Barney and Boo save tidy mum from storage meltdown.

Everyone needs storage, whether you’re a minimalist maniac or not. We’ve all got keys, paperwork and general paraphernalia we don’t quite know what to do with. The kind of stuff we don’t really want to keep but annoyingly, feel like we have to as it might be useful one day…So despite everything, we grudgingly stuff all those leaflets from school, along with the instructions to the microwave, into a drawer, or in the magazine rack or behind the utensil jar in the kitchen. And then we forget about them…

It’s much the same with my children. At one time, there were brand new toys in our house that had been put away then never been touched, not once. But rather than being forgotten about, it seems in this case, ‘the system’ was no good. Hands up, my fault entirely. In an attempt to enforce neatness on my offspring I went a little overboard with my crazy compartmentalisation.

I had all the jigsaws stacked up like the leaning tower of Pisa, the jewellery making sets neatly crammed onto a shelf (“don’t take that middle one out or they’ll all come tumbling down!” I can hear myself cry) and the Barbie dolls in a lovely rucksack hanging nicely on the arm of the rocking chair. It suited my neat freakery very well and didn’t require much storage, but it wasn’t too conducive to playing if I’m honest. The children were not impressed. “We can’t find anything” they would cry, to my astonishment.

“They don’t know how lucky they are”, I would mumble. If only all my bits and bobs were as easily sectionable I would surely be able to remember that it was non-uniform day, or the supermarket coupons were about to expire. That is of course if someone were to remind me to look at all my neat piles…

So cue my new system, the pick and mix bedding box – and friends. Yes, that’s right, I’ve just cobbled everything together in bedding boxes, bedside tables, the bottom drawers of their wardrobes and their new tallboys. Weebles, zoobles, spirographs, the lot, all thrown in like a hearty ratatouille.

It’s like all their birthdays have come at once. What could be better than a good root around in a big box crammed to the rafters with precisely who knows what? Their rediscovery of things old and new has given us all a new lease of life, not least the once-discarded toys. Plus, I’m learning to sift through my pile of nondescript paperwork every now and again too!

The cherry on the cake is when, at the end of each day, they put everything back, behind drawers, doors and lids, hiding the jumbled mess from my neat freaked eyes.

Thank the furniture gods for decent storage, where WOULD we be without you!