Under stairs cupboard - arghhhhhhh

[FALSEdichotomy]

Fellow mumsnetters, I beg you, please advise me how to organise my understairs cupboard - every time I open the door, it's contents try their best to engulf me in the hordes of crap stored in there.

Helllllp meeeeeeeeee

No idea, but if you find out let me know - I opened mine today and couldn't face sorting out so just shut the door again...

I'm with you there, gintastic

Oh how I long for order in my house - to be always guest-ready is my ultimate dream I just can't get beyond the dream though

No help from me.

Mine contains a bookcase, a pushchair, an ironing board, a freezer, a dinghy and oars, a bike rack, a camping stove, decorating equipment, some planks of wood, plus loads of small bits and bobs like craft materials and tens machines.

It isn't particularly huge but we don't have a garage or a shed. This means we have got four bikes in our kitchen and one in the hall!

I can heartily recommend binning stuff though. I did a lot of that recently and it's much easier to get at what I want now.

Ooohh you know what's in yours! I know mine has lots of pairs of shoes and a couple of old handbags, but beyond that, it's just a scary cupboard.

I long to live in a peaceful, calm, orderly house but with 3 DC's under 6, this is probably unrealistic. We have just finished building an extension as well so are in the process of reorganising the entire downstairs of the house...

No idea at all what's in mine - it's too scary to look in there properly

Our under stairs cupboard is short at one side (and houses the boiler) and full height on the other. The cupboard door is in the middle.

We put shelves all the way up the tall side with:

• space from floor to first shelf has enough height for 2 recycle boxes side by side
• next three shelves are close together and just enough height for shoes (one for ankle boots)
• next shelf up has enough space for 2 storage boxes side any side. one has things like gloves, umbrella's, ds's karate pads, footie shin guards etc. other has household type things like batteries, sellotape etc etc
• then we have another two shelves on top with more thing like dishwasher tabs, kitchen rolls, etc etc

Also have hooks on back wall for jackets and lower hooks for school bag, sports bags, handbags etc.

we did really it really cheaply and easily by buying 2 huge sheets of thick MDF from B&Q and using their cutting service to cut the shelves to the exact size we needed and then cut the spare MDF into 2" strips to use as the shelf supports (sides and back), this made the shelves really strong.

Bumping for the evening crowd am clearly desperate for tips

Ours has shelves with enough canned and dried food, plus the Hoover and cleaning products

If its not something you need easy access to either bin it or put it in the loft.

Bin the lot?

Oh,shoes live in there too, and the box with hats and gloves.

Assuming your hall is fairly empty (hah!), remove all the contents from the understairs cupboard and sort through them. Get rid of as much as you can. If the hall isn't fairly empty, do the hall instead of the cupboard as it's the hall guests see, not the cupboard. Unless they're very nosy or live like Harry Potter.

Maybe add shelves and hooks? I have hooks on the inside of the door for torches and screwdrivers.

I keep stuff there in small cardboard boxes. I boxed it up for a house move in the 1990s and decided to just keep it all that way. Labelled things like Electricals, Glue and Tape, Miscellaneous. Plus a tool box.