In today’s day and age where house prices are growing fast than your waistline at Christmas, but wages just aren’t managing to keep up, it’s very easy to find yourself in a home that is a little bit smaller than you would like. Aside from building an extension or having a huge clear out to declutter your home, there seems to be little you can do to remedy this other than soldiering on. Well, here is a solution to your problems. Below are four simple way to help increase your storage space and stop yourself feeling like an overstocked second-hand store.
Vacuum storage
This invention is the saving grace of families everywhere. Simply place items in the bag, use your vacuum to suck out all the air and voila! You have a huge amount of stuff taking up a tiny amount of space. This is great to store away bulky spare bedding, duvets and pillows that aren’t in constant use. However, this is also great if you are one of those people that can’t seem to stop their wardrobe from expanding. You can separate your clothes into winter and summer collections (or rough approximations thereof) and simply store the collection you aren’t using in the attic or garage. The downside to using this method for your collection of clothes is that you have to fully commit to the change in wardrobe. It would be very frustrating to change to your summer wardrobe following a warm, sunny spell in late April, only for the sun to disappear again until August.
Furniture
Furniture takes up a lot of room around the home, so why not make it earn its keep by transforming it into useable storage. Consider an ottoman bed that has easy access storage for bedding, clothes, and shoes. A wooden chest or blanket box makes an ideal coffee table, whilst also offering a large amount of storage for DVDs, CDs, or anything else you could think of. If you have a spare room, you could also consider throwing out the bed and replacing it with a sofabed. Sofabeds can create extra storage by freeing up valuable floor space for further storage solutions. Having an abundance of floor space can also make a small room feel less cluttered, allowing for a feeling of openness and space to flow around the home.
Utilise the height of a room
When we think of storage, it can be easy to think about bulky items of furniture that have a large plan. Stop seeing the space in your room as a two-dimensional aspect, and start looking at it in three-dimensions. Once a piece of furniture has taken up room on the floor, the space above it becomes effectively useless. Put this ‘dead space’ to good use by transforming it into further storage. If you have a sideboard or console table in your hallway or your living room, consider adding shelving above it to avoid the room becoming ‘bottom heavy’. If you have a bookcase, ensure that it reaches all the way to the ceiling. Many people think having furniture that touches the ceiling can make a room feel smaller and oppressive, but in fact, the effect is the exact opposite. Not only does it lengthen a room, making it seem taller, but it allows for further storage and eliminates the need to get the ladder out to do the dusting.
Smart storage solutions
There is a huge market for smart storage solutions at the moment, and there is so much on offer for so many different products. Traditional wardrobe designs can be very inefficient. The shelves are often too deep to be able to realistically stack your clothes on them, the hanger rails often leave a huge amount of empty space at the top and bottom, and of course, they leave a sizeable gap between their tops and the ceiling. Having a customised wardrobe allows you to ensure that there is storage that meets your requirements. So if you hang a lot of your clothes up, but require very little drawer space, you can have a wardrobe that offers that. You can also choose modular furniture that allows you to build the shape and size for shelving and cupboard storage that fits your home best, allowing you to put that empty space under the stairs to good use.
There you have it, four simple ways to maximise the amount of storage available in your home, meaning that you can go back to the days when your home was big enough to meet your requirements, and you can stop fretting about having to buy a new house just to store your shoe collection.
*This is a collaborative post*