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Creating Secret Baby Storage in the Living Room
You may have set out determined at first to keep all baby clutter in the nursery, but having nappies, changing mats and baby entertainment to hand in various areas around the house becomes a practicality for most of us, if we don’t want to spend our lives lugging a baby up and down stairs or into other rooms.
Whether you have a living room, a lounge, a front room or a drawing room – even more if you live in a studio flat or bedsit - it’s the room that most visitors come into as well as being the most used room in the house. Keeping it tidy when there’s a baby around is a challenge, so here at easyStorage we’ve put together a list of ways to create hidden storage space in your living space, (after you've baby proofed it that is!)
1. Ottomans
Ottomans are fabulous double/triple purpose items of furniture, acting as not only storage but also tables or stools. And in the right fabrics/colours may even add a stylish touch to a room.
2. TV Stand
If your TV is on a stand rather than on the wall, you may want to take a good look. Firstly would a wall mount release up space, but if not, do you have a shelving style one? By replacing this with a closed in cupboard type stand, you hide the ‘knitting’ (cables), reduce the amount of surfaces needing dusting, and give yourself extra storage space.
3. Toy box
Without a toy box, the floor will inevitably serve this purpose.
Depending on your views on decorating or making baby’s presence felt, storage might be a children’s toybox, basket, decorative box. We saw a fabulous ‘ali baba’ type basket. Just remember that once baby starts to crawl or toddle, you don’t want something that will topple over on them or trap their fingers when they attempt to rescue their toy(s).
Toy boxes are also great for encouraging children to put things away as they grow old enough to tidy up behind themselves. They also make it super easy when it comes to packing toys for moving house.
4. Coffee table storage
Coffee tables with lift up lids (not suggested for regular use – little fingers get trapped easily). Coffee tables with cupboard space. Fabulous old boxes than can double as coffee tables. These are just some of the ways that coffee tables can serve a double purpose.
(Nesting tables can be used to create extra room, but consider little fingers being trapped before going along this route.)
5. Shelving
Look up! Shelves may gather extra dust but are also oh so useful for creating extra storage space.
If you have the space for bookshelves, they too are a viable option – just remember to make sure they won’t topple onto a baby using them to pull up to standing.
6. Drawers
Chests of drawers can make unusual features for a living room, and provide fabulous storage spaces.
7. Sideboards
Sideboards are often forgotten, holding onto things that will never again see the light of day. A brutal declutter of a sideboard can release oodles of space. That old fashioned china set given to you by a great aunt, the bottle of liquor that tasted great on holiday but didn’t travel well, the ornament you spent a fortune on but didn’t quite sit right: dispose of them, sell them, rehome them - whatever you do, rehome them and create space for things you do use and need. Like baby paraphernalia.
Which leads us nicely to….
8. Boxes for organisation
Boxes, baskets, caddies are all great ways of not only creating and increasing storage space inside all of the spaces you’ve just created, and for keeping shelves tidy and organised, but also help organise things so that they are accessible.
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