Decor ideas for creating extra space in your first home

Posted on Wednesday, October 24th, 2018

As you move into a home of your own for the first time, it would be understandable for you to brim with excitement. However, that excitement could dissipate rapidly if it dawns on you that the property lacks quite as much space as you had initially perceived.

Sadly, looks – especially first looks – can be deceiving, but there remain clever strategies at your disposal for opening up what could otherwise come across as overly cluttered spaces of your home.

Allow for a practically useful welcome

Naturally, as you enter your home, you want to avoid stumbling over carelessly discarded items. However, clearing the clutter can be just the first step of overhauling an entryway to impressive practical effect. Ultimately, essential items should routinely remain easy to reach in that space.

To make this possible, install wall mounted hooks and open shelving to use as storage – and place a bench where people can sit to remove shoes, suggests Freshome.

Make essentials readily accessible in the kitchen, too

There is a strong argument for a kitchen’s layout outweighing that of the entryway in importance. After all, the kitchen is typically the home’s busiest room, leaving more scope for clutter.

Fortunately, you can still free up space in your kitchen by installing vertical storage shelving in the pantry and organising dry goods and food storage containers in drawers. Meanwhile, to make your counters more spacious, install overhead storage for pots and pans.

Resist letting a mess pile up in your living room

Admittedly, this can be much easier said than done. You have probably noticed that your living room is especially prone to accumulating clutter even despite your supposedly best efforts to prevent this.

However, the mystery often fades when you stop to recall how much traffic the room probably gets from friends visiting and family members catching up on the latest TV drama.

Rather than simply consider your tidying efforts doomed to failure, you could store items in multifunctional furniture like ottomans, as well as coffee tables with drawers and open shelving.

Choose fewer and smaller items for your bedroom

Where your bedroom has been rid of non-essential items, it may still feature furniture that is unnecessarily large. The Spruce notes that most bedrooms include space-hugging king size beds, so replacing one with a single bed or double bed could make the bedroom appear larger.

For a particularly small bedroom, it would be good practice to limit its items to just a bed, night tables and a small chair.

Do not lose hope if your home is particularly small

Some types of residence, like studio apartments and small homes, demand especially meticulous approaches to creating storage. However, you ought to see this as a plus rather than a negative, as it will force you to keep only objects that you truly need.

Furthermore, as this article has shown, there are creative solutions for insufficient storage. You could fit bookshelves above doorways and give an array of rooms – including bedrooms, bathrooms and kitchens – built-in shelving units.