You managed to keep your home cosy and warm this winter, and you’ve enjoyed many a night by the fire with a steaming mug of hot chocolate. However, you’re already beginning to feel stressed. Christmas is just around the corner, which means you’re entire family is going to have an influx of gifts, most of which will need somewhere to stay. Where on earth are you going to put everything? You seem to have an entire house worth of extra stuff with nowhere to put it already. Worry not though, as below are a few ideas on how to get some extra storage around your home, and help to minimise clutter.
Invest In A Chest
You may have a wonderful coffee table already, but it could be taking up a lot of room and offering little in return. Why not consider replacing it with something timeless and useful. A wooden chest is not only a stylish centrepiece for your living room but an excellent way to minimise clutter by storing any items that don’t need immediate access. You could keep spare bedding in it if you have a sofa bed for guests; or perhaps, if you only have a modest DVD collection, it could reside in here. There are many styles to choose from, so you’re bound to find a good fit for your living room. An antique-style carved design in a dark wood would fit well if you have a lot of wooden furniture in your room already, and it would pair well with a Persian rug for an old-world feel. Alternatively, you could opt for a light coloured wood and keep the design simple to add a bit more of a modern feel. The choice is yours, and so is the extra storage.
Sleep Easy With An Ottoman Bed
Once you have bought one of these, you will wonder how you ever coped without it. In case you aren’t too sure, an Ottoman bed is one where the base lifts on hydraulic hinges to allow easy access to the entire floorplan of the bed. You may have storage drawers under your bed already, but an Ottoman bed will offer you masses more storage and easier access to boot. If you have a tight fit around the perimeter of your bed, you may struggle to open the drawers fully (or at all), leaving them reserved for occasional use items. Because the Ottoman bed lifts straight up, it allows easy access, meaning you can store anything from spare bedding right up to your rapidly expanding shoe collection. And it doesn’t get put under the bed and forgotten about like usual. They also provide a great place for your children to store some of their toys they can’t bear to part with, meaning you can walk into their room without fear of stepping on a Lego brick. Ottoman beds are usually slightly more expensive than the equivalent bed with storage drawers, but many owners say that the extra cost is more than worth it when you factor in the ease of use and versatility this style of bed offers.
Banish Worry Wrinkles With A Vanity Unit
Bathrooms are so easy to become cluttered because everything is used almost daily; therefore everything is left out. You may have your mirror mounted on a cupboard for some simple extra storage for things like toothpaste and mouthwash, but the key to solving your storage problems is to utilise any and all ‘dead space’. Dead space is any part of a room that is unused due to inaccessibility. For instance, underneath your sink. The amount of floor space your sink takes up is not proportional to how much storage it offers; make use of that gap between the floor and the sink by choosing from Drench’s selection of vanity units. Not only will your bathroom have a neater, more modern feel to it, but as you minimise clutter you will also have room to store some of your larger bathroom supplies, not to mention all those showers sets you’re bound to get at Christmas.
Compress Your Stress With Vacuum Storage Bags
While these may not be so useful for storing things you need access to every day, they are great for allowing you to store occasional-use items in less space. Spare bedding can take up so much room and only be used a handful of times in a year. By stowing it away in a vacuum storage bag, you leave room on your shelves and in your cupboards for so much more. If you have a particularly large clothing collection, but not a large wardrobe, you can separate your cold weather and warm weather clothing and put the half you’re not using into storage. You could keep it in the attic or even in your new Ottoman bed. If you choose to do this, however, you will have to be a decisive person. It can be tempting to unpack your entire summer wardrobe when a week of warmer weather arrives in April. However, you may be left shivering when the sun doesn’t make another appearance until July. Pack things in a logical manner and label the bags so that you know what the contents are. One thing to be wary of with this storage is that it can be easy to not take the weight into account when you put the vacuumed contents away. It may take up less room, but it still weighs the same, so don’t but an entire winter wardrobe, including overcoats, resting on a flimsy shelf. You may come back to find your shelf looks more like a boomerang.
Don’t Let It All Stack Up With Extra Shelving
It’s easy when we think of storage, to think of bigger pieces of furniture to keep everything in. Although handy, these are not the only way to approach your storage problem. As mentioned before, the key is to utilise the dead space and make it work for you. You may have a lovely sideboard or console table; it provides storage and looks elegant at the same time. However, that piece of furniture wastes a lot of space by making it unusable. We are talking, of course, about the space above it. By adding shelving or other storage on top of (or above) your sideboard, you are making use of space that would otherwise go wasted. You could display photographs or trinkets; you could store books or DVDs, you could even add a vase or house plant. The possibilities are vast, but the important thing is that you have optimised the amount of storage you have available to you. The simplest option in a situation like this would be to use something like the Box Shelving from Ikea which allows for versatility and customisation. You can also add wooden or glass doors to stop the dust settling and making your cleaning take twice as long.
There are many ways to increase storage potential and minimise clutter around your home; you may even have a few ideas yourself. The best storage solutions are ones which make use of or build upon, the available furniture you already have, by providing hidden areas to keep your possessions. This way, you can minimise clutter without having to sacrifice floor space to another piece of furniture. If you have important items or something that has sentimental value that really occupy space but really can be challenging to let go, the best thing to do to minimize its presence in your home is renting a self-storage unit. You can get a revitalized space without getting rid of these important items. Hopefully, these examples have helped calm your nerves about the incoming wave of possessions in your home (some of which might even still be there in the New Year), and leave you more prepared to tackle and enjoy all that 2018 brings your way.
