I love my house but there’s no getting away from the fact that we have hardly any storage space which causes a problem when you have a family of four who seem to have a lot of ‘stuff’.
The house itself isn’t tiny although it is on the small side – we bought a smaller house than we could have afforded at the time because we wanted to have money to spend on having fun with the kids. I know that’s totally the opposite to what they say you should do but the difference in mortgage payments between this and the larger house we almost bought was quite a lot and we really wanted to just enjoy the kids while they were young without having to worry about money.
We’ve talked about moving but genuinely don’t see the need for a much larger house and we genuinely love where we live. We have great neighbours, everything we need close by and we’re just a few minutes drive from the beach so we’ve decided that we’re not going anywhere. We’re just going to make the best of what we already have and do what we can to make storage wherever we can….
Under sink units for more storage
We’ve only just bought a couple of these and I am so impressed at the extra storage they’ve given us in the main bathroom and our ensuite. They were such a bargain at £30 each from Argos and I love them because they use what was essentially just dead space. They’re great for storing all of our toiletries and now both upstairs bathrooms look so much better.
Think about a bed with storage
We used to have a bed with drawers underneath to store things in but now we’ve gone one step better and we have a bed where the mattress lifts up and it’s just one big storage area underneath. We have all sorts in there and it seems to hold so much more than when we had four big drawers.
Use your space wisely
Between our bedroom and the bathroom there was a small space on the landing that I knew a bookcase would fit into if only I could find one that wasn’t just plain and boring which would fit perfectly in the gap. For years, I had the measurements of the gap in my purse ready to pounce on a piece of furniture if I found the right one and rather than buy just any piece of furniture I patiently waited until the right one came along. I didn’t want a boring flatpack unit because I try to only add furniture to the house that I love because we’re limited to what we can have spacewise. It was actually Mr Frugal who found the perfect bookshelf and I have been in love with it since he bought it for me as a Birthday present last year. It fits the gap perfectly and is very ‘me’.
It might have taken me a while but I’m now filling that dead space with a book shelf which holds some much loved photos and other things that mean a lot to me. Even the clock on there is storage as the front opens to store our extensive screwdriver collection.
Over door hooks
This saves so much space and we all have them on the back of our doors for dressing gowns, jackets and scarves. We also have a big one in the downstairs bathroom for all of our coats so they’re tidy and in one place.
Consider fitted wardrobes for extra storage in the bedroom
Things like fitted wardrobes can be amazing if you can custom design them to your own specifications. We have a space in our bedroom that would be perfect for fitted wardrobes and I know that if I got them fitted along the whole wall then I could make much better use of the space! I saw some great bedroom designs on Pinterest which got me started with how I’d like ours to look and before you know it, I have a whole board of ideas. I got lots of inspiration from the Urban Wardrobes site about how we could use the space much better than we currently do and even Miss Frugal has her eyes on a fitted wardrobe for her room now after she walked past me wile I was browsing.
Have shelves in cupboards
My food cupboard has a mini shelving unit like this one at the back of it so I can double layer my tins. Obviously this is not a picture of my food cupboards – you can’t see the back of my food cupboard at the moment so no point taking a photo to show you the shelves at the back!
Baskets, Baskets and more baskets
The Dining area of our house is the one area that I don’t love but it definitely packs in a LOT more storage. I got rid of our dresser until a couple of years ago and replaced it with some pretty boring dark wood shelving which are the only things in the house that are there purely because they need to be there rather than because I liked the look of them. They hold lots of baskets that I bought on offer at Morrisons and the baskets give me so much storage that I can almost forgive the shelves for being so boring. I love baskets because I can just fling stuff in them and they don’t need to look neat. 😉 I use the larger ones for things like holding all of our crisps and snacks, spare school supplies for the kids, tupperware and food storage, everything blender related, first aid stuff and photography bits and bobs whereas the smaller ones are for things like swimming goggles and gym cards, tape measures and crafty stuff, tools, sewing stuff and pegs. All things that can look cluttered but need to be close enough at hand to find them in a hurry.
Make things look pretty enough to display
I have a really cute wire shelving unit in the kitchen and it’s filled with vintage tins and pretty glass jars. On here I store things that would have taken up space in the cupboard at one point so it’s saving space as well as looking pretty.
Multi purpose furniture
I have a table in the living room that is a hollow cube which I use to store my magazines and notepads. It tucks in the corner and as well as providing more storage in the living room, I can either use it as a table or it can be a spare seat if needed.
Seasonal storage
We have a couple of big hard plastic suitcases which we use for storage in the garage. We have one which is filled with Summer Holiday clothes and shoes and another that’s got things like Christmas jumpers and onesies in there. Even just taking out a few clothes from the wardrobe at certain times of the year makes more space for us.
Don’t forget the tops of wardrobes and other units
We have some lovely wicker hamper baskets on top of our wardrobes and on the boring cupboards in the dining room to make more storage. The ones in the dining room have all of my random silicone bake wear in one and my laminator in the other and the ones on top of the wardrobes are hiding places for presents.
Organise the toys with cube storage
When our two has masses of toys we used to have cube storage and each cube had a box or a basket in them for a particular type of toy. For example, Lego would go in one, Littlest Pet Shop in another and so on and so on. This gave us more storage because it was more organised and was also much easier to keep tidy and they quickly learned the one box away before another one is brought out rule.
Do you have any great more storage ideas to share?
{This post was originally published last year but I’ve updated it to include lots of new ideas that I’ve had for storage as it’s something that we’re really trying to focus on this year!}
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