Surprising Ways That You're Probably Wasting Space At Home
There isn't anyone out there who wouldn't like at least a little more space at home. After all, even people living in huge homes can end up feeling a little bit cramped at times. For a lot of people, the solution is just to move to a bigger home. This can cause problems for a couple of reasons. For one thing, that's definitely easier said than done! After all, if you're living in a particular sized home, it's probably because that's the home that you and your family can currently afford at the current moment. That's not to say that you won't be earning more in the future, but it's hardly a good idea to hold out until then to start feeling comfortable in your home. The other problem is that the square footage of your home might not actually be the real issue. In fact, there are plenty of ways that you might be wasting space in your home without even realising it. Luckily, many of these things can be fixed by simply being aware of them and taking a few simple steps to avoid them. With that in mind, here are some things that you might be doing to waste space in your home, and what you can do to avoid them.
Bad layouts
One of the most common ways in which people end up wasting space in their homes is actually one of the toughest to spot as well. When you're arranging a room, you probably have a pretty clear idea of what the "obvious" solution is. Most of the time people tend to lay out a room in pretty obvious ways. The couch will be in the centre of the living room, and everything will be pointed at the TV, which will be in one corner of the room. Or perhaps you'll have your bed sticking out into the centre of your bedroom with a closet at the foot of it. Sure, these can be pretty useful and convenient ways of arranging a room, but just because they're the most immediately obvious doesn't mean that they're necessarily the best. Why not take another look at the rooms in your home and think about different ways of laying them out. Instead of having it in the centre of the room, why not keep the couch pushed up against a wall? That way you're going to be in a much better position to maximise the floor space when it's not so divided. Sure, you're going to be further away from the TV but who says that the TV needs to be the focal point of the living room all of the time? Why not point your chairs and couches at each other instead? That way you're not only using the space more interestingly, but you're encouraging people to talk to each other.
Poor storage solutions
There are few things that can encroach on a room's overall size like having stuff strewn all over the floor. Not only is your home simply going to be more untidy but you're going to have significantly less space to move around. If you want to improve the size of your rooms, get creative with your storage solutions. Instead of taking up valuable space with large bookcases, why not use things like floating bookshelves? These not only allow you to free up far more floor space than you might expect but they can also function as some really interesting decorations around the house. The same goes for things like toys in your kid's rooms. Plenty of shelving units and closets come with spaces for stacking toy chests. That way you can have things hidden away when they're not being used. Giving your child more room to play overall and making it much easier for them to keep their room tidy.
Having too much stuff
Do you ever walk into a room in someone's home and it just feels cramped? You can't quite put your finger on why but, no matter how large the room is, it just feels like you don't have that much space to move around. The next time that you start feeling like that, look at just how much stuff they have. You'll likely find that their home is crowded and cluttered with more junk than any person could ever need. Then, take that idea and apply it to your own home. Look at the shelves and surfaces. How much space is there? While you might think that space in your home is inherently a waste, the reality is that it can be an incredibly positive force in your home. If you fill up every inch of space on every surface and shelf in your home, then you're not going to feel like you have any room to breathe. By keeping things just a bit more minimal, it's going to add a whole new dimension of space to any room. Keep your mementoes in a box in the attic, that way you can change them up from time to time, so you don't get bored.
Appliances
A lot of the time people think about the appliances in their home as a part of the general shape and floor space of the property. This is usually because they come with the house and are in pretty static positions. After all, you can't move your radiator or washing machine into different parts of a room. However, just because you can't move them around doesn't mean that you have to just put up with how much space they take up. 3 column radiators are a fantastic way to decrease the amount of space that they take up. Rather than having them take up horizontal space that you might want to use, have them take up vertical space that is just going to end up going to waste anyway. Not only that but it will help to turn something functional like a radiator into something more visually striking which can help to make a room feel more interesting overall.
Furniture
A lot of people treat furniture in the same way that they think about many of their other possessions. It's just something that you put into your house that exists somewhat separately from it. In reality, furniture occupies a slightly stranger space since it's sort of halfway between being a possession and a piece of the layout of your home as a whole. After all, furniture is often very large, so if it doesn't fit with your home as a whole, then it's going to cause problems. Sure, you might want a huge couch that can fit all of your friends and family at once, but if it's going to eat up half of the living room, it might not be the best idea.
Of course, even if you do fix all of these things, there's no guarantee that your home is going to suddenly feel like a mansion. In reality, the best thing that you can do is to start thinking about your home more creatively. Rather than just trying to maximise the space at every opportunity, think about ways in which you can try and use that space as effectively as possible. By looking at your home from that kind of different perspective, it can often become much easier to deal with things that might have once seemed unavoidable problems. Even the tiniest home can work for just about anyone as long as you understand how to use the space that you have, rather than constantly trying to get more and more space that you're just going to waste in the same way as before.
Outdoors
Don't forget your garden! We all flock to the outside when it's sunny but that's a small proportion of the year. For the rest of the time our gardens remain largely un-used. But fear not, if you have the funds then why not splash out and build a separate space for lounging, entertaining, studying or working out?
Since the Covid-19 pandemic the demand for garden rooms has sky-rocketed and today they're one of the most sought-after major home improvements. They're often less expensive than a conservatory or extension and generally don't require the usual permissions. Some go beyond the norm of building a single room and build an entire micro-home, referred to as a "granny annexe" to create a dedicated space for family and friends.