January is almost upon us, and with it comes a plethora of extra Christmas toys, gifts and clothes that we (somehow) didn’t foresee coming. Storage, space and how to make the most of it all is at the forefront of many parents’ minds at the start of the year, so we thought we’d round up our top tips on how to make your child’s storage space stretch.
1. Opt for a combination wardrobe. – Combination wardrobes are those that have both drawers and hanging space. Practicality-wise, they’re ideal for children, as they’re helpful for storing toys and trinkets in the drawers as well as hanging their clothing above. – Since their clothes aren’t as long as ours, children don’t necessarily need the full length hanging space, thus with both a rail and drawers, it makes much better use of the room available, and possibly even negates the need for a separate set of drawers.
2. Seek out multifunctional furniture. If space is at a premium in your kid’s bedroom, then looking for ways to make their furniture work harder is key. Beds that double up as desks or chill out zones are often a great way to instantly create extra space in their bedroom. If longevity is important to you, then look for beds and furniture that are built to last, using a combination of solid hardwoods and proper joints, as well as sustainably sourced timbers to help protect the planet too. A great place to start your search for inspiration is on Pinterest, where you’ll find that using a few key phrases will broaden your ideas base and get those design juices flowing. Multifunctional beds such as high sleepers and mid sleepers are both great for saving space and creating a multipurpose environment in a small room as your child gets older.
3. Invest in a trundle bed. Why waste the space under your child’s bed? Let’s face it, it’s far easier to keep track of all the toys when they’re stacked nice and orderly inside a drawer (one can but dream)… Jokes aside, trundles are a storage-fan’s best friend and here’s why. – Running the full length of the bed and the width of a single bed, they are nothing short of a giant drawer in which to stash all the stuff they rarely use (but would no doubt miss, if ever there was an utterance to donate to charity). As well as being a super handy storage drawer, our trundles double up as sleepover beds too. – Just pop a mattress in et voila – extra sleep space in an instant. If you’re looking for multipurpose trundles, our top tip would be to ensure that the trundle base is completely flat (with no slats). This means that there’s no converting required, as both functions use the same base. – It’s just a case of pop in a mattress, and they’ll soon be off to the land of nod!
4. Use the walls. Tall boy storage and wall mounted shelving are both great ways to obtain more space in a child’s room. With tall boys, the clue is in the name. They are traditionally sets of drawers that are narrow and tall, thus providing lots of smaller drawers that sit up tall against the wall. As well as being useful for clothes storage, using tall boys to store toys vertically helps keep them away from the floor too, since they’re not so easily within reach! And when it comes to shelving, look for wall mounted shelving with hooks, which means that you can also hang clothes up, too.
5. Double the deck. For siblings who share, bunk beds are their best bet when it comes to saving space in the rest of their room. If your children’s room is compact, look for bunk beds with a fixed ladder (so that it sits against the side of the bed, as opposed to coming at an angle into the bedroom). This will help save even more space. Always opt for a trundle drawer or bed underneath, to make best use of the room under there, and we’d always advise checking that the bunk bed you are looking at can be separated into two full size single beds. This means that it’s bound to last a lot longer since it can be used in guest rooms as well as the children’s room. If you’re looking for tips on how to lay out a bedroom with separated bunk beds, try positioning at least one of the beds into the corner of a bedroom. This automatically creates more floor space in the rest of the room.
For more space saving tips, be sure to check out our fortnightly Blog updates.
Happy organising! x
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