Not only does it look a mess, clutter can be a bit of a health hazard too, especially when you have kids around. Think about knives lurking at the bottom of drawers, or heavy boxes waiting to topple on toddlers. Doesn’t bear thinking about.
Here are some tips to help keep the house tidier, and safer to boot.
A Place for Everything
It may be a tired old cliché, but having designated spots for everything from boots to crayons means you can find what you want straight away without tripping over things on the way.
Drawer organisers are easy to buy and cheap, and they’re useful all round the house, not just for cutlery in the kitchen. Use them for:
- Pens, crayons and felt tips in a crafting drawer.
- Hair ties and bobbles.
- Costume or play jewellery
- Make up and brushes
You can also buy or make dividers for sock drawers, and to keep crockery or pots and pans organised.
Shelving throughout the house creates lots of storage without restricting the floor area, and is especially good for keeping glass or other breakables out of little finger’s reach.
Activity Zones within Rooms
We can’t all afford bespoke rooms for every activity. Bedrooms are all occupied by beds and people who sleep in them, and dining rooms are fully fitted out with dining furnishings. We can, however, earmark sections of a room for certain activities and take steps to make sure the kit needed for those activities stays within the boundaries.
- The office in the living room – a small computer workstation in a corner takes up little floor space. Install shelving over the desk for stationery or text books, and use an open bookcase set perpendicular to the wall as a cubicle boundary. Have some books facing each way so it looks good from either side, and pretty it up with trailing plants and photo frames or ornaments.
- Zoning children’s rooms – make a quiet reading corner with a couple of bookcases and a beanbag, or lay a play mat for building bricks or cars. Captain and cabin beds create additional space for activity zones beneath them without taking up extra floor space.
- Elsewhere in house, adopt ideas such as installing a shoe rack in the cupboard under the stairs to encourage people not to leave shoes lying around in the hallway. You could rearrange furniture in the living room to make conversation more important than watching TV, or create zones with colour or textiles that either excite the mind or promote calm.
Going Seasonal With Storage
When you’ve got more possessions than house room but you don’t want to permanently get rid of stuff, putting what you’re not using into self storage is a way of freeing up space. Some people go the seasonal route, storing summer garden furnishings and machinery over winter and winter sports kit during the summer. You could adopt the same routine with clothes if you have favourites that come out every year. Wardrobes are less crammed, and what’s in there stays in better condition.
Minimising the things kept at home makes it easier to create a safe environment too. Not only are garages and sheds less attractive as treasure troves and climbing frames to children, it’s easier to keep the inside of the house clean and sanitary when you can easily reach the corners.
An added bonus to organising home storage and clearing up some clutter is the sense of mental freedom afterwards. The home feels more airy and spacious, and is an altogether nicer place to be.
we do the seasonal storage route and its brilliant. It means the house is so much less cluttered.
Im a bit of a hoarder so storing is like my compromise!