The place I lived a few months ago I had a garage, a place to put my tools, and a large cabinet in my kitchen that I used as a pantry, and a linen closet.
The place I lived last (for a few months) did not have a garage, I used a storage unit to keep a lot of my stuff in, and had a walk in pantry.
The place I live now has no garage, no pantry, and no linen closet.
What this means is I need storage.
Personally, for the most part, as storage can be expensive, I like to buy storage that is relatively inexpensive and / or can later find use in a garage or holding gardening supplies.
I prefer the plastic or metal to the MDF / particle board wood stuff because it'll take more of a beating and last longer and is something I would actually keep / use as garage or gardening storage in the future as opposed to something that is MDF / particle board which would really just be tossed later, kind of like the old Ikea bed we threw out while moving, and a few "book shelves".
These shelves for example, I bought when I was at school in Miami as storage shelves. They have been storage shelves, book shelves, garage storage shelves, and now act as a pantry and as an extra work surface in the kitchen (forgive the mess, still unpacking). Best part is, when we eventually buy a home we can use them in the garage again.
This unit was bought as a cleaning supply and linen closet as our current place is a bit low on bathroom storage space and has an in unit washer / dryer where the linen closet used to be.
One day it'll be relegated to garage storage or gardening equipment.
If you do go with MDF / particle board type things there are some things you can do to reinforce them / increase the quality.
For these 9 cube units, which included small nails and 5 pieces of cardboard each (to create an X pattern with 4 units left open, but meant to stabilize the corners and decrease the wobble) I (with the help of my dad) installed some nice thin hardwood ply.
The benefits: 1) much more sturdy, and 2) I really like the light / dark contrast.
To do this, measure the back of the unit once assembled. Go to your favorite home improvement / lumber selling store, pick a nice piece of thin hardwood ply.
If you want to build it to last a very long time, use wood glue along the backs of the cubes in addition to screws.
If you want to be able to take it apart later, or don't care as much, you can just use screws.
It took 16 small thin flat head wood screws, one at each intersection.
Ideally you want to pre-drill your holes then you ought to use a significantly larger bit with the drill rotating in reverse to create a nice sink for the screw head to go into. Doing the sinking allows the screw to go in flush while not cracking the hardwood ply.
The MDF / particle board is still cheap though, all be it much more stable and sturdy than as would have been had I used the supplied materials. The problem is that the veneers are cheap and easily damaged in moving and so on. Still, the screws and plywood back panel added about $5 per unit so long as you have a screw driver / drill of some sort around. (Again, forgive the mess, we have a goodwill run to make.)
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