Organize Your Home With No Storage Space
Everyone wants to have an organized home that is easy to keep tidy. Even if you live in a home with no storage space, you can get organized with a few easy tips.
Declutter All Spaces.
You can’t organize clutter. There’s no way around that! This always has to be your first step! When you have little or no storage space, you need less stuff.
By decluttering your space and reducing the number of possessions you keep, you may find you have more space than you thought and you won’t be buying storage solutions you do not need. You can keep anything, but you can’t keep everything.
Break it Down into Manageable Chunks.
Work through one room at a time or, if that feels overwhelming, pick one drawer or one surface like the top of your dresser.
Commit to a set time window you can do every day; 15 minutes a day adds up. If you find momentum, you can keep going, but you don’t have to. 15 minutes is enough.
That’s over 100 minutes a week. Your home will be a lot more tidy and organized in 100 minutes.
Sell, Donate or Trash!
Depending on their condition, your unwanted items can be sold, donated or thrown away. There are more obvious things you can let go of than you think. Once you get started, you will find duplicates, broken things you don’t want to repair and stuff you forgot you even still had.
I know. No one likes to throw things away, but sometimes the garbage is the correct solution. Your home is not a landfill.
Your home is also not a museum to display other people’s gifts for you or their memories you inherited. Let go of the guilt along with the unwanted sale item, the impulse buy or the employee appreciation clutter that ended up coming home with you.
If you don’t know how to start to organize your home with no storage space, check out this post.
Schedule Time to Haul Items Out.
It is also very important to get those unwanted items out of your home. You have made the decision and you don’t have the space to store these things anymore. At the start, you may find it necessary to take your donations away multiple times a month, but as your home gets less cluttered, it may be once a month or once every few months.
There will always be maintenance to do even after you finish your first round of decluttering. Life goes on and more stuff comes into your home. You get better at decluttering and let go of more stuff as your priorities change.
Make Decisions Now!
This is a small intentional change to keep your home decluttered, clean and organized if you especially when you are working with little to no storage space. Instead of setting things down because you aren’t sure where it goes, take a minute to think about where it belongs. If it doesn’t have a home, you need to give it a home or get rid of it.
You make one decision and that gives you some momentum. If you put that mail in the recycling bin right away, you aren’t starting a paper pile that grows large before long.
Procrastination doesn’t help you build your decision-making skills and leaves you with more to do later. Help future you! If you really can’t make the decision on it today, then set a deadline for you to decide. You can put a reminder on your phone or in your planner.
Choose Multipurpose Furniture.
If you truly have no storage space, then you will need to create that storage for yourself. Multi-purpose furniture can give you more flexibility.
Use Storage Benches.
A storage bench at your front door can hold shoes, jackets, mittens, hats, umbrellas or anything else you might need to take out the door. (This was so easy for me when my kids were in elementary school. Drop the stuff in there after school and it was ready for the next morning.)
A similar storage bench on one side of your kitchen table can double as extra space for bulky appliances, like a slow cooker, Instant-pot or rice cooker.
Find New Uses for Traditional Furniture.
You may find it helpful to find new uses for traditional furniture. Maybe you loved your grandmother’s china hutch but have no use for fancy dishes in your busy life. In your hallway, that piece might work very well as a closet for your towels, sheets and other linens.
If you need to, divide a storage unit in two. Maybe you do have dishes to display, but those drawers underneath might be used to house books, games or toys.
Closed Storage.
If you prefer closed cargo space, storage ottomans, coffee tables and end tables can all be great choices. You don’t have to use open baskets if you prefer not to see everything.
Use labels if you think that will make it easier for you. There are many options and labels are a great way to stay organized when you have no storage space!
Ultimately, if you try multi-purpose furniture that does not work for you, get rid of it and try something else. Don’t punish yourself for a purchase that didn’t work.
Use Vertical Space
Clear floor space and flat surfaces make a space look cleaner. It’s also a lot easier to sweep, vacuum or dust if you don’t need to move many things around to clean. This makes vertical storage a huge win.
Look Above the Doorway.
A shelf mounted over doorways can hold baskets to provide extra storage, hold plants to keep them away from pets or display things.
What about the Back of Doors?
The back of doors can be a much-underused space as well. Whether you use an over-the-door hanging organizer with many pockets, hooks or bars, you can use this vertical space and then close the door to keep it out of sight.
Hooks & Racks on Your Walls or Hanging from the Ceiling.
This is a good idea for more than just those spider plants and trailing pothos.
Wall hooks are a great solution, especially with kids. It’s just as easy to hang things up as to toss them on the floor. In your pantry, these hooks can keep your broom or mop off the floor but close by for those quick clean ups.
Pot rails or pot racks in the kitchen can free up space in your cabinets. Mounted wall magnets can replace bulky knife blocks on your countertops.
Utilize Under-Bed Storage.
In the absence of a linen closet, under your bed is a great place to store extra sheets, blankets and pillows. (Every parent has changed sheets on a kid’s bed during the night for a sick child. It’s nice not to have to go very far for fresh bedding.)
It is also a useful spot for shoes if you have a large collection or your off-season capsule wardrobe so your closet and dresser can be focused on your current wardrobe. (If you want to create a capsule wardrobe, there’s more on that here).
If you want to access your under-bed storage frequently, opt for an under-bed solution with wheels. If the space is too tight, you can add bed risers which fit under the feet of your bed to raise it a few inches.
(Depending on the design of the couch in your living room, this may be another candidate for under furniture storage.)
Maximize Deep Spaces.
It can be frustrating to organize when you have no storage, but equally frustrating to have ineffective storage you can’t fully use because it is too deep or too big and undefined. Don’t settle for that!
Add Accessible Options.
Deep cupboards, vanities and other deep shelves can be divided up using shelf risers and lazy Susan’s. Use the whole space and stop losing things at the back. Alternately, you could also add a stack of drawers inside the cabinet to create compartments.
Try Tension Rods for a Tall Space.
Tension rods can turn the top half of a tall cupboard into hanging space. They can also turn an unused corner between a cabinet and wall into usable space. In your laundry, this might be useful for hangers, while in a cupboard, it might be ideal for cleaning sprays.
Optimize Your Closets.
Whether you have one closet or six closets, these are a powerhouse for storage and can be easily organized no matter the width or depth.
Use Multiple Clothing Bars.
Two clothing bars may work better than one in a bedroom closet. If your clothing bar is 65” (1.65m) or more from the floor, then you could add a lower bar around 36” (0.91m) from the floor. This is an easy way to double your available hanging space.
Create Additional Shelves.
If you have a tall closet and a single shelf, you could add wire shelving inexpensively to create a second shelf above it for boxes or other items you don’t need ready access to.
Keep The Shoes Sorted.
No one wants to search for their matching shoe every time they want to leave the house. It’s the worst game when it’s a mix of adult and kids’ footwear.
A tiered shoe rack on the floor can keep shoes organized or, in a non-entry closet, can give you shelves to stack baskets, boxes or other containers.
Rotate Seasonal Items Away.
There are two types of storage in a home: the immediate storage at your fingertips and the out-of-the-way, harder-to reach kind. Make sure you can reach the things you need the most often.
For example, if you have a smaller kitchen, the roasting pan you only use for holidays does not need to be easily accessible in your kitchen all the time.
You already do this with your Christmas decorations and your summer sports equipment. It can be a really handy strategy around your whole house when you need to organize with no storage space.
Downsize oversized pieces.
If you are pressed for room, consider downsizing any oversized furniture. Furniture that is too big can crowd the room.
If you don’t need a kitchen table that seats 8 people, maybe a smaller table for four will suffice. The smaller table will leave you with more room to add any storage pieces you need.
Maybe you are holding onto this big furniture because you associate it with a different time in your life. It is not serving you now. Be realistic about what you need as you need to think practically about organizing your home with no storage space.
Define the Zones in Your Home.
Creating zones in your home is useful for more than your cleaning schedule. By defining the function of each room (or even half of a room), you understand what you need to organize in that space instead of spreading those things across your home.
This also helps you designate a home for all your possessions. When everything has a home, you don’t need to spend as much time cleaning up.
When you organize your home this way, you are less likely to have a lot of duplicates. You know what you have and don’t need to shop to bring more into your home. Controlling that influx of new things has a big impact on your home and your storage space.
Be Very Selective About How To Organize When You Have No Storage Space!
You figured out how to organize your home with no storage space and how you want to use it. Now you have to protect it!
Many of us run into problems with our storage space because we want to hold onto many things. What we have to remember is storage space is a set limit. When you go over the limit, it becomes a mess. No one wants that.
The solution is usually not more storage and more containers. You need to be selective about what you store and be honest with yourself about what is truly important. Ask yourself if it is worth giving up your valuable storage space for this item and organize your home storage accordingly.
No home has perfect storage. You do the best with what you have. Take control of your space and work toward that vision in your head of how you want your home to look. You can do this!
