to place the location of where the bag is going to sit above the floor.

This system works very well and I can store my remote control, my phone when it’s not being used and even reading material that I’m waiting to read. I’ve used these attachments for years and I actually have another ottoman which also has two bags attached to it with the same method. These bags are also great when you need to store an object(s) that you need access to quickly, such as kids toys. I hope this post was useful for those of you who may use it. Depending on the needs of you and your family, you should pick your canvas bags accordingly, by testing out different sized bags.