What's the perfect storage solution? I'm Rachel Papworth, from Green and Tidy, the
online Professional Organiser. I liberate busy people like you from the shackles
of clutter and disorganisation, to give you peace of mind and enable you to
achieve whatever you set your heart on, and if there's one question I get asked
again and again and again, it's what storage should I buy? So I'm
here to tell you about five storage solutions you can't live without. And the
first one is shoe storage. Oh shoes can be a nightmare, can't they? You get all
different shapes and sizes, we seem to have quite a lot of them, and we end up
with them all in a jumble in the bottom of our wardrobes and rooke through them
trying to find them, so here's how I keep my shoes. This is my genuine, actual shoe
storage cupboard. I did consider tidying it up even further before showing it to
you and then I thought, 'No. I'm gonna show you the actual thing'. So the boxes don't
all match. Not everything's in a box: some things are sitting on top of
the boxes - that tends to be the things I use most often -
but everything's accessible, I can see what I've got and, best of all,
I can shut the doors!
And in my utility room, I also have this shoe cubby. I use this for
sports shoes and cycling shoes and the kind of shoes I grab when I'm on my way
out to play badminton, and you can see my wellington boots also sit on top of it.
I love this shoe cubby. Before I had this, I used to have a shoe rack which sat in
that corner there. Basically the shoes never stayed on it: they all just fell
off (I wish I'd taken a photo of it before I got rid of it) and so I used to
just hurl the shoes at it basically, and not even worry that they weren't
sitting on it, and they'd lie in that corner in a pile, and now look how neat
and tidy they are! If you're really obsessive, you can even label the shelves.
Look. But that's one step too far, even for an organising geek like me!
That's just a couple of ideas. There are loads of shoe storage solutions on the
internet. You could get something that hangs on the back of the door with pockets
that you tuck the shoes into. You can get cabinets where the door folds down and
you tuck the shoes into the cabinet. You can get ottomans.
You can even get a shoe wheel. It's like a mini ferris wheel and you tuck the
shoes around it. So get on the internet and have a look and find a shoe storage
system that's gonna work for you. Number two: random bits of broken plastic
and things that have come off things and you don't know what they are. What do you
do with those things?! Here's what I use. You can see these are
takeaway tubs and I've labeled this one "Last year" and this one "This year" and,
throughout the year whenever I find some random bit of plastic or a loose screw
or something, and I don't know what it belongs to, I pop it into "This year" and, at the end of
the year, I dump everything in "Last year" in the bin and I move everything
from "This year" to "Last year" and I start again because I figure, if I
haven't needed it in a year, it's not important and I can let it go. Number
three: a laundry bin. Well of course everybody needs a laundry bin but I
want to show you my laundry bin because I really, really love it! Here's my laundry bin. Of
course, it doesn't normally sit in the middle of the room. I've just pulled it
out to show you. It's got a lid so you don't have to look at everything that's in it
all the time and it's got three compartments. I use them for darks, lights
and then anything that has to be handled specially, like hand washing has to be
handled differently, it goes in that one, and what I love about it is two things.
First, when I come to do the laundry, I don't have to sort it. I can just grab
everything out of whichever compartment and whack it straight in the washing machine
and, second, I can see how much laundry there is to do before having to go
through it all. I don't have to get it all out, sort it into piles and then think, "Oh
there's not enough really there to do a lights wash so I'm not going to do that".
I can see straight away how much I've got in each category. I love it!
Number four is a filing cabinet. I do not know how anybody lives without a filing
cabinet. Even in our so called paperless society, it seems we still have a lot of
paper to store. Whether you work for yourself, like I do, or you're just storing
personal admin, a filing cabinet is essential. Here's my filing cabinet. If
you've done my awesome Declutter Paper and Paperwork video course
(shameless plug there), you will have seen this before. You might not need a four-
drawer cabinet. I keep all my business paperwork (because I work for myself, from
home) in it and also all my personal admin, and actually it's not even full. So
you might not need a four-drawer cabinet but I do think everybody needs to have a
filing cabinet. And the fifth and final storage solution
you can't live without is storage that makes use of otherwise wasted space. Now
I prefer to keep the space under my bed completely clear but if you're
struggling for storage space, there's a perfect bit of space there for you to use.
Don't just shove stuff under there randomly though because it's going to
get really really dusty. Get some plastic storage boxes that fit under the bed,
ideally on wheels, and store stuff under there. And one of my favorites is
to put shelving on the walls above head height, in space that otherwise isn't
being used at all. Here I am in my office. Here's the top of the filing cabinet I
showed you before, and here's the entrance to the room and, above that, above
head height where I'm not going to bump into it is, shelving so all those files
can be out of the way, easily reached, I can reach up and get them, but they're
completely out the way and it makes use of that vertical space. What do you think?
How many of those five storage solutions have you already got in your home and are
there any that you're now going to introduce? Comment below and also tell me
about any other amazing storage solutions that you use. Don't forget to like the
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training. Share this video widely and I'll see you in the next one.