Design on My Mind: File Organization as Furniture
If loving a 168-drawer oak file cabinet is wrong, I don't want to be right.
I’m plagued by thoughts of storage.
I live in a very small apartment, which means I’m always negotiating with objects–what they hold and whether they actually earn their footprint. Dressers, in particular, have started to feel like a failed category for small spaces. They’re heavy and too dependent on stacking and rummaging.
File cabinets, on the other hand, keep showing up in the spaces I’m most drawn to–not just as storage, but as furniture.
The leather daybed perched on a base of metal file cabinets was the thing that sent me down this rabbit hole. It looks like something that belongs in an architect’s office, yet somehow feels completely at home in a living space.
While researching it for this post, I realized the piece was designed by Christine Espinal, someone I interviewed for one of the very first issues of this Substack. A small, satisfying reminder of how often the design world overlaps.
What stuck with me wasn’t just the cleverness of the piece, it was how logical it felt.
File cabinets prevail where dressers and shelves often fail, encouraging categorization instead of accumulation. A rather difficult place for things to disappear into the void.
There’s a longer lineage here. Systems like USM didn’t change to enter the home– we changed how we live. Brought into domestic spaces, they haven’t been softened or redesigned because they were already optimized: modular, flexible, and efficient.
I just placed an order for this file cabinet with the intention of using it as a dresser — it’s on backorder till April, so I’ll let you know how it works out, given the bottom drawers are quite literally file drawers.
You can also have the look minus the metal
It doesn’t need to be an actual file cabinet to give the effect. A tall stack of narrow drawers does the trick just as well. Repetition, verticality, and shallow depth do most of the work.
From Ettore Sottsass’s apartment to a kitchen I covered in Brittany.
Get the Look
1. Vintage industrial 5-drawer filing cabinet, 2. Vintage steel Flat File Coffee Table Medium Made to Order, 3. Unusual Industrial Salvage Colourful Office Metal Filing Cabinet, 4. 10 Drawer Cabinet, 5. Vintage handmade 22 Drawer Wooden Flat File Cabinet
Massive 168-Drawer Oak Parts Cabinet – leaving this one here just in case you have the goods to fill it.
Smart insight on how office systems get domesticated. The point about file cabinets encouraging categorization versus accumulation really nails why dressers feel broken for small spaces. What I find intresting is how industrial design's efficiency premium translates so cleanly to residential use without needing restyling. Had a tiny studio apartment once and those shallow drawer depths would've solved the "forgotton bottom drawer" problem where stuff just dies.
Great idea!💡