Plans for Christmas and New Year celebrations go hand in hand, but we don’t often think about where all the new stuff and decorations will go when it’s all over.
If creating more space at home is on your resolutions list, or just your wish list, we have a few tips to help you master the art of streamlined living once and for all.
Forward Planning
How you organise your home in preparation for Christmas can help towards staying organised afterwards. When you’re expecting lots of guests, whether just for a few hours or overnight, it’s a good idea to rearrange your living space.
Consider which furniture items you could temporarily move to provide more floor area. Candidates include anything that can’t be a useful table or a seat:
- Bookcases
- Floor lamps
- Pet beds
- Hobby or fitness gear
- Decorative items such as vases or family photographs on surfaces
- Delicate items you want to protect from damage
Use the spaces you create by removing photos or ornaments for seasonal decorations like cards, candles, advents, nativity scenes, and your tree. Replace accent lighting from floor lamps by hanging light garlands around the walls. The floor area you create provides room for extra seating such as floor cushions for kids, or extra chairs for adults. Or even just space for everyone to move around.
Instead of placing those items into a different room, consider renting a storage room. There are all sizes available in local self storage facilities, so there’s bound to be something suitable.
Seasonal Storage All Year Round
Going forward into the new year, lots of people operate a rotational storage system to help keep their homes clutter-free and practical.
During the winter months, all the summer gear is safely stowed in self storage. This includes garden furnishings and equipment and summer clothing and all the other things we don’t use over winter.
Then as the seasons turn, items in store get swapped out for winter items we won’t need for a while. This can extend from snow shovels and winter sports gear to oversized baking and roasting trays used at Christmas.
Living in a smaller house has many advantages, but space isn’t one of them. Finding alternative storage for needed items that aren’t being used gives the best of both worlds all year round.
Rethinking How You Use Space
Maximise space at home with furnishings that double as storage. There is a huge choice in just about every style whether you like traditional or modern.
When you’re refreshing things after the Christmas and New Year rush, look out for lift-top coffee tables, end tables with shelves or drawers, storage beds to maximise linen and towel storage, and fitted shelves everywhere.
You can also clear a surprising amount of space in bedrooms by organising your closet. Maybe fit an extra rail, add a small craft drawer tower in the base, fix hooks and a rail behind the door, or pop a shoe rack at the bottom. Mornings are a lot less fraught when you can quickly grab the day’s clothes.
Spare Rooms and Home Working
While it’s true that homes seem to be getting smaller these days, it’s also true that we demand far more of them than we used too. What with working from home and taking up new hobbies to relief day to day stresses, a quiet, creative area is becoming a must for lots of us.
Turning spare room into a hobby room or home office is a way to keep tools and equipment out of the rest of the house, reducing clutter and making it easier to find stuff when you need it.
If you worry about not having a spare bed for overnight guests, it’s simple to organise the room, so you can switch back. You could, for instance, have a pop-up work desk you can fold down against the wall, making space for a bed. Guest furnishings not in use all the time can be safely stowed in your local self storage room. Alternatively, and if you have the space, a daybed or sofa bed might be an alternative. People manage to do amazing things with small spaces. The tiny house movement is filled with inspiration for storage at home for all the everyday items, and for larger necessities not in constant use, self storage gives the best of both worlds.
