Whether you have gone for the full Marie Kondo and decluttered your entire home, or prefer to hang onto your belongings, we all expect at least a little storage in our houses. Everybody needs some extra space to put away boxes, out of season clothes and functional items like vacuum cleaners, ironing boards and mops which would just get in the way elsewhere. The thing is, many people find that they never quite have enough storage for all their belongings. Without a doubt, there are plenty of clever things you can do to maximise storage space and find ways of making use of the area under your bed, walls and the top of wardrobes. All the same, it is useful to know that you have a right to a certain amount of space in your new build home for keeping your belongings. The government has laid out guidelines on how much space should be set aside exclusively for storing your stuff. Yet, there’s no denying homes are getting smaller, and therefore so is our storage space.

With the latest data showing today’s new homes are the smallest that they have been in 100 years – just how much storage space in new builds can you expect and what could you reasonably store inside it?

How much storage space does a new build offer?

Back in 2015 the government created minimum standards for internal storage space in new build homes. Detailing how many metres of floor space had to be set aside to allow for cupboards, under stair storage and built-in wardrobes.

So, depending on the size of your home here’s a a rough outline of items you could reasonably fit into each space,

• One bed homes - only really provide enough space for cleaning items, a small suitcase and a couple of storage boxes.

• Two bed homes - Cleaning items, a large suitcase, three to four storage boxes and coats and jackets.

• Three bed homes - provide the most space internally. Allowing for larger furniture items such as summer garden chairs.

All about Proportion

Although the storage space allocated to different sized properties varies, it is all roughly in proportion. Generally speaking, homes must provide between 2.5 percent and 3.2 percent of the total floor space for storage. One bed homes have the smallest proportion set aside for storage - perhaps unsurprisingly since single people and couples tend to have fewer belongings. Nonetheless, as a proportion of the entire space, homes of all sizes dedicate a similar area to storage.

Shrinking homes and Space

Although welcoming that the government has set out standards for minimum storage space in new homes, the fact is homes are simply getting smaller. New homes built today are the smallest they have ever been, at, on average, 67.8 square metres of floor space - more than 20% smaller than properties built in the 1970s. So, even though storage standards have been put in place, this still results in less storage space in absolute terms than homeowners could have expected in the past.

The Current Reality

For better or worse homes are getting smaller and people, therefore, have less space available for their belongings. While some people will enjoy decluttering, not everything can or should be thrown away - especially if you hope to upgrade to somewhere bigger in the future where you can keep everything in your home

So where does innerspace stand on storage? As we are a customer driven business our magnetic north is our customers. Since their number one hassle in new homes is the lack of storage its high priority for us.

Firstly, our homes are bigger than both the national average and government space standards, so you can automatically expect proportionally more storage to start with. Secondly, we intentially spent a long time on our internal designs, not only so our homes were lighter, airier and healthier, but also so they provided what are customers valued most - plenty of storage that is ample and accessible. Our current 4 bedroom homes provide 7.82m of storage which is 260% (or 2.6 times) more than the National Space standards requirement of 32m

Credit: Attic Self storage for text and imagery