Intentionally reducing your living space to go tiny means you have to get creative in how you store, display, and organize the items that made the cut when you purged your belongings. Making the most of your vertical space can be the key to creating an efficient tiny living area.
Brynn Burger has ideas to help keep your tiny home clutter free in the New Year!
For Living Spaces:
Throw Your Mail In The Air
For our mail, we use a wooden desk caddy that was meant to set on a desk and hold pens and pencils. Since it durable and has several compartments, we use it for most all of the things that would normally just get tossed onto a table or counter. This is beautiful for 2 reasons: 1. It saves on the valuable real estate of our counters. 2. It looks decorative and it light enough to hang with 3D Adhesive Velcro.
Elevated Storage Drawers
We bought a couple of the inexpensive, plastic three-drawer bins and we built a loft shelf above our children’s area where we use them to store workbooks, school supplies, paper, and more. They are great for organizing and storing things that need to stay out of the reach of kiddos.
Use Shelves Like A Mantle
When it comes to decorating for the holidays, you can use the wooden framing around a window or below a wall-mounted TV as a makeshift fireplace mantle and still decorate for each season. It brightens a home and keeps things festive for kids, all while providing ample shelving for books or picture frames.
Creative Art Hanging
We hang our kids’ artwork on a piece of painted pallet wood with clothespins on it. This looks like intentional farmhouse wall décor and make it super easy to change things out as they make new creations. Another option is to hang clipboards and change out artwork in the same manner as the clothespins.
For the Bathroom:
Hanging Help
Take it back to the idea of a wall mounted fruit basket for storing bath towels, we use shower caddies in the shower for soap and washcloths and also hanging inside of our cabinets to store everything from bottled spices to foil and boxes of sandwich baggies. These over-the-door hanging options are genius!
Wine Racks in the Bathroom
While we love wine racks in the kitchen, they can also be an efficient storage option for extra bath towels, washcloths, and even magazines.
For the Kitchen:
Magnetize It
From spice racks to cutting knives, hair accessories and school supplies, most tiny dwellers hang about 40% of the items in their homes. In the kitchen, magnetic metal of a stove hood or on a refrigerator is perfect for mounting spices and a cooking timer. A heavy-duty magnetic strip can tackle sharp cutting knives. In the bathroom, hair accessories and jewelry hang by magnets. And magnetic spice tins double in the kids’ area to hang googly eyes, puff balls, and small school supplies from the outside of a metal rolling utility cart.
Use Hanging Baskets
These are so versatile, can be decorative, and are incredible forms of storage and organization. Metal hanging baskets can house everything from hair dryers and brushes to soaps and toilet paper in a master bath and they can be an alternative to an end table beside a couch to hold a drink, phone, and remote control. In the bedrooms, they hold books for kids and a phone, chapstick, and book for the adults. We love to use them for fruit, veggies, and easy grab-and-go snacks for the family in the kitchen.
Hang Your Drinkware
When you are living on wheels, you have to be mindful of the storage of glassware. A wall-mounted rack for coffee mugs and wine glasses can keep everything hung up, secure, and act as a major space-saver in cupboards or on countertops.
When your interior space is reduced, it doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice, but it does mean you need to get creative. These space-saving tips can help make your tiny living dreams an efficient reality.