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We have a new Blog…
Over the next few weeks, we will be transferring all our old blog posts to this new one. All the older posts will begin to appear below this message until we are up to date and ready to get cracking with some new content.
We hope you enjoy our blog, and as always, we welcome your comments.
When you’re trying to declutter and reorganise your space, these three simple words are worth storing at the back of your mind:
Visibility – Choose storage boxes and containers that are transparent so that you can easily see what’s inside when you come back to retrieve whatever you’ve stored.
Accessibility – Storing the various different possessions you use daily in easily accessible places and spaces will help save valuable time and may just save your sanity too!
Flexibility – Invest in storage solutions that are flexible like our modular elfa shelving system. As your needs and requirements change over time, flexible storage will work with you and may just save you a bit of money too as they’ll last into the future.
The Daily Telegraph reports today that Howards Storage World will be opening its West Lothian branch on Saturday.
The article says “The new store, in Livingston, West Lothian, has been opened through a franchise agreement with a company called HSW UK, in which Howards Storage World has a stake.”
There is little information on the brand well known in Australia other than “The retailer sells everything from hose racks to bicycle hooks. The original concept was launched by co-owner Les Howard in a Sydney suburb in 1970 under the name Stack & Store.”
Read;
I have been waiting for this opening for a while now and will definitely be popping for a look around on my next trip north.
It’s amazing how often we get requests from overseas customers for our storage and organisational products. Unfortunately we only ship to UK, and Ireland at present but do occasionally send our storage solutions to Europe and USA if you give us a ring us at STORE.
Actually that’s not strictly true, we had a request from NATO recently to ship 500 wooden shoe racks to Afghanistan to help with storage issues in their Kabul barracks. Packing the shoe racks was easy but the transport was a tad more difficult and required a USAF aircraft from Germany! Back on subject and if you don’t live in the UK here’s a few overseas retailers that may be able to help:
For our Antipodean friends who keep asking us to ship down under, Australia has it’s very own storage and organisational store, Howards Storage World (HSW). We’ve never ventured into one of Howards Storage World stores in Australia but if the Howards Storage World website is anything to go by they’re doing a great job.
Recently Howards Storage World has also opened stores in the Middle East, Spain and now Ireland and Scotland. Welcome to the UK Howards Storage World who are opening in The Centre Livingston (83 Almondvale South next to Argos if you want to take a look). If you live near-by and want to take a trip plug in EH54 6NB into your Sat. Nav.
As well as stocking the usual range of home storage products, Howards Storage World UK will also be stocking elfa shelving and storage systems so the good folk shopping in The Centre Livingston can also see the great elfa and elfa decor range that we so often shout about. HSW’s Easy-Build shelving system is also worth a look too if you live near Howards in Livingston, it’s is a free standing, fully adjustable shelving solution that doesn’t require tools to assemble. Pre-designed kits are available from Howards for shelves, wardrobes and even wine racks.
As and when we hear more from Howards Storage World UK up in Livingston we’ll keep you posted. If you prefer, Howards Storage World has a great e-newsletter so you can receive regular updates on Howards products and de-cluttering tips. Simply log-on to the Howards Storage World Website for more details.
For those of you who don’t live near one our very own STORE’s here in the North West we’ve a lot of respect for UK retailer Lakeland. Originally known as Lakeland Plastics they’ve some great ideas in their Lakeland Solutions catalogue. If you can’t find what you’re looking for in our STORE we’re always sending our customers in the direction of Lakeland Chester as their range of kitchen bakeware products is second to none.
Across the pond in USA we love The Container Store. For those of you who can’t get to one of their 60 odd stores you can also shop online for their great ideas on storage and organisation. Better still they have a great design service for elfa and elfa decor shelving which can be used in The Container Store and also online just like Howards Storage World in Oz.
Shoppers in Scotland will no longer have an excuse for unnecessary clutter as Australian brand, Howards Storage World, gets set to open its first store in the UK.
Howards Storage World, which specialises in storage and organisation solutions for the home, will open in The Centre, Livingston, in October. The retailer will offer hundreds of clever and innovative storage ideas to promote a fresh and simple approach to organised living.
From clever kitchen helpers that make food preparation easier, ingenious wine stacking solutions, tools to give your drawers an instant makeover and organisational systems for the bedroom, Howards Storage World offers countless functional and flexible solutions for every room in the house to help you love your living space.
With quality and innovation at the forefront of the HSW concept, which has been welcomed the world over, the retailer offers shoppers something a little different with a collection of unique products including ‘onion goggles’, ‘chalkboard labels’ and ‘wine wedges’ to name but a few.
Martin Brown, Managing Director of HSW UK Limited and UK Master Franchisee who is launching the first store in Livingston and hoping to open another 50 stores across the UK in the next five years, is thrilled to be bringing the brand to Scotland.
He said: “The UK is renowned for being a nation of hoarders and now, more than ever, people are deciding to stay in their current home instead of upsizing. These factors highlight the fact that making the best use of space has become paramount to many families.
“The secret is simple – create a place for everything and make it easy to keep everything in its place. We have found that customers find it enormously satisfying to take control of their space, and that’s why this great Australian retail concept is a worldwide success story.
“Bringing Howards Storage World to the UK market has been a long time in the making but I am delighted with our product range and expect customers will agree. Our unique products matched with our exceptional customer service will help us revolutionise homes.”
The internationally successful retail concept combines a fantastic range of Howards Storage World branded products as well as well-known international names including Elfa, Brabantia and simplehuman – mixed with helpful advice and great customer service from the friendly staff in store.
Customers in the rest of the UK need not wait until Howards Storage World expands further as the launch of the Livingston store in October will be closely followed by its UK website launch (http://www.howardsstorageworld.co.uk/) allowing customers across the country to easily purchase the unique items. Prior to the website launch customers can also order products via the Livingston store.
I found this acronym in an old book on storage and organisation.
It’s cheesy but good to remember the next time you’re trying to declutter your S.P.A.C.E…
1. S ort out – Have a good tidy up and decide what you want to keep
2. P urge -Be ruthless! Throw everything away that you don’t want.
3. A ssign a home – Give everything a suitable home
4. C ontainerise – Put things in boxes, on shelves and in an organised manner
5. E njoy – Sit back, relax and enjoy your new ordered space and mind!
The lounge is one of the most frequently used rooms in the house and a focal point for family activity – but it can also be a magnet for clutter. Here are my six top tips to bring order back to your chaotic living room:
1. Decluttering your lounge can be a daunting task, so focus on one small space at a time.
2. Each item in your lounge is another object to clean, so if you’re not using it, get rid of it. Items such as old books, out of date magazines and old videos or DVDs should be the first to go.
3. Give everything in your lounge a suitable home. For example, use deep storage spaces for bulky items, and group items by association.
4. Start to containerise, finding space-saving storage solutions for living room items, such as magazine racks, media units, remote control tidies and baskets.
5. When buying new furniture, consider items that encompass storage capabilities, such as coffee tables that incorporate shelving or storage cubes that can be used as side-tables. (Check out our range of shelving including elfa)
6. Once you have turned your lounge into a clutter-free oasis, it is important to keep it that way. Take a few minutes each day to clear any clutter, and schedule larger clear-outs a few times a year to throw out any unwanted CDs, books or DVDs.
I was watching art historian Dr Gus Casely-Hayford’s BBC4 documentary exploring the pre-colonial history of some of Africa’s more impressive kingdoms this week. There was a remarkable snippet on the magnificent 16th-century bronze casts that were discovered in the kingdom of Benin in 1897 which many at the time could not believe had been made by Africans! In the same show Gus touched upon a group of sophisticated West African cave dwellers who had constructed and decorated sizable food stores within their caves to store and preserve grains and pulses. These early storage solutions represent an important turning point in history both in terms of the constructor’s abilities to secure and store their food for future use and also the fact that their sophisticated lifestyle allowed time to decorate the exteriors of these giant food storage boxes.
So are these the oldest known examples of kitchen or rather food storage solutions in the world? Apparently not…
The oldest food storage boxes used to store, preserve and cook food in are around 14,000 years old (that’s the Stone Age to you and me) and come from Japan. Known as Jomon storage pots, and heralded (my me) as the world’s first kitchen storage solution, they were crafted from coiled wet clay which was baked and then had strands of wicker or seagrass added to the outside to give a basket-like look.
I believe that Jomon literally means ‘wicker-like storage basket’ or ‘cord pattern basket’ in Japanese but these storage pots represent much more than the slightly misleading translation suggests and in my opinion are a remarkable leap in technology. Unlike the contemporaneous crude wicker storage baskets or even large leaves and foliage used to store or eat food off, the Jomon storage pots where both watertight and allowed food to be cooked inside without the risk of burning meat etc or destroying the container in a fire. Further, they also allowed easy and secure transport of whatever was stored inside from one place to another.
It could be postulated that the ability to safely transport stored items was important to the Jomon people who were hunter-gatherers, however they lived in a particularly food rich area which allowed the Jomon to settle in one place for years at a time and (it is thought) thus encouraged the invention of what is in my opinion the world’s first storage solution.
Remarkably some Jomon storage pots still contain burnt food deposits and gas chromatography –mass spectrometry (GC/MS) analysis has revealed the residue of what could also be the world’s first fish stew and remarkable over 65 different mammal species!
So you heard it here first…the world’s first kitchen storage solution was invented by the Japanese 14,000 years ago!
Any other contenders for the oldest storage solution in the world, please let me know!
Si @ STORE HQ
Helen in our Chester store always suggests that customers organise their clothes storage by like-for-like items (coats, shirts, skirts etc.) and according to colour. Her theory is that if you hang shorter items at one end of your wardrobe, graduating to longer pieces at the other end, you’ll create space underneath the shorter clothes for shoe storage or maybe even a small cupboard or one of our elfa basket drawer tower in which to store folded items like t-shirts and bedding.
A bed is the functional heart of a bedroom but it also harbours the most overlooked source of hidden storage – the space underneath it. A tucked away under bed storage box keeps a lot of clutter neatly out of site but also close to hand.
You can boost storage inside the wardorbe with hanging organisers that fit into what would otherwise be empty gaps. Hanging organisers with pockets for sweaters can convert unused vertical wardrobe storage space into places for jumpers, scarves and handbags and better still they’re cheap!
At the end of the bed, an open fronted unit is useful for storing books and bits – and the TV can sit on top. Chests, trunks and storage boxes are decorative and have plenty of room inside for storing away bulky blankets and out of season clothes.
A customer asked our Saltney shop manager the other for her top tips to make the best use of space in their home. Always keen to here my colleagues organisational tips I listened in and here’s my summary
1. Whether you’re intending to spend the entire weekend tacking a room full of clutter or simply wanting to organise your shoe collection, start your de-cluttering in bit sized chunks so you don’t feel overwhelmed. Don’t try and re-organise the entire house in one go but concentrate your efforts in one area trying not to “zig-zig de-clutter” by moving things from one area to another creating even more mess!
2. Think vertically when it comes to storage. If space is tight use the walls. Stacking recycle bins for example can free up precious floor space and help with better kitchen storage and bathroom caddies can keep surfaces clear of clutter in a small bathroom where storage space may be at a premium
3. When thinking about how you use your space at home also consider multi-functional storage products. E.g. a leather storage box or cube that could double as a side table and allow you to clear the clutter by throwing kids toys or newspapers and magazines inside
4. Clever storage products won’t just help you make the most of your space, it’s all about organising your live and saving time too. Something as simple is a key rack in the hallway to store you bunch of keys with say a shelf above for your phone and wallet is going to help you get ready faster in the morning without the normal “where are my keys / phone” etc. conversation.
5. Finally, doing something practical to de-clutter your space is going to make you feel a whole lot better about yourself too but if you’re not the kind of person who’s going to keep things super-tidy then don’t present you are. Instead make sure you’ve effective ways of managing the clutter your create. Something as simple as a small plastic storage box or container to manage the daily post is a great example