Streamlining my processes

We've been living in this home for 5 years. Prior to moving in we did a complete paint job on the place - I was 7mths pregnant with Nathan. I was fortunate to have my parents come and help out - I was chief lunch and cup of tea maker, sewed curtains, swept and did a bit of pre-cleaning.

The place has pretty much stayed as it was when we moved in. I had recently completed a diploma in Interior Design and put my new skills to use. I had it all planned out, cute little to-scale room plans with mini to-scale cut outs for the furniture placements etc. On the whole, it's all worked out great and I love the feel of our home. Over the years I've implemented new ways of doing things, rearranged occasionally, and have become more "green" which has brought with it new routines and things to take into consideration.

However, over the past few days I've been reassessing some of my processes in the ways I do things. Our house is reasonably small - not tiny, but not large - just over 100 sq metres. We have minimal storage space - or so I thought. The only cupboards we have are in the kitchen, a linen cupboard in the laundry and a wardrobe in our room and Danielle's (Nathan's now has a small stand alone wardrobe). We've relied on other storage ideas to help out, such as shelving, cabinets and storage chests.

Here is the list of things that have always annoyed me but I thought were beyond doing anything about...

The vacuum cleaner being stuffed into the laundry cupboard which is behind the door into the laundry - so a clutter of doors and vacuum cleaner bits would drive me nuts having a wrestle with them to get them out. I found vacuuming a big hassle because of this and was lucky if I vacuumed once a week despite needing to be done more frequently. I also have a 3-drawer plastic storage unit in here for my stationery and elctronic cables/software etc which was also difficult to access.

There was the loss of cupboard space under the kitchen sink due to recycling tins and platics and the large bag of plastic bags jammed in there.

There was the compost scraps container cluttering up the kitchen bench, there for convenience but too small to even hold a days worth (and flicked scraps ending up on my wall).

The large wicker laundry hamper in the laundry was jammed into a space that was a bit inconvenient to access, so I rarely used it and dirty clothes would just be piled up in our bedroom and transferred daily when I do the washing.

Storage space in our bedroom wardrobe was crammed with all sorts.

So..it only took moving the first thing and the rest just fell into place.

~ I moved the laundry hamper into our bedroom
~ The vacuum cleaner has come out of the cupboard and is now in the spot where the hamper was
~ The plastic bags are now out from under the sink and hung in the laundry
~ I found an unused small flip top rubbish bin poked into a corner in the laundry that I have placed under the sink where the plastic bags were and that now holds my compost scraps. It's much bigger than the previous container and more practical and gets the container off my benchtop.
~ I cleared out our wardrobe shelving, had Simon buy a large lidded plastic bin to store the surplus in down in the garage (the bin is large enough to be useful for other things if required). The bin mostly consists of clothing that is made from useful fabrics that can be refashioned at some stage.

I have come up with new solutions and they seem so...simple, and I ask myself why I didn't think of them earlier. I guess life just became comfortable and it was easy to just pass the house off as small and lacking space for things. Now I have a heap of spaces that can be filled if ever needed - but I'm such a declutter that I can't imagine that happening.

My problem wasn't lack of space - I just wasn't using what I had wisely.