10 Stylish Ways to Up Your Storage

Everyone wants a beautifully decorated home – this is not up for debate. For most of us, the first step to achieving this goal is to get organized. Every home has a few hundred items that are used on a daily or weekly basis that can – if allowed to – create clutter. However, a cleverly organized home can help everyone keep their dishes in the sink, their clothes in the hamper, and even keep the linen closets looking nice. The key to a truly beautiful home, however, is figuring out how to make your organization stylish.

That’s where we come in. There are more than a few innovative home storage items that can double as décor, or home décor items that can be used as storage in a pinch. If you combine the practical with the aesthetic, you can easily achieve a home that is both functionally de-cluttered, an appealing to the eye. Let’s look at ten different home décor items and ideas to get your home both organized and beautiful, all in one.

Cubed Storage

Cubed storage is everyone’s first shelving answer to color-coordinated storage. If you need an entire wall of sturdy baskets or boxes of toys, computer cables, console accessories, or art supplies, then cube storage will be your best friend.

With a few matching sets of cubes (or several styles, if you want to mix and match), you can fill a shelf with storage, and it will look like a simple display of colorful or patterned boxes.

Add Woven Baskets and Hampers to the Mix

The same as the cube storage strategy, don’t forget that baskets can be just as handy. Woven hampers and baskets add a warmth and visual diversity to your storage approach... and can also be much easier to carry! Switch to wicker laundry containers or use wicker baskets to hold any heavier items on shelves, or just in the corner of your space. Wicker baskets can also help tie your furniture together, pairing extremely well with rattan, cane, and bamboo furniture to give the space a warm, bohemian or ranch style depending on your color scheme.

Give Everything an Elegant Label

When putting all your home’s clutter into organized cubes and baskets, don’t forget the labels. A little clever labeling can save you hours of rummaging in the future, as well as make your storage look well-organized from the outside. For décor's sake, you can look for elegant, metal-label frames or chunky, wood-block labels – though of course chalkboard paper and a liquid chalk pen will do the trick, too, especially if you plan on changing or re-using your labels in the future.

Create Space with Hidden Compartments

Multi-purpose furniture is a great tool for creating both storage and decoration simultaneously. Bench seating and ottomans can be made hollow with a hidden storage compartment inside. Coffee tables can be built with drawers or cabinets to store supplies, cords, toys, and much more in a way that keeps the clutter out of sight. Hooks inside cabinet doors and fold-out storage from shelves can also provide hidden levels of storage to your already-existing storage space.

Use Glass Jars and Bowls for Attractive Collections

For anything that would look elegant when on display, consider organizing in a way that makes those items visible, with glass jars and bowls. Glass jars and crystalline plastic cannisters are appealing in the kitchen when holding both ingredients, and pre-wrapped snacks for easy access. Breakfast cereals, cookies, sugar, or coffee grounds are all great options for kitchen items that could be displayed in labeled glass jars to give your kitchen a more personalized feel. The same is true for glass jars used to hold cotton swabs or bath salts in the bathroom. But don’t limit yourself to only the elegant options – your seashell collection, your child’s colorful toys, even spare gravel for your fish tank might look best on display in glass rather than boxed or bagged up inside a drawer.

Turn Your Books into Shelf Sculptures

If you have a book collection, your books are a beautiful opportunity to turn some of your walls into shelving sculptures. Decorative floating shelves can turn their contents into art, and traditional books are now an aesthetic specialty when it comes to interior decoration. Paired with terrariums or stylish bookends, your books and shelves together can provide organization and accessibility, as well as a display that will increase the visual appeal of your space.

DIY Light Your Shelves

Of course, what you put on your shelves is only eye-catching (or useful) if you can see it. Central lighting can be insufficient when it comes to highlighting the shelving pieces in your home, turning your accent storage invisible, or worse, into an eyesore. However, lighting options have come a long way – the options are endless. Strip lights (ribbons covered in LED diodes) can be placed above each shelf, on the underside of the shelf above, pointing downward to highlight the objects on the shelf below. Illuminating your shelves will transform every closet, pantry, cabinet, and bookshelf into storage that is not only functional, but admirable.

Hide Organizers in Every Drawer

The contents of your drawers might not be something that you have ever considered decorative, but with the right inner organization they can be! The first step is to place organizers inside every drawer in your home, whether that be in the kitchen, living area, bedroom, or bathroom. Using the same color/style of organizers throughout the space will also make your organization feel more cohesive and manageable.

Embrace the Vertical Storage Hack

Things stored vertically are more attractive (and easier to grab) than things stacked directly on top of one another or stored horizontally. From roll-out spice racks or added shelves in the kitchen, to accordion storage for folded clothes, the ability to separate and vertically align items can transform a once-disorganized space into an easily maintained one.

Organize the Counter with Canisters

If you have a messy counter in the kitchen or bathroom, bring out decorative canisters. These can be the glass jars and bowls we discussed earlier, an opaque canister to hold your cooking spoons, or a new wall hook to hold all your potholders and spoon rests. In the bathroom, you could add another canister to hold brushes and combs upright, or for your family’s toothbrushes. Matching cannisters are relatively easy to find and can make a world of difference in your home if used the right way.

Home organization should be beautiful, and a beautiful home should be organized. We here at Decorsify hope that these steps will make the storage in your home a little more manageable! Be sure to check out our different options for shelving units to use in the different rooms of your home that need a little extra spark for storage décor.