The stuff in our lives takes up more space than we ever have room for. Spare rooms quickly become full-of-who-knows-what rooms, floor space gets eaten up, wardrobes get crammed full. Eventually, the lack of physical space eats into our mental space, and we’ve got no room left to live our lives.
If you want to make some space for yourself in your home (and your life, because you deserve to live your life), you can. And you can pull it off quickly, like a bandaid. Use these 5 quick tricks to your advantage and you’ll be living a pain-free, bandaid-ripped-off, organised, clutterless life in no time.
1. WFHNH (Work from Home, Not Hell)
Working From Home can quickly begin to feel like Working From Hell (cc: your cat on your keyboard mid-way through a critical email). There are a lot of different ways you can make working from home more bearable, but there’s one rule you should treat as gospel. Keep your desk clear.
This is especially tricky when you’re short on time or short on designated space, like, if you’re working from the kitchen table. It’s still possible, though. You just have to develop a system.
Try following these tips to maintain a tidy desk/tidy mind:
- Keep only the essentials around
- Make it manageable by designating homes for everything
- If something has to live on the desk, keep it clean (a tray for pens and pencils)
- Maintain a chef’s practice — pack up and pack down every day
2. Tone Down the Excess
No matter how hard you try, minimalism isn’t for everyone — behind every Pinterest interior design shot is a pile of stuff just out of frame. We all have stuff (there’s no getting around it), but you can at least make a dent in the mess.
Start with the excess:
- Tone down the pillows (they look cool for real estate photos, that’s about it)
- Donate the books you’ve already read and will never read again
- Sell the clothes you don’t wear anymore
- Store anything that’s out of season
There’s no point overcrowding your cupboards with the non-seasonal stuff. Staring at your shorts isn’t going to make summer come any faster. Get them out of here until then.
3. Respect the Under the Sink Stuff
Don’t lie. We all have a habit of cramming the stuff we don’t want to see in the hard-to-reach places — think back of the cupboard or under the sink. It makes us dread reaching in there to get anything. Organising every space (even the spaces you barely ever see) makes all of that feel a hell of a lot easier.
Try this ritual, it works every time:
1. Take everything out
2. Toss anything you don’t need
3. Make a home for everything that’s left
If it’s under the sink stuff you’re organising, get creative. Use tension rods to hang spray bottles, baskets for cleaning supplies, tiered shelves to keep things itemised. Things like this make awkward spaces a lot easier to manage.
4. Store the Stuff You Don’t Want to See
Any stuff that you “need” but don’t necessarily want to see, you should store. That’s where a service like TAXIBOX can come in handy. TAXIBOX conveniently brings the storage unit to you so you can fill it up and then when you’re done, we will take it away and store it securely until that “might-need-it-someday” stuff becomes “I-need-it-today” stuff.
5. Go Solo
It’s human nature to want to spend your spare time catching up — we don’t get much spare time, so we tend to fill our days off with other people. Spending some time catching up with yourself, by yourself? Underrated.
Make some space for yourself by spending some time with yourself. For me, that means having a friend book me a surprise day away once a month so I don’t know where I am going until the day. I’m then totally off the grid, no colleagues, no family, no phones. It’s a great way for me to recharge and free up some space in my mind. Whether it is a day away, a day at home alone or a trip to the movies, choose something that works for you and commit. You deserve it!
By Jan Uwland, Marketing Manager at TAXIBOX