When you look around your home you will see lots of bits and pieces that probably don't have a permanent location in your house. There may be lots of kids' toys laying around not put away. Maybe you just have a lot of small bits and pieces that you wish had somewhere to go and not just thrown on the kitchen table.

This is where the wonderful world of storage comes in. It's something that every house needs, but usually doesn't have, especially newly build houses. It's something that our family has experienced so we decided to put together some tips that we used to help overcome this. Read on below to get some of our ideas and see if they would work for you?

Let's start with the living room. This really was one of the most challenging rooms to sort storage for. Mainly because we wanted this room to be somewhere that we relaxed and enjoyed family time in. We didn't want it to be somewhere that was overrun with places to put things we probably don't need anyway!

We initially decided that we didn't want any large cabinets in the living room. These take up a lot of space and literally just hide things away. So we started looking at what shelves we could put up.  We managed to find some lovely bamboo shelves with drawers. These were perfect. It had somewhere to hide away some of the smaller items but also gave us some room to put up some nice décor. We had some lovely lamps and pictures set up on these that really look amazing.

Next, we looked at the coffee table. This had a few things on there that we managed to remove completely. We then introduced a lovely bamboo tissue box and a matching bamboo bowl for us to put our loose change and keys into. Keys were always going missing so this was a great place to keep them.

We have a long narrow console-style table behind our sofa. Again this had some messy bits on it. We managed to get some lovely bamboo candle holders for here. They look amazing in the evening with the candles giving a nice relaxing glow as we relax. We also put some small matching bamboo boxes here to keep some other small bits and pieces.

Altogether, the room now looks organised and the mess has gone. Not much work involved but the outcome has worked really well.

Moving onto the kitchen, this was where the real work started.

As with most modern houses, the kitchen and dining room are combined in 1 large open space. This has its benefits but also means that combining them together to give a unified look can be a bit harder.

The cooking area was relatively simple. We managed to get some good quality bamboo utensils that replaced all of the old mismatched bits and pieces that were in an old container that we kept. We also got some lovely glass jars with bamboo lids which I wasn't keen on to begin with, but have to say that they look amazing on the work top. We also opted for the rotating bamboo spice rack to bring it all together.

It was time to clear out the cutlery drawer too. for years and years the cutlery drawer was filled with more mis-matching sets of cutlery. There were also odd knives that may have come with some Christmas foods and some old children's sets from when our daughter was younger. These all went, and in came a nice new set of cutlery along with a lovely expanding bamboo cutlery tray to keep them all tidy!

To finish off the food pre area we got a lovely solid bamboo chopping board. This one was big and heavy and was going to last us for many years!

Next, we looked at the under sink area. The place where all the cleaning bits are kept, but never organised! In here we got some lovely bamboo boxes and everything was given it place and every box was specific to a cleaning job. Quick simple and now very tidy and organised!

We were considering the use of a bamboo drying rack but with a dishwasher, didn't think it would be beneficial.

Last was the dining room area. This seemed a little bit easier most of the items were stored in the kitchen. We still managed to get some nice bamboo place mats and drinks mats for the table. These matched everything else really nicely. We also put together a small bo0x for the table that contained all of the condiments. We managed to find one with a carrying handle so that it was easy to move around when we needed to.

We added some similar shelving to the ones on the living room. These again had a small drawer to them so that some of the smaller items can be put away out of sight. These are a great find and we highly recommend these for any room.

So that's probably enough for this article. In the next few articles we will look at how we tackled the storage in the bathrooms and also the bedrooms. We also have some great ideas for your laundry area that wont over run the house!