Apply some creative thinking to your storage solutions to create spaces that offer practicality, while still adding interest. Here, the wide steps of a ladder provide shelving, while the narrower rungs can be used for draping jewellery, scarves and other accessories.

If you have a penchant for open display – like me – find a common thread to group your pieces. Objects stored on open shelving and flung-open cupboard doors take on new appeal when blessed with a uniformity of colour, because what's the point of possessing beautiful and meaningful things if you can't show them off for the world to see?

Don’t feel you need to buy a staired chest – I recycled balsawood boxes tipped on their sides and secured (by sheer gravity or Liquid Nails, if you must). They once housed old scrolls, paper lanterns and ceramics.

As I mentioned recently in my Stylist Alphabet: S is for... post, while I’m perfectly content with throwing things into baskets, filling jars and inventing other ways of decoratively displaying my possessions, I’m equally devoted to finding practical – read neat and tidy – storage solutions. Look for second-hand shelving and cabinetry from apothecaries or industrial filing cabinets and drawers in a mixture of timber and metal.

I have a lot of stuff (yes, I really am just a good old-fashioned hoarder like my grandmother!) so I've  built floor-to-ceiling shelves to house it all. They've become my cabinets, or shelve, of curiosity. Corners to explore, study and enjoy. You can do this, too, anywhere you like – on window sills, mantels and dressing tables. Line things up on a baseboard on the floor or hang textiles from a suspended pole from the ceiling. Do not limit yourself with display and let your collection speak for itself.