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1280 Castlefield Avenue, Toronto
416.489.1055
Mon – Sat 9:30 am – 6 pm, Sun 12 – 5 pm

Does your garage look like this? Mine neither. It could, however, with a few swipes of the credit card at Toronto’s Space Solutions. With its move last month to a giant new location in the Castlefield design district, the retailer has leap-frogged its competition to become the city’s king of home organization products and custom built-ins.

After stumbling upon the new 10,000 sq. ft. space (across the street from Ginger’s Bath), Space Solutions president Barb Larocque swallowed hard and closed two much smaller locations, gambling her business on the bigger showroom. Larocque and her team now have ample room to stock and demo a much wider range of products like garage organizers from RedLine, StoreWall and Schulte (top pic), closet systems from Germany’s Element-System (above right) and innovative Murphy beds ($3,000 – $5,000 installed) like the one below right that pulls down sideways making it perfect for basement applications where ceiling height is a challenge.

Store manager Andrew Wencer gave me a tour and pointed out an extensive array of products from shoe and laundry organizers to specialized trash and recycling bins to phone and gadget charging stations. The children’s closet organizers (left, $15 – $30), with their days of the week cubbies, are fun and colourful and wrap over standard Metro shelving units.

“When we were in the other locations we were considering cutting back on the retail side of things in order to focus more on our custom built-ins business,” says Andrew. “With this new space we’ve been able to expand both aspects and bring in a much wider range of products.”

My thanks to styleNorth reader Christie Morrison who suggested this item; Christie also happens to be a professional organizer and when someone like that gives me a tip, I pay attention.