Houses without storage

[Icantfindausername]

How do people cope when houses have little storage?

We are in a house with loads of storage, little storage cupboards here and there and a full understair shoe and coat cupboard, looking for a detached which is about 150k increase and they have no storage, how do people cope?

I am literally like where do people put their stuff????

I currently live in an ex council house, it's got tonnes of storage cupboards, it's ace.

Just sold and buying a new build, it's our perfect house, but one of the things worrying me is there's no storage. Not even a landing cupboard for towels etc. We will have a spare bedroom, so I'm looking at putting storage in there along with it being for family/friends to stay I've just started watching The Home Edit show on Netflix for inspiration.

You declutter & you think of ways. For example, we don’t have anywhere for gloves/hats/scarves but I bought a nice looking wicker basket which lives in the corner of the hallway. We have a cupboard for shoes under the stairs luckily but coat hooks are in the hallway by the stairs. The hoover & iron board live in there too.
I utilise wardrobes for excess toys, they are built in so quite roomy. Our kids don’t have that many clothes so loadsa floor space for toys & teddies. Towels & bedding go in drawers under the bed. Clothes in wardrobes. Chest of drawers hold all my hair & makeup stuff. I have a box in the wardrobe filled with suncream etc). Medicine goes on the bathroom cupboard. We fully boarded our loft which is more than adequate for our excess stuff like suitcases, Christmas decs/tree, hand me down kids clothes & toys etc. & we have a shed for outdoor stuff such as bikes, paddling pool, parasol etc and we keep paint & tools in there.

I’m the opposite of hoarder though. Anything we do not need or use & it is gone. I hate stuff & clutter (which I’m having to try relax a little with children & toys 😂 I’m currently staring a giant jumperoo 😫😂). I have the essentials we need & a space to put them.

We bought storage units when we got a house with no storage, like a dresser for downstairs, and a few different drawers units for upstairs.

As we got more money and time, we built in some storage - as part of the loft conversion, large drawers into the under stairs space downstairs, 2 large bookcases in the sitting room etc.

And when we were doing the loft conversion, we needed to move things for a few months to accommodate that so got a relatively small storage unit about 5 minutes drive away. 13 years later, we still have that unit and it's now crammed with stuff. It needs a good clear out but we just don't have time to do it. But all the Christmas, Halloween, Easter decorations are there, off season clothes, camping gear, diving gear, toys that DD has grown out of (clothes have tended to go to others in the family), all sorts.

Isn’t it a shame though that most houses are built with such limited storage when clearly people value it and find it so much easier to have a couple of in-built large cupboards.

The trouble is that most home builders are not driven by these things sufficiently, but squeezing in more units of accommodation on a site and ensuring there are plenty of en-suites at the expense of storage. There was another thread recently about how Smaller new build flats lack storage AND windows! Many don’t have bathroom windows, or windows in the kitchen area and some don’t even have a window in the bedroom but an internal frosted window to another room that does have a window. Some only have 1 large or 2 smaller windows in the whole flat. It’s property developers squeezing in more units and it seems storage and windows get sacrificed.

The only properties which seemed to have been built with denying living needs in mind were the council houses up to about 1980 when they insisted on storage, certain hall sizes and minimum room sizes.

Yes, people can find ways to manage storage by buying lots of baskets, kallax units, having things under beds etc....but much of that wouldn’t be most people’s top choice and a couple of decent sized in built cupboards which could hold a large chunk of the stuff shoved under beds or into Units which aren’t always easy to access or hide away the stuff totally, would be preferred.

Often even the so-called executive new builds lack decent storage (PP mentioned having a utility room that lacked usable storage and kitchen cupboards that were shallow and only a half height cupboard under stairs) and you need to look to the really pricey massive houses to start finding properly useful storage, or an older house which has had lots of extensions or adaptations. It’s probably true what some else said about houses seeming to need to have years worth if owners adding the inbuilt storage because they simply don’t have it.....but people do value it!

It’s not all new builds .. we are in the process of buying a 4 year old house and I was pleasantly surprised by the storage. It has a very large under stairs cupboard, an internal garage with built in shelves, the back of the garage has been insulated & made into a utility space for washing, (admittedly, the garage won’t fit a car but it has a double drive) it has a fully boarded loft, wardrobes .. I’m not sure what we’ll do with all the storage 😂