If you are one of the many people who view spring cleaning with dread, take heart.  It is a great way of clearing out all the things that are cluttering up the place and you have been holding onto as something that might come in useful at some point but you are not sure how, when or why.

Start in the workshop with a strong plastic bin-bag. Workbenches or work tables, if not tidied out underneath on a regular basis will begin to become unorganised and difficult to navigate around. Take care to wear work gloves when reaching out things from under the work table or bench. An unseen, spare craft knife blade could give you a nasty cut.

Odds and ends, bits of wood and metal, rusty screws and so on should be dealt with ruthlessly. Shredded wood is great in compost, for example. If there are nails and screws that are roaming free and still look useful, gather them up and put them in wooden or plastic storage boxes in order to keep them safe and secure.

Hopefully, you will have a first aid box of some description in your workshop. Make sure it is stocked with everything you may need and is safely secured on a shelving system.

Text job is to check your decorating tools. Use an old plastic bucket or a washing up bowl and turpentine or white spirit to soak paint brushes and rollers that have not been properly cleaned the last time they were used. Open all the paint tins and make sure their contents are still viable, and then use a shelving system to organise these items for ease of access.

Every so often, the lounge becomes a battle zone. Old newspapers and magazines will sometimes be spearheading the offensive, protected by the insistence of various household members that they had not yet finished reading that magazine or the crossword puzzle in last week’s newspaper needs to be completed.

It is essential that storage is considered as soon as possible in order to maintain organisation within any environment, as this will assist in giving all items a designated place to be found. By simply creating ease through storage, people can become less stressed as they avoid having to plough through all manner of items before reaching what they need.

Most councils now provide a collection service for anything made out of paper, and even those annoying catalogues that keep arriving from a mail-order company you only used once, several years ago, can be condemned to the recycling bag.

Drawers, cupboards, shelving units and paper racks are all potential hiding places. Old bills, bank statements, mortgage and insurance documents for example will sometimes lurk here. Any kind of paperwork that you know may be needed in the future could be stored in a box or container that was to have been thrown away and stored in the loft.

It is also a good idea is to use a marker pen to clearly label the box and what its contents are before consigning it to its temporary resting place. The inventive DIYer could use odds and ends of wood or other materials to build storage racking into which the boxes could be organised.

Remember that magazines, especially hobbyist ones might be of interest to somebody else and there are plenty of second-hand shops run by various charities that will be able to sell them on. Set aside a separate bag to sort these into.

The contents of the upstairs rooms can be quite alarming at times. The bathroom, for example, will often have windowsills, shelving units or cabinets filled to bursting point. Take cardboard or plastic storage boxes in there and put everything in it that isn’t nailed down.

Put the box outside the bathroom if you are sharing the house with anyone else, and insist they sort out what they do and do not need. If you find a bottle of tablets or liquid and no label, make sure you dispose of it responsibly if you are not sure what it contains.

Now you can clean the shelving and cabinets properly. Once you’re finished, find a space in the bedroom to take out the contents of the box and throw away anything either past its use by date or simply not needed.

Next, tackle the spare room. Charity shops sometimes post collection bags and you could take one with you to dispose of anything that someone else might be able to use. Creating shelf storage space in a closet is surprisingly easy when old t-shirts, dresses and other items of clothing are cleared out.

Odd socks, threadbare clothing and towels are sometimes collected by the council as long as you store them in a separate bag for textiles only. If old shoes or slippers that are falling apart have been stored out of the way in the spare room, you may find a local cobbler who will take them and they can be recycled.

Implementing storage solutions for your household is a sure-fire way to keep on top of the many belongings you have, and keep your home tidy and organised all the while.

Lightweight angle iron shelving units are simply a low cost version of its heavyweight cousin. These light steel systems are strong enough to be used for household storage when they are stabilised and braced. It is unfortunate that on many occasions they are not properly stabilised or braced. In this state, they are unsafe.

As with the heavy angle iron systems, a shelf should be installed at ground level to form a rigid box structure. If this is not done the legs might buckle and topple the entire unit. If this leaves you a shelf short, then make use of a light wood frame to replace the bottom shelf. It is also possible to use more than one shelving kit to give you the option of either a taller unit and therefore more shelves or the same height of system but the shelves will be twice the depth affording more shelf storage space.

Alternatively, you could use wooden shelving systems. They are a lot more flexible than metal shelving. It is possible to make them any size or shape you want and this allows you to install them in any space you like.

Wooden shelving systems also have a more attractive appearance than their metal counterparts. Uprights and shelf edges can be rounded and bracing made decorative which makes them ideal for indoor use. If they are to be used indoors it is recommended that you finish them with wax or varnish. Paint is likely to scratch easily and will spoil the appearance.

In the garage, it is sometimes a good idea to install storage racks for aerosol cans. It will mean that you are able to organise your various cans of spray paint, oil and so forth, and be able to find them easily. You might want to build one yourself or simply buy one. Either way, mounting the storage racks onto the garage wall above workbenches, for example, will keep the cans in one place.

Now, where you place these garage racks is quite important. You should be careful about allowing direct light onto them. Therefore if your garage has a window, try to attach the rack to the garage wall where light will not fall onto them. When the can are empty, please dispose of them responsibly.

Storage racks in the kitchen are useful in quite a few ways. A spice rack will be the ideal place to store your various jars of herbs and spices. The added bonus is that they can be quickly examined to check if you are running low on your supply. Some racks will even hang on the inside of a kitchen cupboard door.

Sharp kitchen knives should be stored in a safe place, where they are easy to locate. They must not be hidden from immediate view in a drawer under other objects or left lying around on kitchen work surfaces, especially when there are children in the home. Magnetic or wooden knife racking is useful and easily mounted on the wall.

Recycling as much as possible is the latest trend and will probably be with us for years to come, in spite of recent events that imply the situation might not be as serious as was first thought.

Nevertheless, there are still many objects that cannot be recycled, mostly made of plastic. However, these may also represent an opportunity to solve your storage problems.

Plastic shelving is the cheapest material around for this use, and it is therefore used more often than most other materials for shelving. As it is a material much more liable to bend and snap, this increases the chances of the user having to replace them frequently, which presents obvious implications for the environment.

This is avoidable, however, with the use of more durable materials for shelving solutions. Metal shelving is much more hard-wearing than plastic and is guaranteed to last much longer, and therefore limit the likelihood of them needing to be replaced.

Plastic bags, especially cereal and bread wrappers are very useful to help keep food fresh in the fridge or the freezer. The storage of packed lunches either for school or work is also a good idea. Do not throw the large soap-powder boxes, either – clean them out and use them for magazine storage.

Plastic shopping bags make good bin-liners and it’s always a good idea to have a composting bin of some description in the garden for biodegradable waste such as vegetable and fruit peelings. During the summer, grass cuttings can be used as well. Don’t use animal fats or anything from them, such as bones, gristle and so on as this may attract rats and other vermin.

If you find it necessary to create another room, a workshop perhaps or even a music or artist’s studio, you could do worse than consider the garage and its storage potential as a possibility. However there will be several things to bear in mind depending on what kind of activity you are planning for the converted space.

For instance, if you have your heart set on making room for a workshop, then it should not be too complicated or indeed expensive to create a good, functional working area that will be ideal for whatever projects you have in mind. The installation of storage cabinets and storage racks to accommodate your tools will not be too difficult. Similarly, installing a worktable will be no great task. If the allocated space is quite small, then folding workbenches that can be hung on the wall or stored in a corner might be a better idea.

However, the conversion of your garage into a studio, living area or office is a more serious matter and will entail a lot more money and work. Take for example, a music studio. There are several factors to consider with this particular project and one of the major factors is noise. If the garage is connected to the house, you may have a problem with the fact that the sounds being produced in the studio will reverberate through the structure, and you will be listening to your teenagers rehearsing no matter what room you are in. Rewiring and insulation will also have to be taken into account.

Unfortunately, with shelving units there are safety issues that need to be addressed. It needs only a bit of common sense and a little extra time and effort to ensure your assembled shelves or shelving systems do not cause any problems where safety is concerned. When assembling or making wooden shelves, goggles and safety shoes should be worn as well as appropriate clothing.

Metal shelving units, in particular, can be a safety hazard. Indeed, in the industrial sector, lack of bracing makes their use illegal. This, however, can be fixed by adding some way of restraining the unit. Attaching them securely to a wall would probably be the least expensive option. Since racks are mostly supplied without enough bracing anybody bumping into them heavily may cause it to fold over sideways and the result can be tragic.

Unstable shelving units that are not against a wall may very well topple over and cause a serious injury to anyone caught in their fall. It is recommended that a strip of wood is attached to their top and is connected to another shelving unit or secured to the nearest wall.

If metal racking is fixed separately from other units or the wall, it must be well braced to make a totally rigid unit. Any movement in the joints at all will eventually cause the bolts to loosen and come undone.

Wooden shelving units must always be attached to a wall or firmly braced if you intend to use them as a free-standing unit.

Storage cabinets can be used to store a wide variety of items. Their location will affect their size, shape and appearance.

For example, a bathroom storage cabinet, especially a medicine one is probably better kept locked if small children are in the home. Try and make sure that medicine bottles have child-proof lids all the same. It is only too easy to forget to lock something away. Some people prefer two storage cabinets in the bathroom, one for medicines and the other to store shampoo, shaving foam, after shave and other items. A cabinet with a mirrored door is extremely useful for shaving and checking appearance before leaving the bathroom.

In the garage or garden shed, a storage cabinet or cupboard is useful for keeping various substances out of harm’s way. Weed killer, surgical spirit, adhesive, paint thinner and the like should be stored in a lockable cabinet. Do not, under any circumstances, pour something harmful into what could be mistaken for a drinks container, very young children cannot read. However, still make sure the container is clearly.

Despite the legislation in our country now, shotguns are still permitted. Please make sure you have a license for them however. Also ensure that the shotgun and ammunition are locked away in steel storage cabinets that are kept locked with the use of a sturdy padlock. Do not leave the padlock key lying around, close to the cabinet or just hanging from a hook in the kitchen – keep it with you at all times.

The vast majority of homes in the UK come with built-in garages, and whilst these extensions to our homes were designed to store cars and other vehicles, they are often more useful for the average homeowner as a storage space for all manner of items.

From tool kits and workbenches to seasonal games and garden furniture, garages can easily and quickly become full of clutter. Finding anything in this building can be a task in itself, which is why it pays to have some sort of organisational system in place.

One of the most effective and simple storage solutions available is shelving. Expense for storage shelves is often minimal, and they are available in a range of different materials to ensure that however heavy the item, there are durable shelves to suit.

Plastic shelves are the cheapest option, and are ideal for storing lightweight items. Metal shelves, on the other hand, are more suitable if the garage is being used primarily to store heavy tools, as they won’t bend or break like plastic shelves as they are more hard-wearing.

Shelves are ideal storage solutions in any area of the home, as they can be easily installed and fixed onto walls, thus optimising the space available in even the smallest of rooms. This makes it much easier for certain rooms to be organised, and makes good use of floor space.

Keeping track of certain items and ensuring ease of use is also a benefit to be gained from something as simple as shelves, as they will help the user to save time looking through endless clutter to actually fidn what they are looking for.