We often feel like we don’t have enough space in our home, no matter how many rooms we have or how big the garden outside is. If you’ve got more than one or two people in your home, you’re going to find yourself in tearing your hair out over the lack of usable space at least three times a week. Honestly, it’s quite a stressful thing we don’t consider too often, which means learning how to get creative with your storage solutions is a life lesson most of us adults need to get on board with!
A lot of us don’t have large homes to work with, and quite a few people are taking this phenomenon to the max with the idea of ‘tiny house living’. If you can’t afford to move on and up, why not just cut down on the amount of things you own, and the amount of storage you need to use? It can be a smart way to live your life, and it means you’re always going to have room to put that new pair of shoes, but it’s not for everyone!
So, in the interest of making your home a lot more usable, and in the interest of cutting down on the amount of books and boxes and cups and plates you trip over every day, here’s just a few ways you could maximise on the space in your house. There’s a lot more available than you might think!
Does your coffee table, your dinner table, your bedside table, and your patio table
Store Upwards
One of the easiest and most straightforward ways to make use of all the space in your home is to simply look up. You have walls and walls of free space, and the air above you can be easily utilised in the name of keeping your floors just a little bit cleaner! Storing upwards is going to take a bit of getting used to, to make sure you’re never banging your head or overreaching for something on a top shelf and falling over, but it’s definitely not an impossible challenge.
If you’ve got some clear walls in your home, either in your living room or your hallway, or maybe even the bedroom, it’s time to put them to good use. Move the pictures you’ve already mounted around, or make them a part of the shelving unit you’re about to attach there – you can very well be creative here! Make the photo of you and your friends from graduation day the centerpiece, and then frame some shelves around it; maybe you could even box it in and use it as a backdrop for those china miniatures your mother got for you. It’s a touch of personality, even in the madness that is trying to organise your living space, and there’s going to be plenty of room for them in your home from now on.
You could use some tall and thin bookshelves, to put behind the sofa in the living room, and make an entire wall of books or other odd bits and bobs. It’s certainly going to be a focal point for anyone entering the room – feature walls really can be made out of anything you know. Similarly, you could forego buying and putting together some lumbering cases and instead just mount shelf after shelf on top of each other, either as some kind of rope ladder, or just by measuring a few inches of space between each one.
Then put some wall and ceiling hooks to liberal use. They can be drilled into the wall or simply stuck there, or just screwed into the ceiling above. Anything can be hung off of these, including living greenery planters, or just plastic storage boxes you keep all your favorite DVDs in.
Double Up on Your Furniture Use
If you’ve got a small home to live in, and you’ve got barely any room to breathe, let alone sit down and spread out in, it’s time to turn to adaptable furniture. This is the kind of furniture that has more than one use to it, like a bench you can both sit on and use as a table. It really can be as simple as that, if you’ve not got much money to spare in the name of outfitting your home all over again.
In the living room, or the bedroom, you could very well do away with the side tables and the coffee tables, and put another seat in there, or just give yourself some more floor room. Bedside tables alone can be quite bulky, and if you’ve got a bed that’s quite low to the floor, you can very well just put your nighttime necessities right next to you on the carpet. It’ll make grabbing your glasses in the morning a lot easier – you won’t have any chance to knock them on the floor, on the other side where you can’t reach, after pressing the snooze on your alarm for the third time!
At the same time, adaptable furniture often has hidden storage compartments to them. Beds, especially, are good at doubling up in this way. Either you can lift the mattress up to reveal a lot of packed out boxes beneath, or you’ve got a couple of draws built into the frame of the bed. If you have a metal frame, and there’s little wiggle room because of the sturdiness of this kind of material, why not think about investing in a different bed that has more use to it?
Think About Micro Extensions
OK, let’s be real here: not all of us are going to have the room to put more and more things in, even if they’re acting as storage solutions or double use furniture pieces. No, some of us have absolutely no room to work with, and need a way or two to add some more space as soon as possible! We can have a clear out, of course, but after the second or third time of doing this, it’s clear the system of storage we currently have just isn’t working out.
And that’s where micro extensions can come in. Plenty of home builders out there offer creative solutions for using up the awkward corners in your home, and it’s an undeniable fact that a dishwasher can be fitted into any sized kitchen known to man. If you talk to a professional, you’re going to have plenty of options on your plate, and a lot of workable ideas to run with.
For example, you could add just a small and simple porch onto your front door way. Get the door itself removed for the time being, hire a builder to brick in a little entranceway with a small roof to boot, and then put the door back. Voila! You have yourself a porch, and somewhere to store your dirty boots. It can be done in just a couple of days! Or you could take the sloped ceiling that falls over your kitchen and cut into it, making a little alcove that can be used as a new cupboard to put your dishes or your packaged foods in, or to just light up with candles to create a more cosy and comfortable atmosphere.
Say you’re lucky enough to own a garage as part of your home; how do you add more space? You could simply take the car out and be done with it, or you could start mounting your bikes on hooks at the top of the wall… Or you could add some french doors onto the front or the side of the garage, so in the summer, you have a semi-patio to put all your outdoor and BBQ furniture on. In the grand scheme of home renovations and extensions, a set of new doors is cheap and easy, and adds a lot more to the space you have to work with.
So, Have You Got Maximizing Power?
A lot of us have, without even realising it. After all, when you’ve been living in houses your whole life, and have a lot of experience with making sure all of your items can fit, you’re going to be a dab hand at this practice by now. So let’s make sure you’re realising your power here; you own your home, so don’t let it own you!
Make sure you have the floor room to move quickly and easily throughout your doors and your halls, and make sure you always have a space available if you need to pick something up and put it out of the way. If you’ve got a family on the way, or a pet that loves chewing on the things they find and running off with them, this needs to become a habit! It’s just good practice to get yourself living in a cleaning and storage system that adapts to the space you’re in, no matter how much or how little that space really is.
