So, following on from our last article, we were looking at some very simple but effective storage ideas for different areas of the house.

We have spent some time going through some ideas for the living room, kitchen, and dining room. Now it's time to start looking at the upstairs of the house. For us, this includes the bedrooms, bathrooms, and also an office, where most of these articles get written. So lets start this moving then with a look at the bedrooms.

For us, there were 3 main areas around the bedroom. Clothes, shoes, and makeup! These were the areas that were constantly causing problems and making the rooms look messy.

We started with the shoes first. These were a fairly quick fix. Yes, we had lots of shoes between us but by simply getting a shoe rack the problems were solved. We were lucky enough to find 1 that fitted into our wardrobe perfectly.  These were simple 3 shelves racks that were freestanding. They went perfectly at the bottom of the wardrobe, 1 on either side for me and my wife.  We only used the bottom 2 shelves for actually putting shoes. This meant that the top shelf acted as a barrier between our clothes and shoes. It also meant that some other items, like scarves, hats etc could be put in some nice boxes and stored on the top shelf.

Clothes was a bit more tricky. As most families, we have a lot of clothes. For us, we were looking for something n between having everything put away and keeping the everyday clothes and workwear easily accessible when needed.

We actually found a great solution to this. Next to each side of the bed we now have a freestanding bamboo clothes rack. There is a bar at the top for all of our clothes to be hung up. There are 2 lower shelves, which double up as a bedside table and also our everyday shoes. At the top, above the rail is another shelf. On here we have some simple bamboo storage boxes that we put some of the smaller things in. I have some ties, cufflinks etc in here ready for when i have to go to the office. This is a really practical way of keeping your clothes tidy in the wardrobe but also having the everyday things prepared and ready for the week, but still looking neat and tidy!

Organising the make up area was actually a lot easier than i thought. My wife always used to have make up on the dressing table. There would be some in each corner at the back and then some along under the mirror. Its was sort of tidy but generally looked as if it had no where to actually be. To solve this we got some 3 tier box shelves that fitted lovely on the one side of the table. This got rid of most of the smaller bottles and items.

For some of the larger bottles and spray cans we got some small bamboo frame shelves. These are normally for putting picture frames on. They have a small lip at the front to stop the picture frame falling off. This was perfect for these larger bottles. The shelf happily held them while the lip at the front stopped them from being pushed off. Perfect!

The solution that we used above for the makeup, also worked really well for us in the bathroom. We had the 3 tier shelves with a lot of the smaller items in and mounted some shelves below the bathroom mirror to put some of the larger cans and bottles on. This immediately cleared off everything that would normally have sat on the sink or on top of the toilet!

We then looked at some of the toothbrushes etc. These again would sit on a small area next to the sink but didn't really look right. We decided for a wall mounted toothbrush holder that again released some space to put a nice bamboo and ceramic soap dispenser next to the sink. Ideal!

We decided against the use of a freestanding bamboo toilet roll holder. Although we loved these, we wanted to get things off the floor and give everything a proper home. Having this freestanding toilet roll holder would mean that it gets moved around and pushed out of the way when not needed.

No bathroom would be complete without the bin. Looking through the shops we found a perfect sized bamboo bin. This sat neatly under the sink and was perfect for holding everything likely to get thrown in there. Nothing worse that looking to put a deodorant can in the bin, but actually the bin isn't big enough for it!  Not anymore!

Simple straight forward solutions that could work for anyone. You don't need to spend a fortune and put lots of things in place. Just ensure that everything has a home and that everything looks how you want it to look! Keep it simple, cheap and enjoy!