There’s nothing worse than moving into a new place and feeling like you are squeezed in because you just don’t seem to have the storage full of your stuff. If every time you move to a new house, this is how you’re feeling, you’re probably not imagining things. Over the past few years, the size of an apartment has shrunk down by at least 8%. And freshly built studios are almost 20% smaller than they were ten years ago.
Homes are getting smaller, land is getting smaller and we’re all feeling the squeeze because our stuff just doesn’t fit anymore. You want to be able to enjoy the things that you have without having to feel so squashed, so it might be worth thinking about how you can maximise your storage to ensure that you’re getting the absolute best from your house. Whether you’re looking at hacks like adding underbed storage or you choose to install a set of garage shelves to be able to organise the garage a little more, there are plenty of ways that you can add storage to your house and finally be able to have a place for all of your things. Smart storage and a little bit of forward thinking are really going to go a long way when it comes to making sure that you can make your space feel bigger and better organised.Let’s take a look at exactly what you could be doing to help your home to thrive.
- Make sure your beds have drawers. One of the things that you want in your bedroom is a comfortable bed, but you could always double it up as a storage space too. The clutter in your bedroom should not ever be untenable. You should be able to move around the space without having to slide yourself sideways to get around boxes. If you currently have a lovely bed, swap it out for one with drawers or a similarly designed platform bed. You’ll immediately gain a ton of storage space underneath your bed space without having to worry about trying to get everything into the room. You’ll just know it will have a place to go and everything will fit.
- Use clear boxes to store your shoes. Sometimes it means so much more to have clear boxes as your stories rather than cardboard ones or opaque ones. Clear boxes allow you to still see your stuff, so it’s a little hack where you’ll still have boxes everywhere, but at least you’ll be able to see what’s inside them. It will keep your stuff neatly organised and make it easy to find your favourite pair so that you’re not sitting in a pile of 50 pairs of shoes, trying to find the right ones.
- Invest in magnetic racks in the kitchen. One of the best inventions has been the magnetic rack that you can stick to the inside of your kitchen cupboard doors or your pantry. Even if you’re living in a massive house, counter space always is at a premium for appliances rather than for utensils. One of the easiest solutions is to put your utensils onto magnetic racks. You can clear up the clutter on the counters or drawers and utilise the wall space. Some people do like to put them in pantries or on the inside of cupboard doors to be able to hide them away, but you can still just have them on display outside their cupboard doors if you’d like.
- Add hampers to the back of doors. There are so many laundry hacks out there and one of them is to erect 2 pieces of wood on the back of the door in the laundry room and hook on your hampers so that you have space for your laundry baskets to grow. A hamper is a good way to keep your dirty laundry in one place. If the average hamper takes up about as much space as a side table, it’s worth again utilising your vertical space on the back of the door or even the wall so that you can hang your hampers out of the way. Not only will you feel less cluttered because you’ll be able to see more of the floor, but you’ll have somewhere for all of the dirty clothes to go and somewhere for the clean clothes to go as you take it back up to the other rooms.
- Put trash cans under kitchen and bathroom cabinets. Trash cans in the bathroom and the kitchen are a necessary thing to have, but they don’t always look great. An oversized garbage can can really take up some space as well, so mount some tracks inside of the kitchen cabinet and opt for a rolling bin instead. You can do the same thing in your bathroom and put your bathroom bins underneath the sink cabinet. This way you can still make sure you’re getting rid of your rubbish, but you just don’t have to have a bin on display
- Maximise pegboards for wall storage. Pegboards to your walls can really help you to make some extra room in your smaller space. Everything from purses to scarves to coat racks to even stationary can be hung on these racks, and you’ll find that you’ve got a lot more counter space whichever room you’re in. This is so important if you want to make sure that you are freeing up the space that you can see when you immediately walk into the room. There’s nothing worse than a closet door that’s cluttered with scarves when you could just be hanging these up.
- Put your fruits and vegetables in baskets. If you’ve got some space on your counters that is currently being taken up by fruit bowls and vegetable bowls, then it’s time to make sure that you are hanging these on the wall. Clear off some space on the counter and in the fridge by making sure that you have a hanging basket in your kitchen. You can save some of your produce like bananas, avocados and citrus fruits that don’t always hold up as well in the fridge. You’ll then also gain back some of that space that you need on your countertops for either appliances or for cooking.
- Hang towel rails. Hanging towel rails in the bathrooms is a great idea, but you also need to hang one in the kitchen for your hand towels and tea towels, and you can also use towel bars for your scarves and belts. You could hang it on the inside of the wardrobe or on the wall of your bedroom, but it gets all of those scarves and belts off the floor, off the shoe racks, and somewhere that they can be stored correctly. It’s a really good way to make sure that you feel like you’ve got more space.
- Upgrade your garage storage. Earlier on we mentioned the wall shelves for your garage and it’s absolutely a great idea. Christmas decorations, car pieces, pets, infantry, there’s so many things that go in the garage when they could be stored elsewhere. By having shelves erected, you can create plastic crates of things and label them so you can have Christmas decorations, with somewhere for the Christmas tree to go on the top shelf. You could have tools, you could have paint, it doesn’t matter. You can get it stored this way. You’re going to free up the garage space and still have space for your car.
- Go for hidden storage in your lounge. Coffee tables and ottomans are great for extra storage if you have a window seat that could be lifted up for extra storage underneath for pillows and other upholstery that you use in the winter. And you could even use rolling drawers for under sofas and TV units that will help you to store books and other things. Again that utilises as much wall space as possible. By putting brackets on the walls and hanging shelves, this will help you to organise books, DVD’s and any other paraphernalia from your past, including ornaments, photos and more. The more that you use hidden storage and wall storage, the better you’ll feel.
- Use floating shelves. If you don’t want to have cabinets everywhere, floating shelves are a great idea. You can have these all down the hallway of wherever it is that you’re living, around every room in the house if you want to, and even in the bathrooms. Floating shelves are great as a feature because they don’t take up any space and they provide a really stylish solution. You can even put all of these floating shelves above head level so you don’t even have to walk into them and they are there on display for everybody to see.
Your home is going to fare far better when you have the right storage room to room. You could probably think of 100 different ways to add storage to your house and improve your space.
