Making Your Walls Do More For You

Guest Post

I would like to make a bet, or rather, an educated guess, that you've been picking up and tidying away things a lot more in the last year than ever before? You might find yourself looking around the house every evening and see everything from toys to school books to work stuff strewn all over the place.

With the home becoming a quasi office and school for most of the week, you may now see things quite literally piling up in every room. Whether you're sick of seeing laptops left on the floors, tablets stuffed down the side of the sofa, or books now being used as doorstops (yes, it is a reality for some of us), you'll be looking for ways to free up space and help bring rooms back to normal.

That's why I'm going to direct you towards the biggest area for the opportunity you have for improving said problems; your walls. Walls are standing there, not doing much, just waiting to be used. And before you go thinking, "this blogpost is just going to tell me to put up shelves", I can promise I can make your walls for more for you than you've ever thought before. All it takes is some out of the box thinking to get there.

The "shop" tactic

Let's start by looking at your tables and bedroom cabinets. If you look at what gets left there every evening, and it is messy, are there items you realistically could hang on a wall or store away in some capacity? You'll want to employ the shop tactic. You need to look at those items and ask yourself, "how are these presented in a shop?"

While a laptop is not something you'd expect to pop on a shelf, books/headphones/bags/clothing etc., are all things you would see on a shelf or hung from the wall in a shop. I've even seen it where lower shelves are placed in kids rooms to have them pop their toys to make them look like they're in "Toy Story" (an ingenious way of getting kids to tidy up).

It could be as simple as sticking a magazine holder on the wall beside a chair or getting some hooks drilled in for headphones and phone chargers in the corner of the kitchen. Employ the shop tactic, and you'll suddenly start viewing your walls in a new light. And look for items you can upcycle to use or give storage solutions some character.

Turning heating sideways

Which room in your home is furniture sitting right in front of a radiator? Every home has at least one space. It could be your living room where the big panel radiator is hiding behind the sofa (always make sure the bottom is clear to let air flow through!). It could be a box bedroom where a single bed will barely fit in against a radiator.

You can do better and make your wall work for you by thinking vertically. Vertical radiators are arguably the best space saver you can have in a room. Turning radiators on their side gives you back much more wall space than you'd ever expect. Obviously, you can't just turn the thing over and plumb it in. You need to swap out your existing radiator for a slimmer vertical radiator. For anyone on the fence about getting a new radiator, you might be surprised to know that most domestic radiators have a 10-year guarantee on the product.

Now, some radiators will work for a lifetime without so much as a blip, but if you are looking at musty radiators that you know where eggshell white in a previous life, your room could benefit from an upgrade, To see some more examples of this type of radiators, I recommend visiting https://www.traderadiators.com. They have some pretty good deals on vertical radiators.

Having a gallery

I don't know how I came to this realisation, but one day I noticed I didn't have any pictures or frames on the sills or tables. I may have accidentally become a convert to the world of gallery walls. They're so lovely, personal and customisable; I can't recommend having one enough.

In a world where all our photos are stored in the cloud and on our phones, getting some printed online, and ordering some cheap frames at the same time, will allow you to make a wall feel like a welcoming place. It can even work in the kids' rooms if you build it around the likes of a MARVELous Spiderman wreath.

Oh, and make sure you get some command strips for hanging frames. The convenience and lack of damage compared to a hammer and nails just can't be replicated. 

 

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