When you have children in the home, slowly but surely their toy collections build up and up. Suddenly the home is littered with possessions, items, toys and other technology and gadgets.

It’s a nightmare when you have to clear up the floor and furniture. Sometimes there just isn’t enough time and you have to just move things out of the way. When items are dislodged or lost, that’s when tantrums come your way. What’s even worse is when an item that is fragile like handheld consoles and smartphones get stepped on because they were lying in the wrong place at the wrong time. So to get rid of the clutter you have to think tactically and make a new layer of storage available in your home.

The stealth layer

Think of your home as having two layers, the surface and what lies underneath. The layer that sits below the surface should all be about storage. To the naked eye, your home looks normal, and nothing is out of the ordinary. However, underneath your doors and flaps, you have deep crevices where you can store most things.

Think about your cupboards, wardrobes, and especially your drawers and cabinets and what shelves and doors aren’t being used. Cabinets with bottom drawers can have children’s books stored in them, as well as their toys.

A wardrobe’s floor can be used to store big boxes of toys and also as a rallying point when you’re cleaning so you can just throw them in there quickly.

Living room tricks

Just because you have children doesn’t mean you don’t have a life, and usually, the living room is where you’ll have guests come over and sit while you talk. This is where coffee tables with storage come in. They have secret compartments where you can lift the top surface where you would normally put your mugs of tea or other beverages on, and underneath there are crevices where you can store items.

We have one we currently store all the board games in and it’s a massive space saver. It doesn’t just have to be toys or extra things like notepads and pens, but you can also store candles, books, and batteries. Essentially, go wild and see what can and cannot fit inside it with the surface smoothly closed on top. Clutter has to go somewhere, and even a traditional living room furnishing can come to the rescue if needed.

Layer up

Shelves are a great idea. They don’t have to be bookshelves that are stacked on top of each other because you can spread them out. You can have one per room effectively, and place guards on the edges so that things don’t fall off. Each bedroom especially would have another layer of storage, that isn’t in the way and has items on it that are easily accessible, like keys, tissues, phones, sweets or pictures.

Clutter is almost like a little forming of bacteria itself because if left unchecked it just grows and grows. Especially when you have children, the need to have storage available anywhere in your home becomes essential, so think of layers and hidden crevices as solutions.