Share your home storage hacks with IKEA - £300 IKEA voucher to be won

[JustineBMumsnet]

Despite their size, children manage to take up more space in a home than many parents ever bargain for, making ample storage space an even more precious commodity than it was before children for many parents. With this in mind, IKEA would like to hear about the ways you make the most out of your storage spaces and how it’s made your life easier.

Here’s what IKEA has to say: “The house can often feel crowded after the festive period but a few small changes can make a big difference. Adding hooks and storage solutions at a lower height gives children the freedom to tidy things up by themselves. Remember children love spending time where you are so a small kitchen trolley can make a perfect mobile Art & Craft or play station that can be moved tidied away quickly.”

Maybe you have a creative way for storing lunchboxes or tips for fitting more into cupboards without them overflowing? Perhaps you swear by hangers on doors, boxes inside drawers or folding your clothes in a specific way? How have you used IKEA furniture or accessories to make the most of your space?

Whatever your home storage hacks, share them on the thread below to be entered into a prize draw where one MNer will win a £300 IKEA voucher.

Thanks and good luck!

MNHQ

Insight Terms and Conditions apply

Nothing exciting but I’m obsessed with Kallaxes, I’d have them all over every wall of the house if I could!

The biggest one for me is making sure the space under beds are used. We have the ikea white child bed with storage drawers and storage boxes under our bed too. All my shoes are under our bed and all the bed sets all in a matching pillowcase under my DD's bed.

My household consists of two adults (parents) and children under 6.

I have seen that most families love Kallax. I do like it but I can imagine things falling behind and so it's not the furniture I choose to buy. That said, families need more awareness of the other great ranges available which is perfect for families!

Pax/Komplement
This isn't just a wardrobe. This can be used as a wardrobe plus storage plus bookshelf and anything you want it to be. I've found it so amazing and so space-saving. We have it in our room and also the children's room.
It not only stores current clothes but future clothes. You can edit the cupboard as much as you want. A slide out hanger is great for things like hats and bags and scarves. It's such a genius idea.
We then use a combination of hanging rails and drawers. They are so big that they fit all their clothes in them with two spare drawers which stores their arts and crafts and toys.

That said, Stuva is a wonderful product range too. They are especially good for early years. Their drawers are fantastic and make a wonderful bedside table but them four drawers to store their bits and bobs and toys such as Lego. Stuva is customisable too and you can display their toys on the top too.

The reason why I personally love the Pax and Stuva range is because with children, things can get messy quickly and for me, displaying all the toys means more opportunity for mess and then getting tired cleaning up. With Stuva and Pax, you can store all of this on shelves too but you then put a door on and nothing can be seen. Just a plain white door or whatever design or colour you choose. The room looks tidy in seconds! And every item of clothing, toy and craft has its own place in these storage solutions which means even the little children know where things go and easily put their toys away without asking a hundred times.

We’ve used one of the ikea cube shelving units as a room divider as we’ve moved into an open plan house, it’s great as some cubes have the canvas boxes in which are massive enough to store blankets, books, crafting supplies, random stuff etc and other cubes we’ve just put a few ornaments so light still comes though into the sectioned off area, it’s turned one large room with unusable space into 2 rooms with set purposes and we love it!! So my best tip is sometimes furniture doesn’t have to go right up against a wall? It can serve 2 purposes and become a wall itself :)

I recently got rid on my kitchen bin, it was a in a cupboard and took up loads of space. I now have two carrier bags, one for recycling and one for other rubbish.

I've put tins in the cupboard instead, I stack tins of the same thing on top of each other and put them in a row with similar things so two tins of beans on top of each other next to kidney beans.

We bought a massive wardrobe from Ikea for DS when he was about 2 and it's brilliant because all his clothes are on the rail and all his big boxed toys and puzzles fit across the bottom. He also chose a combination of different coloured metal lockers that can be moved and stacked differently, and they really brighten up the room.

Another one for kallax! In every room. Holds so much and still looks nice. Brilliant for misc kids toys

As pp have said - Kallax units wherever we can cram them in!

Also making sure there are specific places for the bits and pieces that are needed daily and likely to be dropped on the floor- hooks for coats and bags, shoe racks etc.

We have a lot of trofast in DSs room - smaller wall mounted and larger floor units. The drawers are great for all his Lego models and he just takes the drawer out, plays with them and it goes straight back in again.
We have a tiny hallway so we got wall hanging shoe storage - everyone has their own box, and there’s one for bags, so there’s nothing on the floor.
Best thing we got was a bean bag style storage bag for soft toys. My kids have millions, and they go in the bag, it’s zipped up and they use it as a bean bag. Stops the teddies getting dusty too!

Plastic storage boxes from Ikea for toys. I used to take some away and only keep one box out so that the toys were rediscovered again and again. Now they are older I use them for clothes the kids will grow into. See through so I can read the labels - age 9 etc.

Not so much a storage hack as a space-making hack: we have Ikea's wooden bunk bed in our son's boxroom bedroom, he sleeps on the bottom bunk and has the top bunk as his play space! We've put a hard platform and then a mix of rug / old cot mattress / artificial grass to give him a variety of surfaces; and we've used a stepped storage unit (unfortunately not Ikea's as it wasn't the right size) to give him step access up to the top bunk.

A medium sized basket by the door is great for keeping kids shoes and wellies in until their feet get bigger.

Have remembered another use for trofast. We have a 3 section trofast in the utility. Each section has one big drawer and one tray in. 3 kids, one section each. Hat, gloves etc in the tray, shoes on the drawer, their coat hook on the wall above their section.

• Kallax, Pax and Malm. In fact I'm thinking of calling my triplets after them

I try not to collect clutter and I do believe in "A place for everything, everything has its place". If I can put a shelf, box, or a hook somewhere then I will.

We're another household with lots of Kallax units- two big ones in the playroom, one medium sized in each of the children's bedrooms and one in the office. They're so useful.
Our other trick is we have two stackable storage boxes in the back of the cupboard under the stairs. In the bottom one we keep summer stuff (wetsuits, picnic rugs, sandals) throughout the winter, and winter stuff (winter boots, coats, hats, gloves, scarves etc) throughout the winter. The top box we keep without the lid on and it has all the bags for the children's various clubs pre- packed (e.g. swimming, gym, ballet, tap) so that we can just grab the right bags each day.

Drawers under all the beds - invisible storage for bedding!

I have put all my jumpers and cardigans into plastic tubs with lids on the shelf at the top of my built-in wardrobe, sorted by colour.

The shelf is so high it was impossible to keep them in neat piles when they were loose and they kept falling out. Now I can fit more in and they are so much neater.

We use the big pax wardrobes in the playroom

One for games, one for jigsaws and miscellaneous toys, photos and craft stuff and one for stationery etc

Dvd and book storage in the playroom is all ikea, 4 bedrooms all with pax wardrobes

Ds2 had a alcove which would have cost 4k+ to get a fitted wardrobe, the pax fits perfectly

I came up with a lovely Ikea hack that I'm quite proud of

I have Pax wardrobes with a corner unit. The corner unit is shallower than the standard Pax, so they stand forward of the wall and there's a wasted space behind them. I bought a bookcase in the same colour as the interior of the Pax, and the depth of the gap, and fitted it to the back of the corner unit. I cut out a piece of the back panel of the corner unit so that I can access the shelves from within it, and fixed that piece onto the part of the shelf unit that sticks into the triangular gap in the corner.

Now I have secret shelves behind my hanging dresses, where I can hide presents. Don't tell the dc!

Stuva/fritids wardrobe with wire basket, hanging space and drawers and kallax unit for the kids bedroom. Can't beat them especially the kallax.
My kitchen cupboards are full of Variera shelf inserts as space is on the small side. They are better than the wire ones as no stuff will fall through the gaps.

We love IKEA for all our storage solutions!

We used nordli drawers for the base of my daughters bed .. she can now access her clothes herself and it saves the usually wasted under bed space

We have a bed with kallax underneath so we can use the drona boxes for storage

Our hallway is small but with 4 children we needed a decent amount of shoe storage ...kallax to the rescue again! We can fit numerous pairs inside each drona box and the top of the unit doubles as a side- board type area

The boys room has trofast storage which is brilliant for adaptability! Each bucket has a different type of toy in which keeps them organised.

We are currently planning an ikea kitchen and the storage solutions offered are endless! We cant wait to purchase!

Kallax! Kallaxes everywhere!

Learn how to fold clothes effectively and stick to it!

Not many rooms in my house without a kallax or malm chest of drawers. Great for kids jigsaws, shoes, tv stand.... also a big fan of their VARIERA box for kitchen cupboard. Great to keep stock cubes, spice mixes etc together.

Dimpa storage bags with all of the spare duvets, pillows and bedding in them under my bed. Frees up drawers and makes changing the beds faster. Also all of the Duplo in one big transparent storage box and all of the Lego in another. Gets rid of all of the boxes and makes it easier for the children to find the pieces they're looking for without tipping it all over the floor!