Inspiration

12 budget-friendly storage hacks

Article by Your Home and Garden

Don’t let clutter hold you back from the life you deserve. These 12 hacks will help you organise your home in an orderly manner

1 Create a mud room

If you don’t have the luxury of an actual room by the entrance that can double as storage space, your mud “room” can be as simple as a small patch of wall. Attach a few floating shelves, hang various hooks at different heights, add a hat rack and umbrella stand, pop some boxes or baskets on the shelves, and you’re done. If you have space, it’s a great place for a bench or storage ottoman that you can sit on while tying your shoelaces. The key is to ensure this area doesn’t become a catch-all for everything that comes into the home, but rather a drop zone for essentials, swapped out according to the season: keys, hats, coats, scarves, sunglasses, school bags, handbags, the dog’s lead and ball, and the shoes you wear most often. This will get the family into the habit of leaving these things by the door so they don’t clutter the rest of the house.

2 Think double-duty

Whenever you buy furniture, choose items that double as storage. If you’re looking at desks or occasional tables – whether hall, bedside, vanity or coffee – choose the one with the drawers, or with a shelf underneath that you can slide baskets onto. Buy the bed that has storage space underneath. Get the fireplace with the built-in wood box.

3 Look up

When your floor space is limited, go vertical. A ladder-style shelving unit can be cheaper and less visually bulky than a boxy one and, because the shelves vary in depth, they give options for storing and displaying all sorts of items. They’re great in a bathroom and also work well next to a bed, doubling as a nightstand – plus, they’re easy to move to different rooms as your needs change. Floating shelves, wall-mounted storage cubes or hooks can turn almost any forgotten nook into storage, while pegboards are ideal for storing jewellery and accessories, especially in a teenager’s room. Those back-of-the-door shoe organisers are great for storing kids’ toys out of sight.

4 Zone out

Large drawers – or even medium-sized ones – should never be cavernous hold-alls. Nearly every drawer in your house will serve its purpose better if you separate it into zones, and you don’t have to splurge on a fancy modular storage system. Little plastic cube trays from dollar stores are excellent for bits and pieces in bathroom drawers. Pretty little dishes or trays are ideal for jewellery. Brightly painted tin cans are just the right size for storing socks in pairs. Spice racks can work for nail polishes. Extendable bamboo cutlery trays are perfect for stationery storage in desk drawers.

5 Go paperless

We went digital on photo storage a long time ago – remember having boxes and boxes of snaps and negatives? In this era, there are very, very few documents we need to keep paper copies of. Opt to get bills, insurance documents, bank statements, catalogues, etc, on email only. Get an easy-to-use cloud back-up system with plenty of storage space, and scan or photograph other documents and receipts. Most appliance brands keep instruction manuals on their websites, so those can be binned too. Get into the habit of opening your mail while walking back from the letterbox, so you can pop anything you don’t need into the recycling bin before it makes it inside.

6 Free your bathroom

If you have limited bathroom space and an unused corner in your bedroom, a dressing table with a mirror and a drawer or two is a great option for storing and displaying perfume, make-up and jewellery. If you have teenagers, this is a great way to get some of their stuff out of the family bathroom and limit the time they spend in there. If you can’t find a good dressing table, a desk or hall table will serve the same purpose.

7 Keep it out

Stop sporting gear from coming inside. Pop a large, watertight, easily accessible storage bunker just outside your exterior door in which to store balls, bats, yoga mats and the like – but use buckets or boxes to keep things in zones. Better still, if you have a covered deck or porch, place an old armoire there to give you options for storing items of different dimensions – and it’s good for keeping the muddy football boots out of the house.

8 Children’s artworks

Anyone with a child at kindergarten or primary school understands the burden of children’s crafts and artwork. Instead of keeping those precious creations in overflowing boxes, scan or photograph each item and display them on a slideshow in a digital photo frame. Keep only your favourites for framing or the fridge.

9 Decant

In your pantry, choose airtight glass or transparent plastic storage containers, and decant as much as practical into them. Cereal boxes, for instance, are notorious for taking up more space than the product inside justifies. If you can see the food inside the container, it’s less likely to be forgotten and go to waste – plus on grocery day you can easily take a measure of what you have, especially without all that branding and packaging visually yelling at you.

10 Make a bed bunker

If you’re short on space in a bedroom, consider replacing a headboard and bedside tables with a headboard shelving unit that frames the bed, with built-in nightstands and reading lamps.

11 Cube it

A set of stackable, modular storage cubes or sturdy painted wooden crates is a smart addition if you have a new baby because you can rearrange them to suit your child’s changing needs as they grow. Stack them high into a shelving unit for baby items, arrange them in a low single layer to give your pre-schooler loads of accessible display and storage space for toys or stack
a couple to use as a bedside table. Use them as display shelves or add cloth boxes or baskets for storage. Just make sure they’re anchored to the wall if you stack them, as they can be tipping hazards.

12 On tray

An elegant tray on a kitchen island, dining or coffee table, or bathroom vanity helps to keep items contained and gives the illusion of a curated collection. In the bathroom, it makes cleaning easier because you can whip away the tray rather than removing every little bottle and knick-knack. The same goes for when it’s time to set the dining room table.