Planning living room storage now for teens. What should I know?

[sellotape12]

I have 2 little boys under age four. We're in the early stages of parenting with toys and Duplo everywhere. but I want to remodel our living room (classic narrow Victorian terrace) so that it's suitable for when the family grows. We might do tall in-built cupboards. Tell me, if you have teens - what kind of storage do you need and what for? Should I be visualising future football kits, musical instruments, loads of school text books?

My teens keep everything in their rooms. Box by the door for shoes, a drawer for random wires and a tray with current books etc (just so it’s tidy rather than stored) and that’s it.

I think you are maybe meaning older primary school children than teens. Teens don't tend to store much (anything) in the living room. Primary school children will still have "toys" - think board games, jigsaws, construction toys, mountains of Lego and want to play with them in a communal space.

Depending on the house space you have overall, the main change we need to make for teens was to remodel the house so we had a downstairs space where they could hang out with friends (and where we have some seating and TV/games consoles) without kicking everyone else out the main living area. But their rooms are tiny - they could do this in bedrooms if they were big enough.

OK thanks, yes maybe it's up until teen age then. This has made me think that lots of hidden storage (one day) in their bedrooms might be useful too.

Teen don’t need storage in the living room unless their bedrooms are tiny with no space, they will just keep their stuff in their rooms.
With younger children I had a toy box on the living room and the stuff they played with went in there at the end of the day but all their other stuff was just in their bedrooms and they brought it down if they wanted to play with it. We didn’t have specific storage because the rest of the house was big enough. If it’s not then that’s different

Teens, nothing in the living room. Bit younger, maybe space for board games, though after a certain age most stuff is kept in bedrooms.

My teens treat their bedrooms like bedsits to be honest. They keep everything up there.

The only things they leave in the living room are multiple dirty cups, plates and bowls!

It is very different from the younger years where we kept things like lego and magnetised and dolls in kallax storage. We do have some shared family boardgames, card games and some retro dvds in the living room. But that is it.

Nothing stored in the sitting room, no text books as paperless school, most stuff in his bedroom however we have balls everywhere. Sports kit is the main issue, huge cricket kit, golf clubs and balls of every size everywhere 🙄