Your home should be your haven of relaxation, where you can leave all your worries behind. However too much clutter can all too often cause feelings of stress, and even anxiety. In this article, we go room-by-room to explore how the right storage solutions can help you turn a cluttered home into an inviting sanctuary.

Is entering your home akin to executing a well-choreographed dance?

You make your entrance slowly, gracefully pushing the door open so it doesn’t slam into the overfilled mail stand. Walk demi-pointe past the mountain of haphazard shoes. Do a sudden twirl to prevent your bag from knocking over the precariously positioned books stacked waist high from the floor. Extend your foot to gently lob that past-its-best satsuma back into its corner. Enter your room, take a bow, and dump everything you’re carrying onto the pile of clothes beside you.

The perils of clutter

Even if your hallway is nowhere near as nightmarish as this, having any amount of clutter in the house can cause havoc with your mental wellbeing¹. A cluttered home can lead to stress, anxiety and a constant feeling of ‘overwhelm’ – not to mention the imminent physical dangers you might face navigating a clutter-strewn room.

If you find yourself unable to relax for movie night on the sofa, if you knock everything off your bedside table when you reach for your alarm in the morning, or if you baulk at the prospect of inviting friends over, then it might be time to give your home a much-needed overhaul.

By cutting clutter and optimising storage, you can transform your home into a restful sanctuary you’ll love spending time in.

A cosy living room

As one of the main hang-out spots in your home, the living room can end up becoming a clutter magnet simply because that’s where you tend to spend the most time. You’re snuggled on the sofa enjoying some escapist TV and suddenly even placing the remote back in its place seems like too much effort.

Before long, your living room is more Armageddon than chillout heaven. But fret not – with the right storage, you can curb the clutter catastrophe before it spills out into other rooms.

Contain your clutter in one organised spot with a beautiful sideboard placed against one wall of your sitting room. With useful drawers for easy organisation, and plenty of space to display your favourite photos or a stunning vase, sideboards are spacious yet inconspicuous.

Perfect for additional storage, your sideboard can also come in handy to hide any bits and bobs that can’t be assigned anywhere else. A dedicated junk drawer can help give even the most obscure item a home. And with everything assigned a specific storage spot, you’ll feel more relaxed as you prepare for a cosy night in.

Dining in splendour

Sideboards are equally at home in the dining room or kitchen. The convenient drawers are perfect for holding cutlery and utensils, while the top can be used as a coffee or drinks station.

If you have plenty of plates or need to store larger items, you may need to think bigger. A great way to show off beautiful, coordinated dinnerware is through the use of display cabinets or an open shelving unit.

While open shelving units allow you to proudly display your most impressive kitchenware, display cabinets add further design touches while keeping your treasured items secure and dust-free.  Both enhance your décor while keeping your dining room or kitchen beautifully organised.

A bedtime oasis

We spend almost third of our lives sleeping². Add to that getting ready for the day, surfing the web, watching TV or winding down at night, and a considerable proportion of our lives is spent in our bedrooms.

If your bedroom is cluttered, busy and unwelcoming, it can be difficult to unwind properly. As you attempt to focus on the latest app or your new favourite show, your brain keeps guiding your eye to that jumbled-up jewellery you’ve been meaning to sort, or the freshly-washed laundry you’ve yet to fold.

Investing in some bedside cabinets can create handy storage space to help you stay organised. As well as providing plenty of drawer or cupboard space to hold all the items cluttering up your room, well-organised bedside cabinets are also a sensible spot to place bedtime reading, your phone or glass of water before bed.

If you have limited room, a small bedside table can still give you enough breathing space to sort whatever is most pressing. Wardrobes with sliding or bi-fold doors are ideal for smaller rooms, and can store a surprising amount of stuff. And, if there’s room, a three-drawer bedroom chest or larger chest of drawers can hold all those t-shirts you’ve been storing in your ‘floordrobe’.

Once you’ve found a place for everything, add some finishing touches to transform your bedroom into a Zen-like sanctuary. Dim your nightlight, light your favourite aromatherapy candle and play some soothing music to help you drift contently off to sleep.

Storage with you in mind

With the perfect mix of cabinets, bedside tables and shelving units, you can create versatile storage that perfectly complements every room of your home. From that modern, metal cabinet for your minimalistic home to a wooden bedside table to go with a rustic headboard, well chosen storage solutions make all the difference.

Free of all that mess and the anxiety that goes along with it, you might feel like dancing around your newly clutter-free home. And with so much space suddenly available, you could even perfect your pirouette as you wait for those friends you’ve finally invited over. 

¹ https://digest.bps.org.uk/2016/04/29/the-psychological-case-for-decluttering-your-home/
² http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2017/5/5/hey-professor-light-sleep/