Love Your Little Home: Storage Solutions

I touched on this in the very first post I wrote for this series about how I try to live a clutter-free life. I always make sure we don't have piles of stuff lying around enabling more things to just get piled on top. It's really important to try and house the things that end up just being left out. Having rooms in a house like a utility or laundry room, home office, separate living rooms and spaces where a lot of people would be able to delegate products to are not something we have. This is why it is so important for us to be on top of good storage. 

Most of the time the main things family homes want to hide or have a space for are toys, clothes, laundry, shoes, coats, hoovers, printers, ironing boards etc. For us, we have all stated and more!! 

Most of our storage solutions have been down to Rob's handy skills with wood and screws! He has built some great storage easily which helps keep everything in order around here.

Downstairs we keep all the kids shoes, coats, family scarfs, gloves and hats and things like swimming gear all in one side board. This obviously wasn't made by Rob but I did pick it up from a charity shop, sanded it down and painted it. It has one shelf running through, so the two levels fits all of the above on.

When we extended the house, Rob converted alcoves that were in the original wall into two huge cupboards. One cupboard houses our DVD player, all DVDs, all CDs, CD player, kids craft, large toys and board games. The other has anything from casserole dishes, recipe books and home trinkets to my sewing machine, the ironing board and the hoover. They are lovely and deep and by installing big shelves we have been able to store lots in them. They are full though and need a sort to get rid of things we haven't used in the last year. That is a good rule to have; not used in a year, do you need it?

Moving upstairs, most of the storage up there is for clothes. We have tried to avoid having wardrobes as they take up lots of room, so the children each have all there clothes in 3 under bed wheelie crates Rob made. They then have a chest of drawers which has socks, pants and pjs in. This also doubles up as a bedside table and is placed between the two beds.

Their room also has an original feature cupboard recessed in the wall so we have all travel bags, suitcases in there, Rob's formal suits and all our coats. We also have random things like baby shoes that I don't want to get rid of and my wedding dress.

In the spare room Rob made another under bed storage box. This one was out of some shelves that were on the wall and we took down, added a base and wheels and now use it for random old baby things like their red books, keepsakes like memory boxes and my work props.

Having things away under beds and not on desks has made a big difference to our storage habits. Being able to put things away is important, but that 'out of sight, out of mind' saying does become quite true. It does however help in being ruthless with what you keep when you eventually look in the drawers. 

Our room is a converted attic so in one of the eves Rob built a cupboard the whole length of the room, so behind where our clothes hang we have all general attic stuff like Christmas decorations, baby clothes, our childhood keepsakes and so on.

Across one of the other eves in our room, Rob built a shelf which houses 3 low boxes to the width of the room with things like towels, bedding, seasonal soft furnishings, spare bedding, sleeping bags, air mattresses, gift wrapping paraphernalia, the fancy dress trunk and other things that you collect in a home and try to hide away as you don't want to get rid. Luckily a pretty curtain helps to hide it all and made it a very easy way to make more storage.

Gosh this post seems so long, but I wanted to show how good storage works in a little family home!

Comment with any questions!

Emily