Outdoor Shelving For Small Spaces
Come on, this guy wants to be on a shelf outside where he can feast!
Want a garden or some thriving plant life even though your balcony or patio is the size of a shoebox? No problem—with wall-hung outdoor shelving and the help of YOUHANGIT, you can create and hang anything from a tomato garden to floral boxes and even funky DIY shelving units that will hang perfectly and add unique flair to make your little outdoor area a personal sanctuary.
“All I have is a balcony,” you say? No problemo. “I want to grow my own basil on said balcony,” you say? You got it. “I’m super into Venus flytraps and want an entire shelf of them hanging on my teensy patio wall,” you whisper to yourself, because it’s a little weird. We got you.
How Do I Hang Outdoor Shelves?
It depends, but most of the time, for the sake of practicality and safety, you’ll want to use whatever hardware your shelf came with plus screw anchors. In this way, you’ll ensure that your DIY outdoor garden or floral display up on the wall won’t fall down due to changes in weather or wearing down of screws loosening within the walls themselves.
If you happen to be making the shelves yourself and going full blown do-it-yourself, then you need to make sure the screws and screw anchors you choose are the right size and kind, and that they can support the weight of whatever you want to put on them. If your end game looks like running saguaro cacti up and down the walls on shelves that stick out 18 inches from the wall, doing it without shelf braces, screws and anchors that can handle the weight, then prepare for the impending and thorny three a.m. crash of desert fauna.
The YOUHANGIT wall marking system for hanging shelves works great for making double keyhole marks if that’s what you’re up against, and also works well for making level marks for shelf brackets. In either of these instances, this is where the YOULEVEL will come into play, making your life like a billion times easier.
Take a look at this YHI video on how to hang a shelf—it applies to nearly any shelving scenario:
I’m Going to Try Really Hard Not to Kill My Plants
Good call. So before you start deciding which shelves will go where, hit up the old Interwebz to find out what types of plants, veggies, fruits, and so on are a good match for your year-round weather conditions. If there’s something you really, really want out on that balcony that just can’t survive December and January, think about getting what you want with thinking ahead about where these greenies will go inside your home for that seasonal period. In this way, you get to hang shelves on your balcony or in your little patio area without compromising what you get to put on them. You may even find yourself talking to the plants during the indoor winter season—some studies suggest talking to plants might be healthy—it may help your seasonal effective disorder. However, if you find yourself screaming at your plants about your cell phone carrier rates, it might be time to see a specialist.
Small outdoor spaces spruce up quite nicely with a little flair and the help of outdoor shelving. Choose shelves that can withstand your climate, plants that you can accommodate the needs of, and in the name of all that is good in this world, make sure those shelves can’t be reached by the dog, unless you totally love cleaning up soil everyday.