mommi - sorry for taking a while. So many times I have composed this message and ended up rambling. I'm not sure that it does really work for us but I've been having a massive cull on junk lately.
To surmise our living space. Front door onto hall. Galley kitchen, lounge and downstairs toilet.
Small bedroom (boxroom size in large houses), family bathroom and master bedroom.
Master bedroom has wall to wall fitted wardrobe. Dc's room has built in cupboard but not full height as its over the stairs.
Storage-wise. I introduced dh to ikea! We have a tall, wide and tall, narrow billy bookshelf plus short wide one with cupboard doors on along one wall in the lounge. We have a second billy cupboard on another wall. They are very good as we've been able to mix and match shelves around according to our needs. In the hall we have another cupboard at the bottom of the stairs.
Tv is on a corner unit, pushed back as far as it can go. If we could we would walk mount the tv and get rid of the unit, putting sky box etc in a cupboard with a magic eye. But unfortunately our walls are just plasterboard and wouldn't support the weight.
We have a square but extending table. So we can pull out the extension for us all to sit at the table, but make it square again for the kids to do activities at.
We recently got rid of our old coffee table. Instead we have two ikea hol box tables. We can fit all the kids board games in one and dh's paperwork in the other.
Kids room has a bunk bed and one cot! The twins share at present.
What we are going to do is swap bedrooms, so we have the smaller one. We don't do anything other than sleep and watch tv in there so it makes sense to give the children more room for them and their toys.
They have an ektorp unit with the fabric boxes as a clothes/nappy storage. In their cupboard is a double hanging rail which is height adjustable so we can see and easily reach all the hanging clothes. They have one wide, tall bookshelf which is crammed with books and stuff! Really need to prune it.
Our wardrobe has all our clothes and we have one chest of drawers for small stuff. We got the drawer dividers which have been very beneficial at keeping me organised in there.
We have a bedside two drawer unit each.
Upstairs bathroom has a lovely big cabinet - 7 shelves! It is big. But we can get everything we need in it.
Downstairs toilet houses the dirty laundry basket, ironing board, mop & bucket. Iron lives in the under sink cupboard along with spare toilet rolls. We also have a travel cot in there. We are lucky that its a reasonable size but everything is packed in tight iyswim.
Kitchen has been our toughest space. It's big enough for one to cook, but if the other is washing up at the same time you end up tripping over each other!
We've pruned the kitchen to only stuff we need. If it can't go in a cupboard or drawer, I don't want it. We have three exceptions, being the bread bin, food processor and tassimo. If the latter two were in a cupboard they wouldn't get used so I kept them out.
We fitted an extra set of shelves behind our kitchen door and had a shelf put in under the sink as it didn't have one plus shelves in our tall broom cupboard. It was wasted space having one broom and a dustpan & brush in it. Now I have extra food space.
Our under stairs space is open. We did consider making it into a cupboard but its more flexible as it is. It currently houses our downstairs cleaner (have one upstairs in the airing cupboard), a wine rack and the butchers block trolley which used to live in the kitchen. We had to buy a tumble dryer. Bottles drinks are stored in/on that along with the too big for cupboard cereal packets.
Last winter we finally had enough money to buy a shed. It has been a godsend. All the tools and things which were previously housed in various hidey holes around the house and under the stairs have gone out there. Also half the wine!
The children have two toy boxes downstairs. I rotate stuff between there and the loft. Before Christmas an awful lot of stuff got put up there to be sorted out at a later date! With the ages of dc I'm torn between keeping things I know the younger two will eventually use and getting rid to make space. I'm finding a ruthless
Streak I didn't know I had and I think that is helping make our current space work.
I think that's it! But I'm sure ill have forgotten something, or you will be reading this thinking what on earth is she on about. I'm relatively new to this decluttering lark. The dts are 10 months old and we started sinking even more rapidly when they were born.