3 minutes with an Ikea storage expert solved a bedroom dilemma I’ve been struggling with most of my life – and it only costs £2

This October I flew to Älmhult in Sweden to visit the homeland of all things Ikea. I was there to discover the ‘six sleep essentials’ that Ikea’s experts deem vital to a good night’s sleep and to visit the Ikea Test Lab.

It was a 1000-mile trip that involved planes, trains, and a group coach trip to see some moose (sadly the moose weren’t obliging), but in the process, I discovered an Ikea hack that has solved a bedroom dilemma I’ve been struggling with for, well, most of my life. *And* it only costs £2. A game-changer? I think so.

What I didn’t realise before I went to Ikea’s headquarters in Almhult – a location that also houses the Ikea museum and the only Ikea hotel in the world – was that Ikea’s product development team has been doing hands-on research into how we use our homes for more than 80 years.

That means that the Ikea team regularly asks homeowners nicely and visits real people in their real homes. Turns out there are two things all homeowners they visit have in common - they always apologise for the lack of tidiness in their homes, and secondly, they all suffer from storage woes. In particular, bedroom storage woes.

It turns out that whether you live in a Victorian terrace in Wales or a high-rise apartment in Tokyo, the thread that connects us all is we have ‘stuff’, and without adequate storage, that 'stuff' leads to clutter and disorganisation. The Ikea team has totalled it up and reckons ‘we lose 5000 hours of our lives looking for things in our own homes’. Eek.

When the Ikea team started talking about how long the average person spends searching for clothes in their own bedroom, I may have started squirming in my seat.

The stories of homes with piles of clothes on the floor, draped over curtain rails, or – that old classic – piled on a bedroom chair sounded very familiar to me. However, then Ikea’s storage experts introduced me to a storage device that has changed my life (and bedroom) for the better – the humble Komplement Valet Hanger.

The one thing that’s guaranteed to make my small bedroom look super messy is working out what to do with today’s clothes when they’re about to become yesterday's clothes. You know, that outfit that you have on for a few hours that isn't dirty, but isn't clean enough to go back in the wardrobe.

Over the years I’ve tried all kinds of solutions; clothes chair, piled on top of a chest of drawers, hung in the bathroom. None have worked, until now that is...

The £2 Ikea solution

Discovering the Komplement Valet Hanger changed that in an instant. It may look unassuming, but, to my mind, this is one of the most ingenious of the nearly 10,000 products IKEA designs each year.

It’s deceptively simple, it’s super cheap, and it neatly solves a problem that can stump even the best of us.

The Valet Hanger was designed by Ehlén Johansson as an addition to one of Ikea's bestselling products, the Pax wardrobe, a range of customisable bedroom storage solutions that are the best way I know to get a fitted wardrobe on a budget.

However, you don't need to have the Pax storage system to use it. Instead, you can add the Valet Hanger to almost any wardrobe. It mounts inside the door so that no screws are visible from the outside and its three large hanger hooks give you an ingenious solution for hanging up yesterday's clothes.

And I'm not alone in being impressed. Reviews for the Komplent Valet Hanger describe it as being a 'really simple but useful way to hang clothes I take off at the end of the day - reduces the clothes laying around. Surprisingly strong', a 'very useful little gadget, if you are going out you can hang your outfit on hanger in advance (instead of wardrobe door) so you know exactly what to wear', and a 'very handy hook that I use to hang clothes for the next morning on'.

Finally nailing the root cause of my accumulating bedroom clutter is also good news for my sleep quality. Clutter means anxiety, and anxiety impacts relaxation, and the knock-on effect is that we also lose sleep.

That’s why decluttering is one of Ikea’s six essential ingredients for how to sleep better, alongside the following:

• temperature (a bedroom temperature of 18.3 degrees Celsius to be precise)
• comfort (investing in the best mattress and best pillow will help here)
• light (or lack of it, our bedrooms need to be darker according to the experts so you might want to add a blackout blind to your shopping list)
• sound (again, ideally a lack of sound, or if that’s asking too much then a sound system that plays white noise, Ikea recommends the Symfonisk speaker lamp, a collaboration between Ikea and Sonos that means you don't need to have your phone by your bed to operate it)
• air quality (if you live in an area that suffers from bad air pollution and you can't open the window then one of the best air purifiers can help)
• and, no surprises given the data Ikea’s home visits have uncovered; decluttering

Safe to say, should Ikea’s product team come knocking on my door tomorrow asking for a tour, my bedroom is now one place I won’t be ashamed to let them in to take notes on.