Ever since Christmas....in fact no, ever since my first child was born...I seem to have become a collector of "stuff".
I couldn't even pinpoint what I mean by "stuff"...I just know that everywhere I look in my home, there are things everywhere.
In some rooms its clothes, in some rooms its bulk-bought nappies and wipes, in some rooms it's a collection of endless baby towels and blankets....and, I'll be honest, in most rooms its toys.
I KNOW that we need to scale it all back, sort through it all and live a more Kon Mari lifestyle...and I'm trying, reeeeally I am...I donated eight whole black bin bags full of "stuff" just last week (and that came from sorting through only two of the 10 rooms that need to be sorted out!...) but these things take time and time is the one thing that I do NOT have an abundance of right now.
So what do you do when your house is driving you bonkers, your cupboards are literally bursting at the seams and you fear that if you trip over one more bloody Weeble you're going to have an actual meltdown...You buy more stuff of course!!
But stuff to help you to HIDE all of the other stuff in your house and make it look more presentable.
Yes, this month I went on a storage solution buying marathon and I came up with lots of new ways to keep our abundance of stuff looking more neat and organised (for now...) until I get a spare moment to sort through it all (which will probably be when the kids are grown up and moving out, if I'm honest)
So today I thought I would share our top storage and organisational solutions for our busy & cluttered family home!
1) Cube Storage For Toys
I'd love to have a playroom that looks like this....
Light and fresh with barely a toy in sight because everything has its nicely organised home, but let's be honest - it's never going to happen because my children have too much of everything and the collection grows each birthday and Christmas.
I can't be one of those parents who regularly donates unwanted toys to charities because there quite simply aren't any unwanted toys at the moment - my kids genuinely do play with all of there toys regularly, they go through tons of toys every day and use and love them all. They don't leave anything neglected and unplayed with for weeks so I don't feel like it's fair of me to take away things that they love purely so that I can have a less cluttered house - as much as I'd love a Homes & Gardens style clutter-free gorgeous home I feel as though they only get one childhood and it's more important to me that they're allowed to enjoy it, I can have my clutter-free home when they're grown up - so instead I need to find ways to store all of the toys. Which is challenging.
I recently bought this cube storage set from Argos as it was very similar to an Ikea one that I'd been eyeing up for years but had never been able to buy because we don't have an Ikea close enough to us and their delivery charges made it too expensive to order one - when I saw that Argos were doing these I was thrilled to finally get my hands on one!
I love the fact that the canvas storage boxes look quite fresh but are also really functional as they house pretty much all of Sailor's fiddly little baby toys, and the empty cubes are great for displaying the prettier of the kids toys too.
This set was quite a bargain too, as it was a Buy The Unit & Get The Boxes Half Price offer and I also managed to find a great discount voucher here too: https://www.myfavouritevouchercodes.co.uk/argos-voucher-codes
2) A Shoe Storage Bench
This is something I've had my eye on for ages and finally bought this month - it perfectly houses the boys shoes and slippers, my two most commonly worn pairs of shoes and boots as well as my slippers, and Jon's every day shoes.
This means that there need never be random shoes or slippers loose anywhere in the downstairs of the house, as when we come home - we sit the boys on the bench and remove the shoes right away, putting them straight into the drawers and do the same ourselves before popping our slippers on.
And the same when we're going out! It's also very handy to have a place for the boys to sit while we take their shoes on and off - I love it!
3) A Stair Tidy
This is something I've wanted for ages and I used to leave a little canvas basket on the stairs for the same purpose, but I saw these purpose-made stair baskets on Amazon recently and I just had to have one.
I don't know if this only happens in my house but everybody seems to like to leave their random bits and bobs on the stairs ready to be taken up (I tend to just take them upstairs then and there, but that task is too difficult for other members of my household apparently!) - so by the end of each day there is a collection of things like pairs of socks, a hairbrush, teddy bears and so on on the stairs...driving me mad and causing a tripping hazard!
This little basket gives the lazy so and so's a place to pop these things into, so that on our way up the stairs one of us (...me) can take the basket with us and re-home the random items.
I love it!
4) Wicker Baskets Everywhere!
I have wicker baskets in most rooms - they're so handy for keeping things in and you can get some really pretty ones too.
This one is my favourite, it's from Laura Ashley and right now I use it to store my books and magazines in my bedroom as we've yet to get around to putting up a bookshelf and my collection is ever growing!
We also have a basket in the living room for magazines, too as well as a basket in the bathroom for storing the bulk bought toilet rolls!
5)Bath Toy Scoop & Caddy!
Is it just my kids who seem to amass an endless collection of bath toys?! I don't want to sound ungrateful, of course we appreciate any gifts the kids are given for Christmas and birthdays but for the love of God PLEASE STOP BUYING THEM BATH TOYS!!!
I hate bath toys. They are probably Number 1 on my list of Things I Least Enjoy About Life As A Mother...every time I pick one up to move it out of the way it pours a load of hidden freezing cold icky bath water all down me...they are just GROSS.
So I like to A)avoid touching them as much as possible and B)Keep them out of sight as much as possible - sadly we don't have space for cupboards in the bathroom, so I bought one of these little devices!
It acts as both a scoop for retrieving said disgusting toys from the bath so that I don't have to touch them, AND stores them too - perfect!
We also have yet more wicker baskets at the side of the bath for the rest of the ever growing collection....
So those are my favorite storage solutions at the moment, if you have a large and hectic household I would love to hear about your favorite storage solutions and organisational tips too!
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