Storage Solutions

[MeadowHay]

Not property/ DIY really, wasn't sure where to put this.

What are your best storage solutions? Or where can I go to find them? We live in a 3-bedroomed terrace with two reception rooms, there's me, DH, and toddler DC. We have lived here for over a yr and we still have boxes of mostly books in the loft from when we moved house. Now DC has even more toys post-Xmas and we don't know where to put everything. Altho it's 3 bed, two of the bedrooms are v small, little more than box rooms. One bedroom is DC's and the other is a spare bedroom (we have a wardrobe and sofa bed in there, we have friends come to stay quite often). I don't feel like we have any more floor space really for storage units but we need storage solutions for books, toys, and ornaments. Any innovative (and affordable - we are a low-income family) ideas?

Ikea, major decluttering or a bigger house with more storage.

Get rid of the sofa be and put a highish frame bed base in with a mattress. There's room for a lot of storage boxes under a bed like that.. Keep the spare bed made up and have a large throw over it so it stays clean - saves having to store bedding. Only have one lot of bedding for each bed - needs tumble drying but again saves storage. Shelves above loo are good for storing towels. Use pillowcases for storing lego and other small pieced toys, put hooks up in child's bedroom to store them off the floor.

Look on Pinterest for other ideas

less stuff, I'm afraid. Be ruthless with the kid clutter, especially with a toddler who won't notice and won't play with most of it. (the standard round here is tiny gardens with six different play vehicles - ridiculous!)

I love books but sadly you have to recognise limits. Cull seriously, get books from the library or e-library so they vanish after reading.

ornaments are for display. If you have more than you can display, get rid.

I don't actually think we have much stuff though.. ok maybe quite a lot of books? But not of the other things. When I compare how much stuff we have compared to other people/families we know I think we have a lot less than most, particularly e.g. toys for our DC. She doesn't even have many toys but I still don't feel like I know where to put them!

Moving not an option atm would have thought that would have gone without saying. We don't own our house for one.

We also don't own much bedding. We have a summer duvet and a winter duvet, a double duvet and I think two single duvets and a few extra pillows. But we often have more than one person/couple stay with us so we use all of that bedding at once when they stay and then we wash it all. There are no extra spares. We often keep out-of-season bedding in the loft anyway so not taking up space.

Getting rid of sofa bed and replacing with a high bes potentially an option that I hadn't thought about before tbh and it's bit broken anyway. So will deffo think about that. Sofa bed is an IKEA one that has some in-built storage anyway tho, we keep bedding in there atm.

Will deffo try and get rid of some books but doubt we will feel able to part with many tbh. Many of them are also academic books which me and DH may both need to use again in future as we are both building careers.

I think we are just gonna end up putting loads and loads of shelves on walls I guess for books. Still dunno about toy storage...pillow cases on hooks sounds cool idea.

DC has quite a few soft toys (nothing compared to some of th other families we know tho!) that she's never shown more than a fleeting interest in. The only reason I have kept them at all is because I thought when she gets older and starts to do more pretend play, she may like them for that? Or do you think I should just get rid?

You need to use the height of the rooms.

Are all your guests going to be able to climb up and sleep in a high sleeper, presumably you have relatively high ceilings so they could sit up in bed?

There's no magic solution with books. Declutter them and then tall IKEA Billy. How many will you read again, really? Better to have the best one third of them out than have them all packed away.

Measure your books and figure out whether you can squeeze an extra shelf in. Could you get rid of the spare room wardrobe, in favour of bookshelves? What's in that wardrobe currently? Guests will be ok with a small hanging rail or some hooks on the wall or back of the door.

Other than that it comes down to where you have space in your house. Have you got an airing cupboard space that could be better used? Do you have space on the landing or in the bathroom for an extra cupboard? Do you have built in wardrobes that could be improved with some built in shelves or a chest of drawers stood inside? Our smallest room is fab because the whole of the wall opposite the window has been turned into a massive wardrobe. We don't need any other storage in there. In some houses you can rig up a bookshelf up high , above the doorframe, and run it along a wall or two. But IMO bookshelves add a lot of visual noise.

When we lived in a small 3 bed we had a decent sized dining room. We had the dining table, a sideboard, a wall of bookshelves and all the kids' toys in there. The toys were limited to what would fit on, or in, a 4x2 kallax - I was quite strict. They also had a little floor standing tub each in their rooms and we had a storage chest thing full of toys instead of a coffee table.

Toy hammock for any soft toys, they go in the corner of the room hanging from ceiling.

Board games on book shelves, you can also boot the units like ikea trofast to the wall to give some higher up storage, or use the tops of wardrobes.

Agree about maximising vertical space. You could put book shelves above door frames, something like this?

Excuse the mess, but we got the algot system of wall mounted boxes from IKEA. It wasn't massively expensive but allowed us to take some of the storage off the floor which was a win.

Is it an old house with chimney breast and alcoves either side? We got more space by putting Ikea wardrobe in each alcove then building a bookcase in front of the chimney between the wardrobes - if that sounds like it might be relevant I can post pic. Also the kids bed went up high so that we gained the space underneath. If the loft is easy to access you could buy some big storage boxes and put sets of toys in them then cycle through them so you swap one in one out when you feel like a change?

Make use of the second reception room.

Big storage unit, smaller dining table. Use it as a playroom essentially.

Thanks all! Taking note. The toy hammocks a relative has, I just worry about them getting super dusty up there?! Hope that doesn't make me sound like a prin, I'm actually not v house proud, I promise

Our bedroom is two alcoves + chimney breast, yeah - it's a really big bedroom. We have a wardrobe in each alcove and then our double bed is in the middle, headboard against chimney breast. However the rest of the house has been modified so we don't have alcoves like that in any other room.

Book shelves around door frames v cool but perhaps a bit busy hmm will think about it.

Dining room is our main playroom, yes. We only have quite a small dining table. Trofast looks like good idea. Thinking of taking the changing table down as DD is only changed there first thing in the morning now anyway as she doesn't tolerate it at all other than that. Our changing table is in dining room so that will free up some space for a tall unit like Trofast or something for storage of maybe toys and/or board games or whatever. We have board games on a big bookshelf atm but it looks v messy so would like to move them to an alternative solution if poss and replace that shelf with books.

Think we need another plug socket put in DD's bedroom too, will speak to our LL about that (a relative so hopefully can be arranged - how much would that cost? Clueless on that front). We just saw the IKEA toddler wardrobe that is high up with draws underneath, that would be ideal for DD's bedroom. But we didn't see it when we moved in and we bought the normal toddler wardrobe, doh. Which we have only affixed to the wall about two months ago so deffo not changing that lol. Work has been soooo slow with our house, so hard to find time with toddler and work. And she's a light sleeper so hardly can be doing DIY whilst she naps/sleeps grr.

Cycling toys probs good idea too. Loft is accessible, there's a ladder attached, and its a decent size.

The spare room wardrobe probs was a bad idea with hindsight, our relative LL thought it a good idea but we mostly use it for towels etc so a cabinet or something probs more useful. However we are on a budget and it's only about a year old, thinking those storage boxes you can hang on the rail might help us make better use of it and keep it tidy.

This thread has given me so many good ideas already ta! Think need trip to IKEA soon...

You could make very good use of the height of your rooms

If you don't like the idea of shelves above the doors then get plain cupboards to go up there

Instead of bedroom or living room cupboards look at kitchen ones which are strong too

They are designed to go up high and look the same from outside as other rooms iyswim

That is what we had in our old house and Dh is going to do that in our spare room along the ceiling above the door height

Could you fit shelves or storage boxes inside the wardrobe in spare room if you don't want to change it

If you have understates storage area you can convert it to separate cupboards look on pininterest

*understairs

Out of 365 days how many days are actually taken up by people staying?

Could this spare room be utilised as a storage room?

Or use one entire wall of the dining room for Ikea Kallax, floor to ceiling if possible and hide a lot of stuff away in there.

Billy bookcases come tall and with plain dooes to hide the 'busyness'