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Get more storage space with clever home housekeeping

Posted: 07/07/2010

Storage around the home can be just as much a problem for someone living in a four bedroom house as it is for someone living in a one bedroom flat. There just never seems to be enough space to keep everything. We have some clever home housekeeping tips to help you on your way to an uncluttered home.

Paperwork can be a bit of a tricky thing to store. It’s difficult to know how long to keep your receipts, bank statements and bills for and there are no official guidelines on this. As a rule, if you have receipts for things that you have worn or used for a month or so, and these things haven’t yet fallen apart, it’s a safe bet to say that you can throw these receipts away.  With bank statements it is a safe bet to keep between three and six months of records. This way, if you need to produce them for any reason you’ll avoid having to pay the bank to re-issue them.

A great home housekeeping tip is to buy a storage file for paperwork to save your drawers bulging, and to also save time when you need to find any of this paperwork in the future. For any paperwork that you need to throw away, make sure to shred it first!
The spare room is somewhere that everyone uses as a dumping ground for clothes waiting to be ironed, the old exercise equipment and many other things you just don’t know what to do with. It never looks tidy and just recall the panic that you had last time someone wanted to come and stay with you.

A good home housekeeping rule is to treat the spare room as a show room and avoid dumping things in there at all costs. Make it look as perfect as possible for the prospect of an unexpected visitor and use clever storage techniques to hide away the junk.

If you haven’t used the exercise equipment in over a year you probably won’t. Give it away or failing that, hide it in the loft or garage. As for the piles of clothes, sort them out as you did with your wardrobe and give away any that you won’t wear again. Buy some pretty baskets with lids to store your ironing in and all of the mess should stay out of sight!

For more home housekeeping secrets, come back next week.