Living Room Help!

Can you get bookcases that come just under the edge of the stairwell?
Use nightstands for coffee tables that have drawers -for storage.
If the living room is large, you might be able to get away with putting a sofa kitty corner (at an agle in the corner). Behind it can be large baskets for toy or blanket storage. If you dont have room for end tables , make sure you put out a coffee table and then use standing lamps flanking the sofa.
If all else fails, get rid of extra "stuff" that has no place.

ps- how handy is your hubby? I have seen beautiful walls when someone built shallow bookcasing all the way around doors, floor to ceiling and left to right - the whole wall.

It's okay to cover windows... entertainment center for the TV, couches in front of the windows, etc. As for your last question, something about closets and rooms in the house, I am so confused on what you were asking? Are you asking if there are organizational things for living rooms? Yes there are, they have cube holed towers that you put those bin things in and put stuff in the bins... they have lots of things for organizing living rooms. IKEA rocks too! so does target sometimes. walmart has one of those cubby hole towers on their website.

I think we all need more info on what you need & what you want to do!

My living & dining rooms are all part of a great room. The living room has 2 windows on 1 wall, a fireplace & glass door on another....& the rest is open to the dining room & entryway. This is a large space, without interior walls. I back furniture up to furniture: a buffet on the back of the sofa.....a bookcase behind an oversized chair. I use antique steamer trunks for end tables - which houses all of my Christmas storage. I have 2 buffets & 2 other china cabinets. The ones in the dining area hold my dishes....the others hold a misc of stuff, including all of my daycare arts & crafts/books/etc.

I use vintage & antique furniture a lot. My computer, all scrapbking supplies, photo - movie- cd storage, board games, & my family archives are ALL in a huge antique cabinet. The doors close it all away...so the clutter is unseen when we have company. Inside the cabinet, I use binders, boxes, cigar boxes, etc.....to organize everything. (& "small world" - I bought the cabinet at an antiq shop in Cuba!)

By using smaller organizers within larger units, I manage to keep my stuff under control. & by using a variety of finishes & pieces.....some of which are quite unusual.....I have created a look which screams "ME"....which was my goal! Good Luck & feel free to contact me anytime!

I did this more to save my books from my kids, but I put shelves with brackets around the top of two of my walls in my living room about 12" from the ceiling, so it "wraps" around those walls. I really like it because it gives me probably 15-20 feet of shelf space (I'm guessing, I can't remember now), and I can put up books, breakables, odd collectibles, dried flowers, and small pictures. If the tops of your windows or doors are not too high, you could try that to cheer the room up a bit. I have seen really neat built-in book/storage shelves custom made along a wall with stairs on it so it gets "taller" with the wall, too. What kind of things are you wanting to organize? Living room things like furniture, or family things, like books, magazines, toys, remotes, etc.? You can always arrange furniture away from a wall and leave a walk space behind it if you have enough room and create a kind of freestanding wall or divider that way, and if you have enough floor space try a "couch table" behind it. Our living room is pretty much just cluttered because we've got all of our books, kids' toys, kids' books, entertainment things, throw blankets, pillows, exercise equipment (stowed under couches), shoes, coats, snow pants, etc. in there. =)

In response to Cori W. I got the tower storage unit at Target too but didn't like their choice of colors for their bins. I bought those at Kmart and the bins are SOOOO much cheaper than Target's too and the same thing just different colors.

We got a couple of storage ottomans for the kids toys. Friends of ours have a coffee table with a shelf for storage baskets underneath. Good luck. We never seem to have enough space either.

I have a similar problem with my living room... I'm not sure what it is exactly you're talking about trying to organize, but my husband and I bought a bookshelf that we put all our books/magazines & even cookbooks on (which is on one wall), we went to IKEA and bought this other decorative bookshelf thing (I'm really not sure how to explain it other than it has about 10 different cubby-holes of all different sizes and is a book-shelf) that we use to put other decorative stuff (candles, pictures, some toys on the lower 'shelves' that my son can reach) and finally, since we don't have a whole lot of wall space or room left we bought a tall DVD shelf (it's about 7 feet tall and about 6 inches wide) that we put next to one of the windows near our TV. It is big enough to hold just about all our DVDs & video games... but it's still small enough that we could buy another one to put next to it if we needed to.
Oh, I almost forgot... for all my son's toys - we went to one of the furniture stores and I found this coffee table & ottoman set that is really awesome. The top of the coffee table has 2 cushions that come off and you can flip over to have a hard surface for writing or putting cups or whatever - and the whole inside of the coffee table is open so you can use it to store toys. It is great. It's cushion-y so my son, who is just learning to walk, doesn't get hurt if he falls against any of it but is study enough that he can pull himself up any of it.
I hope this helps and isn't completely opposite of what you were asking! LOL