Tag Archives: declutter

Make Your Home Beautiful With 10 Quick & Easy Storage Life Hacks

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LS-Shelf-storage, life storage, To make your home beautiful for Summer, dust off those cobwebs and take a look at these ten quick and easy life hacks from LoveSpace to help declutter your home, organise your world and make the most of your space:

 

1. Don’t just use the space under the stairs to store boxes – add a desk shelf to turn it into a space saving office area.

2. Old perfume boxes or cereal boxes cut in half are perfect dividers for your draws to store your smaller items like makeup, jewellery, creams or hair accessories.

3. Use curtain hooks on a wardrobe rail for your handbags, making each one clearly visible.

4. Thread your ear phone, mobile charger (in fact any type of electrical wire!) through each end of a clothes peg to keep them nice and tidy and untangled.

5. Stuff old tissue boxes with all your old plastic bags and keep under the sink to save space and keep everything neat and tidy.

6. Use shower curtain rings to hang your scarfs through, and then attach all to a hanger – one hanger = all your scarfs!

7. Use chalkboard paint on a kitchen wall to write to-do lists, and messages to do away with the need for messy bits of paper.

8. Recycle jam jars and pasta sauce jars for candle holders, or to store paperclips, staples or any other little knick-knacks – Glue the lid to the underside of a table or shelf and simply twist the jar off to access what’s inside.

9. Mount a tension rod inside cabinets beneath your sink to hang your cleaning bottles on, providing more space below.

10. Take the lid off tin cans, paint the outsides to make them pretty – glue to them to a bathroom wall, then roll up hand towels and insert to create a funky storage solution?

 

 

Women Have £404 Worth of Clothing Gathering Dust in their Wardrobes

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  • Over 10 billion pounds worth of clothes languishing in British women’s wardrobes
  • 80% of women have fashion items they haven’t worn in the past year
  • 35% of women forget clothes in their wardrobes
  • 32% of women have stopped wearing clothes as often because they have put on weight

 

summer clothesBased on recent research, there could be up to 10 billion pounds worth of clothes lying unloved and unworn in British women’s wardrobes, left over from shopping sprees and Saturday afternoons on Britain’s high streets. A survey* released today by luxury resale clothing site VestiaireCollective.com has found that the average British woman has over £1900 worth of clothes, handbags and accessories in her wardrobe.

The survey, commissioned by YouGov, also found that 80% of women have items lurking that haven’t been worn for over a year. With the average woman having not worn 21% of the fashion items they own in the last year, VestiaireCollective.com estimates that this could mean that £10.1 billion pounds worth of fashion lying paid for but unworn in women’s wardrobes.

The survey of over 1000 women found that over one in three women (35%) had actually just forgotten about the clothes in their wardrobe, suggesting that there are some women with a few too many items nestling in the darkest recesses of their closet. Thirty two per cent of women had also stopped wearing their clothes as often because they had put on weight since buying them, with their growing waistlines accounting for smaller sizes being left to hang. Surprisingly, 26% of women stated that they don’t wear certain items more often because they are the wrong size or fit for them.

The average value of a woman’s wardrobe was £1909, the value of the contents rising with age; 18-24 year olds typically having wardrobes worth £1495, and the 55 and overs with £2,232 worth of items.

Fanny Moizant, UK Managing Director and Co-Founder of Vestiaire Collective believe that women should clear and recycle their clothing. She says: “It is sad to see so many once loved items lying unworn in women’s wardrobes. Clean and well-kept branded items will sell in a few days and will give the seller extra money to spend on something that won’t be forgotten or will actually fit. Vestiaire Collective has made it easy for pre-loved fashion to be given a new life and sold on, which can net sellers a sizeable profit in the cash-strapped few months of the New Year.”

Fanny continues:

“And the good news for British women is that this year many of our global shoppers have asked for more British high street, heritage and luxury brands to be sold on the site. With the average clothing item starting from £40 on the site, we’re encouraging everyone to de-clutter and make space in their wardrobes this year.”

 

* *Calculation by Vestiaire Collective: £1909.92 (average worth of wardrobe) x 21.17% (average amount of clothes not worn in the last year) = £404.43 (value of unworn clothes) x 25,074,877 (women in Great Britain) = £10,138,526,622

* All figures, unless otherwise stated, are from YouGov Plc.  Total sample size was 2,046 adults (1,053 female adults). Fieldwork was undertaken between 13th – 16th December 2013.  The survey was carried out online. The figures have been weighted and are representative of all GB adults (aged 18+).

Time to declutter – four out of five people in the UK have too much stuff

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Time to declutter – four out of five people in the UK have too much stuff

Three quarters of people across the UK have too much clutter at home, according to a poll by Storage.co.uk. People love their “stuff” so much, they don’t want to lose it, even though they’ll never use it. The survey found that emotional attachment and the idea they may be useful one day are people’s top reasons for holding on to things they don’t need. Another common cause of clutter (one third of respondents) is the hope that their stuff may be valuable.

An unexpected find was that younger people are more motivated by nostalgia about the past than the older generation. Three in five 18 to 29 year olds cling to clutter because it brings back good memories, compared to only two out of five 50 to 69 year olds who hold on to clutter for the same reason.

As for decluttering habits, the survey found that women sort an area of the home more frequently than men, who mostly tackled the job once or twice in the last twelve months.

The main barriers stopping people from having a good clear out is lack of time and feeling they have better things to do, suggesting they struggle to put the task high on their list of priorities. In some cases, clutter can really get out of control and become a bigger issue in people’s lives. For around one in ten people clutter is damaging their relationships with others, affecting their health and sometimes having a negative effect on the amount of money they have.

Rachel Papworth from Green and Tidy, a professional declutterer and organiser, says: “We live such busy lives, it can be hard to make time for decluttering. If you’re struggling to fit it in, think about how much time you’ll save when you can easily put your hand on whatever you’re looking for. Plus decluttering saves money, protects your mental and physical health, and reduces your environmental impact”.

According to the survey, quirky items of clutter getting in the way at home include a train piston, “hundreds” of old train tickets for travelling to see a fiancé, a camel saddle, carpet samples for a would-be rug , an empty Rotastak hamster cage, seven inch white platform boots, “thousands” of LPs and a lifesize cardboard cut out of Justin Bieber.

Storage.co.uk surveyed men and women in the UK to find out attitudes and habits towards clutter as part of their National Declutter Week campaign to launch on 7 March.

Storage.co.uk is calling on all home occupiers to consider unused stuff sitting at home and to make a big decluttering effort in National Declutter Week from 7 to 18 March. Storage.co.uk has linked up with hospices across the UK to direct donations of saleable items. To view participating hospices, visit http://www.storage.co.uk/national-declutter-week/adopt-a-hospice.