Space-Saving Tips for New Parents: Maximising Storage in Your Home

Guest Post by Gavin Forde, Content Marketing Executive, Clever Closet

One of the biggest challenges when welcoming a new baby into your life is the amount of space you need to make. It’s about more than just setting up the baby’s room – you’ll need a lot of equipment and accessories, and somewhere to put all of them. Many parents don’t realise exactly how much room they’ll need and find themselves living among piles of clutter when the newborn finally arrives.

Fortunately, while nothing can ever truly prepare you for your firstborn (or a second, third or fourth child!), you can at least make sure you have storage solutions in place and extra space to spare. That way, you’ll be ready to adapt to whatever challenges life as the parent of a newborn throws into your path.

Here, the smart storage experts at Clever Closet present some simple ways that you can save space, to make sure you’ve got the storage capacity to accommodate everything you need.

Assign everything a place

You should have everything set up before the baby arrives so that you’re ready to go. For some people, that means having everything immediately to hand in case of emergencies, but while that’s convenient, it can also prevent you from finding a proper place to store everything. It’s easy to get used to the idea that the changing mat stays on the table with the baby powder beside it. However, if you approach everything that way when preparing for a new arrival, you can quickly clutter up your home without properly accounting for the storage space you need.

Ideally, you should find a permanent storage space for everything. After all, while your child’s needs will change over time, the space they occupy will only increase. Don’t just leave items in the baby’s room – find a storage solution. That might mean clearing out some space or moving some of your own belongings into long-term storage, but that’s a worthy sacrifice to make on behalf of your newborn.

Multipurpose furniture

There are several ways to customise how you use furniture. For example, by using a large set of drawers or cupboard in place of a changing table, you’ll have an organised system underneath in which to keep the products you need. There are many similar ideas to choose from, and you can find a lot of inspiration online.

For example, a wall-mounted shelf can be a great place to keep practical products or books, toys and decorations. It can also be customised with a rail underneath, from which you can hang baby clothes. These are ideal for quick access in the event of a mess, and take advantage of space that wouldn’t otherwise be used for anything.

There are also a lot of options – like organisers that hang over a door or storage bins that you can safely stack against the wall – that can add a little bit of extra space and give you some breathing room when it comes to sorting out your storage needs.

Install extra storage

If you want to plan long-term, or you anticipate a serious struggle to find all of the storage capacity you’re going to need, think about bigger options that could transform unused parts of your home into storage havens.

While built-in storage might seem expensive or unwieldy, that no longer needs to be the case. For example, you can now benefit from a cost-effective and convenient built-in understairs storage solution that turns the space under your staircase into a fully organised system of drawers. This is just one way to transform a space without any practical purpose, and because the staircase is usually a central point of the home, it means your baby products are easily accessible from any room.

Similar products are available for awkward spaces, so if you live in a flat or a single-storey home, there may still be options that will work for you. If you find that your storage capacity is already tight, this may be an option that is worthwhile to explore.

The final thing is to make sure that you ask questions. Anyone you know who has had a baby will have ideas, and there are a lot of resources available online. If you have specific questions about how to store particular items, look online for inspiration. You may find that other people with a similar problem have found a novel solution that will work perfectly for you. By combining these approaches into a strategy that suits your needs, you can make sure you’re as ready as you can be for the big day, and beyond.