I was standing in our bedroom doorway laughing last week (while pregnant with our second child, by the way, 7 months along). Laughing at nothing really. Just laughing at how two years ago this same room looked literally like this: We couldn’t even see the floor!
It makes me smile because while yes we have way more “stuff” now than we did back then – I’ve basically become a ninja at hiding it ALL away. My mum came to visit us about 18 months ago and made one of those passive aggressive “oh it’s very…lived- in, isn’t it?” type statements. She knows just how to slice me open with words like that, doesn’t she mum?!?!
Anywho, thank you mum for pointing out the obvious that I had felt like I was drowning in post bedtime exhaustion as a single parent to a toddler. My husband worked nights so bedtime routine was left completely up to me.
Folding mountains of unfolded laundry that had been sitting in a laundry basket for days mixed in with baskets of clean clothes that also needed to be put away.
After putting Amara to bed that night I literally sat on our bed surrounded by baskets of clean laundry, half-read books strewn about and who knows what else that toddlers seem to accumulate in your bedroom overnight.. It was suffocating. The room actually is kind of big, but it didn’t feel that way.
Until I realised…it wasn’t small, we just had SO MUCH stuff in it making it feel closed off. I found myself scrolling through Instagram homes/treehouse profiles filled with what seemed to be perfectly minimalist families. How did they do it?!
How did they live real life without accumulating junk? ? And then it hit me.. They weren’t living with less crap than we had… they were hiding theirs! !
Genius, I thought. Pure., genius. Our first big purchase was this IKEA ottoman storage bed.
Guys.. $450ish / £350 give or take. SO worth every penny. This bad boy lifts up thanks to some hydraulic hinges and holds AN EXTRAORDINARY amount of storage space.
Enough space to fit our winter clothes, extra blankets, a bin for Amara’s baby clothes I’m storing for when the new baby comes, and about 15 books I lied to myself I would read again. Alright. Here’s the thing.
Measure your damn ceiling before buying this. Don’t hurt yourself like I did the first week we got it because you forgot you were buying a bed that literally lifts the entire mattress up. I might have cracked my head opening ours because I forgot how high it goes.
So sue me pregnancy brain robbed me of that ability. But for everyone else DON’T FORGET TO MEASURE YOUR DAMN CEILING. We also purchased these free standing wall mounted bedside tables with hidden drawers.
They were around £85 each and at first I thought WHATEVER..some floating shelves with hidden drawers?? Sure. But the genius of these guys are these drawers are basically impossible to notice unless you’re looking for them.
Behind that flat surface are tons of drawers to shove all your bedside junk into. Our phones, our hand lotions..everything has its home hidden away in these bad boys. Everyone who visits thinks we’re just so organised.
LMFAO. We’re actually hiding it ALL away.. Searching high and low for any furniture I could find that “did double duty”.
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Love that bench at the bottom of our bed? FULL OF STORAGE space. I found that sucker on Amazon for like £65 and it stores ALL my pregnancy yoga stuff..meaning I CAN’T use the excuse that “my yoga mat is just sitting in a place I can’t reach” anymore.
PS the cushioned top is surprisingly comfortable to sit cross legged on while putting your shoes on too. And, bonus points, Amara thinks its great for stepping stool climbing up into bed (yeah, wasn’t exactly what I had in mind either…) This trick is still my fav to date. Instead of getting boring old wardrobe units we opted for these mirror-fronted storage panel units we had installed along one wall.
Not only does it make the room feel bigger and brighter –it ACTUAL IS A GIANT MIRROR- but behind each panel is ANOTHER giant storage unit hidden behind sliding glass doors with zero visible handles/hinges. Expensive? Yup.
But I think it was totally worth the little bit of extra space it gave us AND magic it created. Ever since the mirror panels I became OBSESSED with vertical storage. But unlike a lot of other methods I found these skinny cabinets (only about 8″ wide) that reached from floor to ceiling and gave you TONS of room inside to store linens, maternity clothes, and all those ‘things’ you acquire when you have kids that you don’t necessarily NEED to access every.single.day.
We took the dead space above our wardrobe and installed some pull-down stairs so we have easy access to the containers up here. Now mainly used by Liam because hovering over spaces gets harder as the baby decides to redistribute my organs..HA. Ok y’all.
Hidden Headboard Storage was like the latest and greatest thing I discovered. Instead of buying a typical bed headboard we built a super skinny shelf unit that stretched across our bed. About 10″ deep so it didn’t stick out too much from the wall.
It stores books, lamps, but also has secret storage behind false back panels for important papers/receipts/etc. To visitors it looks like we have a small library. TO ME…it holds all the random junk that used to overflow in our drawers.
Oh I learned a lot in my stealth storage journeys. Created some so covert that I forgot WHERE I put things/storage areas. Lost an entire afternoon looking for my passport before I realised I had it hiding in a secret drawer.
Nowadays I literally have a note on my phone that lists WHAT I have where. Don’t judge me. Kidding.
But it’s not super magical, but it’s WAY more practical when you’re dealing with pregnancy brain. What I finally realised is hiding storage well means knowing how you live YOUR LIFE, not how you want to live your life.
You can look at that gorgeous magazine under the window bench storage hack and think wow that would be SO neat and organise..BUT if you literally always dump stuff on your bed when you walk through the door from work…make hidden storage that works for your habits.
Don’t try and change them. I struggled with this for a long time thinking I needed to break old habits. Then I realised it was easier to embrace them and work with them.
Also when hiding stuff make sure you know where your hot and cold zones are in your house. Learned that the hard way when some leather boots of mines ended up melting in a hot storage spot we had during one of our warmer months. Don’t hide electronics in spots that don’t air flow properly either..you’ll just end up ruining them and creating expensive iPads turned paper weights.
Something I learned about hiding ALL your storage is it completely changes how you feel about your bedroom. Once everything has a place to be put away (and it’s NOT on display) your bedroom goes from constantly being a visual reminder of how much “stuff” you own to a place you actually enjoy spending time in. Also theres something satisfying about people thinking you actually DO live a minimalistic lifestyle in your bedroom when really you just own the same amount of crap as everyone else..you just got good at hiding it!
Well the second one is coming soon so I’m thankful we hid all this storage we’ll need for baby gear and crap taking over our house again. Hiding where your storage is truly exists can sometimes be one of the most honest ways you can live your family life.
