Affiliate links in this post will be clearly marked with a *. Clicking one of these links means I earn a discount or receive payment.
We’ve been living in our home since late 2019, and purchased it in late 2022. As such there are LOTS of ways that we’ve made our mark, without a huge budget, and now we’re looking forward to really putting our stamp on our home with a new bathroom, new kitchen and garden makeover too.
Along the way I’ve spent lots of time working on the storage in my home, as well as making small improvements that made a big difference to the overall feel of our home.
Choose furniture carefully
When choosing items for our home we always try to maximise storage where possible. For example our Nabru sofa has storage underneath the seats – perfect to put all our children’s arts and crafts so they’re close to hand but not on display constantly making our tiny living room look cluttered.
Organise cluttered areas of your home
Start by sorting through your belongings. Make a pact that for every item you bring in within a specific category, such as clothes, you’ll aim to declutter two. You can sell items on Vinted, to make some extra money too.
Using the right storage containers makes a huge difference to the look and feel of your home. In the last few months I’ve re-arranged my wardrobe, adding boxes to store seasonal shoes, make-up organisers, drawer dividers and more.
This means that when I open my wardrobe now, or go to one of the drawers, that I have everything in an organised space, easy to access and it means I’m no longer forgetting to wear or use products that I’ve spent my hard earned money on!
Label everything
If you’re living with other people in your home then ensure that you’re labelling things. Either with notes on what lives where, perhaps a label on the bottom of a drawer, or even just the herbs and spices.
It makes it much easier for everything to find the right item, saves wasted time and allows you to stay organised too. I love to use the D30 printer from Phomemo.
Maximise the most of unused space in your home
Perhaps you’re lucky enough to have a garage and you could better utilise at least some of the space. Add a nice garage flooring and you could turn some of your garage space into a home gym, a pantry area for bulk buying or even just more storage for your families activities.
If you’re a keen sportsperson you could add some storage to the ceiling of your garage and this would allow you to have somewhere to store kayaks, paddle boards, oars and rows, ski boots and much more.
Use well placed mirrors
Last year I was able to buy some full-length mirrors for just £5 from Dunelm. They were a ‘star buy’ and I have been really impressed with the quality of them.
We have one in our hallway, and one in our wardrobe. This helps these two smaller areas of our home to have a little more light in them and feel more spacious too.
Choose paint colours carefully
Using neutral tones around your home is a great way to make rooms feel more spacious without making any actual changes to the layout of furniture or the items you’re storing there.
Also, when you first move into a space you may want to freshen it up, but don’t know how the light is going to sit in each room during the different seasons.
This is a great reason to opt for a neutral colour and then change things up once you’ve settled into your home more.
Make the most of space under your stairs
When we moved into our home the cupboard under the stairs had a dividing brick wall, no flooring and was very much wasted space.
I knocked down the wall (it wasn’t load bearing!), placed flooring down, filled in some gaps in the brickwork and then gave it a nice white coat of paint.
Then I added in lots of storage and now it houses all the larger cleaning items like our carpet cleaner and vacuum, plus it has a huge storage rack for all of the paint, wood, tools and paintbrushes I need to help make our mark on our home.
These are just some of the ways that we’ve made our home look and feel better, as well as being more suited to the needs of our family too.