Having two young kids, a dog and a lot of stuff means the days of me buying furniture just for the aesthetics are long gone. Everything that comes into this house needs to have some kind of storage section built in. No matter how often I Marie Kondo my way through the house, removing clutter, it starts to build up again.
A few months ago, we decided to give our bedroom a makeover. We’d been neglecting it in favour of sprucing up the kid’s rooms and living spaces. Our bedroom just became a dumping ground for clothes, and boxes of paperwork we have been promising ourselves we’ll sort out any day now (it’s been months), and just generally looking tired and run down. It’s not the kind of place that’s relaxing at all, just somewhere to watch some TV or fall asleep.
The biggest investment in any bedroom is the bed. It needs to look great and feel great too. Now, we’d already had a great mattress which we’d bought the year before, but the bed frame was an old, battered one which we decided to throw away.
Ottoman Beds
The space under a double bed is valuable real estate. In the past, we’d used those storage boxes on wheels to keep shoes, clothes and bedding etc. The thing is though, they still waste so much of the space under the bed. Plus, we have a wooden floor which makes the space under there fill up with dust bunnies before you know it.
I’m not a fan of divan bases for my room so one of those with drawers was out of the question too.
Then, I remembered a video by the YouTuber, Emily Norris. She has a beautiful grey ottoman bed, which lifts up to reveal a huge amount of storage underneath. I mean there was so much in there, and it was so easy to get to, no crawling around on the floor trying to drag things out. Plus, you couldn’t see what was under there.
So, we chose a beautiful grey upholstered ottoman bed, the type that lifts from the end (rather than the side). We know that we were going to go with either green or peacock blue for our colour scheme, so grey would have gone perfectly with them.
Utilising The Space
I didn’t want to just throw things under the bed and forget about them, I wanted it to work as an active storage area, like our airing cupboard. I kept the plastic rectangular storage boxes we’d used under out other bed, which were the perfect size. I also bought a few large vacuum packs too. We have some spare bedding and blankets which we only need a few times a year, but take up so much space. So I packed them away in these vacuum bags and now they take up the same space as a few pillows, which has given me much more space in the airing cupboard too.
Styles Available
There are so many styles to choose from with an ottoman bed. We went for an upholstered one in a medium grey colour, with a heavy cotton type feel. Many people go for a velvet feel finish but I still have nightmares about a pair of curtains in my parent’s house in the 80s, so I tend to steer clear of velvet, but they do look great. If you’re not looking for a fabric-covered frame, there are wooden options too which look very impressive.
From a practical perspective, it’s a lot easier to keep clean than I’d expected. We’ve had a few incidents when we’ve spilt Calpol on the fabric or one of the kids has put a chocolatey hand on it, but just used one of those Dr Beckmann upholstery cleaners
with the built-in brush and it’s come away looking as good as new. If you’re going to do this, I’d recommend testing it somewhere inconspicuous first just to make sure it won’t affect the fabric.
Now our bedroom looks and feels a lot more relaxing and a lot less cluttered. We’ll probably be opting for an ottoman-style bed again when we come to redo the spare room before Christmas.
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