7 storage hacks for small homes with children

It’s a given that if you have children, your home is going to be full of toys, games and soft toys for a number of years. Toys are a great way to stimulate children’s brains and let their imagination run wild but a lot of toys without clever storage is a recipe for disaster! Here’s seven useful storage hacks  that we would love to implement around our home;

1. Store toys in transparent boxes for easy visibility

See through boxes can store everything: fill them with clothing, linen or shoes, and pile them on top of one another to save floor space. We’d keep the boxes containing toys at kid-level, knowing they’re going to be in and out of them all day. But, if you’re still struggling to keep on top of it all, chuck items out or consider packing them away using services like Readysteadystore.

2. Use a shoe organiser for toy storage

Cuddly toys and Barbie dolls can be stored upright in shoe organisers hung on the back of the door. You can buy these from IKEA or Argos, for example, fixing them to cupboard, bedroom and bathroom doors or anywhere else you need them. They’re great for shoes too, obviously…

3. Buy beds with storage room underneath

Beds swallow up the most space in a child’s room, which leaves you with two options: a raised bed with a play area underneath, or a low bed with storage underneath. If you opt for the latter, consider a frame like this one. You can use the pull out drawers for toys or clothes, doubling up the use of an essential piece of furniture.

4. Hang toy cars on a magnetic knife strip

This is one of those hacks we can’t believe we didn’t think of before… Fix a few magnetic knife strips to your kid’s bedroom wall and stick toys cars to them: they’ll be visible, accessible, but best of all, out from underneath your feet!

5. Keep labelled buckets on the stairs for each child

Consider this a portable storage hack: a bucket at the foot of the stairs for each child means you have something to dump their stuff in throughout the day. Better yet, ask each kid to explore the ground floor every evening, putting their belongings in the bucket. It can go upstairs with them at bedtime to return items to their proper place.

6. Add a rail under a floating shelf for a baby wardrobe

If you don’t have space for an actual wardrobe, you’ll be short on clothes storage. As baby clothing is lightweight, simply fix a rail beneath a floating bookshelf to hang their sleep suits and vests on. You can also use one of these Premium Wood Suit Hanger to keep everything tidy and easy to grab; plus, it looks super cute and organized, almost like a tiny boutique display.

7. Use Ikea’s RASKOG Cart as an organiser

This piece of furniture is cheap and cheerful, but is a great storage hack for just about anything you can imagine. Use it to put away kid’s books, arts and crafts or bath time toys. For more ideas, see what Good House Keeping would do with theirs.