Clever Ideas For Better Organisation – Ten Sneaky Storage Ideas

It All Starts with Good Intentions

Nearly everybody dreams of getting rid of all the clutter in the home – or at least organising it all! Even the world’s worst hoarders probably have some deep down plan to arrange or manage all the bits and pieces that fill their homes (garages and attics and back yards etc.). In a perfect world, we wouldn’t have any clutter in our homes at all. However, even if we try to be very strict about following William Morris’s dictum of having nothing in our homes that we do not “know to be useful or believe to be beautiful”, we can still end up with clutter in our homes. All those things we believe to be beautiful, such as children’s finger paintings with “I love you, Mummy” on them, can really get in the way.

Having Space for Everything is Vital

Even household odds and ends that we use regularly tend to become cluttered if they don’t have a proper home for them to go in. Sometimes, the only difference between clutter and order is just a case of having a place for everything and everything in its place. Getting everything in its place is simply a matter of self-discipline and good habits; having a place for everything can be another matter entirely. If you can’t think where you’re going to put whatever you keep tripping over, you can never get it properly organised.

Don’t Have the Space? Don’t Buy it!

Most homes today are smaller than they used to be, and we can’t (or at least shouldn’t) devote entire rooms to bric-a-brac or storage. This means that we have to be cunning about the space we do have available. Of course, being ruthless and getting rid of the stuff we don’t use or need is essential, but clever storage is also vital for a well-run home.

So how about you try a few of these clever ideas?

Smart Storage Solutions

1. The average single bed takes up 1.73 square metres of floor space. A queen-sized bed takes up 3.09 square metres. This is quite a lot of storage space! Some beds come with storage drawers for blankets and the like built into them (they are a right pain in the neck to move when you’re shifting house or rearranging the furniture, but that’s another story). If your bed doesn’t have built-in drawers, use cardboard boxes or other containers to store blankets, personal memorabilia like old love letters, sports equipment and the like. If you’re really pressed for space in older children’s rooms, consider loft beds. These are like bunk beds without the bottom bunk. Sleeping in a high bed has the cool factor and a lot of extra storage space becomes vacant underneath.
2. Having a rack on the wall where you can hang kitchen implements isn’t just something to show off your impressive range of knives. The wall is a great place to hang frequently used items that just won’t fit inside drawers (e.g. rolling pins). The same goes for dried herbs, dried chilli peppers and strings of onions: this “traditional farmhouse” touch had a very practical origin that needs to be re-adopted.
3. Take a tip from Tolkien’s Hobbit: “lots and lots of pegs for hats and coats”. Don’t just keep these beside the front door for the use of visitors; have them in every room. And you can hang more than just coats and hats on hooks. If you have children, have some lower down hooks for schoolbags where children can reach.
4. The old workshop trick of gluing or nailing screw-top glass jar lids, then screwing on the matching jars filled with little bits and pieces isn’t just for workshops. Try it in the pantry for storing pasta, raisins and spices, or in the home office for storing paper clips, flash drives and other small bits of stationery.
5. Sick of piles of plastic shopping bags in your cupboards and pantries? Either do without them and stick with reusable shopping bags (good luck with that – some shops just hand them out before you can tell them not to bother), or use an old tissue box to store them in. It’s amazing how many of them you can fit in there!
6. Corral children’s school books (or your own home office files) in a dish rack. You’ve got all those handy slots to put letters and other files in, while the cutlery compartment makes a great place to put pens and flash drives.
7. Old pizza boxes (regular size pizza, not mini pizza) can store hundreds of sheets of A4 paper, stack easily on top of each other and take up less space than ringbinders. Make sure they’re clean so you don’t get your insurance policy documents smeared with tomato sauce and/or smelling of pepperoni.
8. Pegboards are another storage solution that deserves to come in from the workshop and into the home. You don’t have to do the traditional silhouette thing to show what goes where (although this could be good in a children’s room) and pegboards can be painted in any colour that suits your décor. They work well in laundries, bedrooms and kitchens.
9. Just because a particular organising tool has been designed for a particular room doesn’t mean that you have to use it like that. You can use office stationery in the kitchen and/or bedroom, kitchen storage tools in the office or bathroom, etc. Similarly, shoe organisers aren’t just for shoes, and bookshelves aren’t just for books.
10. If you’re a bit of a handyperson, install shelves around the walls. This gives a living room something of an old-fashioned touch and is very practical. The traditional use for shelves like these is books and ornaments, but there’s no reason why you can’t store other items there (your DVD collection? pot plants? serving dishes?).

One final word of warning, though: if you’re trying to eliminate clutter from your home, don’t hang on to potential storage containers (pizza boxes, glass jars, etc.) just in case you need them to store something in one of these days. This just leads to worse clutter!