Bedside Tables with a Twist

Bedside Tables with a Twist: Great Stashers with Personality

Few homes today can afford the luxury of single purpose furniture, especially in the bedroom where storage space is frequently at a premium. So when you set out to buy bedside furniture, consider all the possibilities there are for making the pieces you choose do double duty.

Need more storage for your socks and underwear? Consider buying matching three-drawer chests and putting one on either side of the bed. If you’re part of a couple, you can keep your small stuff in one chest and your partner can stash his or hers in the other. On the other hand, if you live alone you can keep both chests for your very own use, perhaps keeping casual foldable garments like jeans and sweaters in one and your underclothes in the other.

You can also buy pieces that look like chests of drawers but are actually something else entirely—like a cabinet with shelves concealed by faux drawer front. Depending on what your specific storage need is, these may provide a better option. Or have a chest on one side and a faux chest on the other!

Are you short on book storage? How about stacking a short bookcase on top of each chest? You could even use the side of the bookcase that runs parallel to the bed to hang an adjustable reading lamp. That way, you’ve got your books, a good reading light and your comfy bed all in one space, without taking away from the horizontal space on the top of the chests.

If you’ve got a lot of books to store, another way of doing this is to buy two unpainted bookcases that are six feet tall. Remove the shelf and the portion of the sidepiece closest to the height of your mattress and box springs. This will create a horizontal surface similar to the one that would have been provided by the top of the chest had you gone the bookcase on top of the chest route, but still allow you to use the other four or five shelves for books.

Using this format, you can also buy a board long enough to fill the space between the two bookcases and secure it between the bookcase tops using small angle irons. This will give you the effect of a built in bookcase/entertainment center that surrounds your bed and make a nice frame for a large picture, grouping of prints or other wall art above your bed. Finally, paint or stain your new bookcase/beside storage the color of your choice and you’re good to go!

Creating functional and attractive bedside tables for your bedroom doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive. Many times you can find interesting pieces of furniture at yard sales and antique shops that would work exceptionally well as bedside tables. A few ideas include an old jam cupboard, stackable wine or apple crates made of cedar with interesting old labels and stamps on the side. Any of these ideas is a much better ‘grown up’ solution to the college ‘milk crate’ tables.

©2007, Kathy Burns-Millyard