TERENCE Conran, founder of Habitat, is also a designer, furniture-maker, restaurateur and author of numerous books , , many of which focus on the issue of well thoughtout living space and storage. In his latest publication, he sets out in great detail how best to organise homes, regardless of size, but recognising how our needs change throughout life. One of the most dramatic stages, and hopefully the happiest, is moving into your first home with a partner, he explains.

As soon as you move into your first home, you are likely to meet the whole issue of storage head-on. Most first homes, whether they are rented or the first step on the property ladder, tend to be on the small side, which means that you are automatically starting with a basic shortfall of space to put things. This is all the more acute if you are moving in with your partner. Setting up your first home provides an ideal opportunity to make a final decision about those belongings that have lingered on in your old family home as nostalgic markers of previous years.

If your parents have enough room, the items that you want to keep can be boxed up and stored in an out-of-theway location until you can give them a permanent home yourself. If you are short of money as well as space, you may find that family and friends offer you a motley collection of furniture and other bits and pieces to help get you started.

This is all well and good if the items in question are useful and what you want in the first place, but just another form of overload if they are not. Resist the temptation to become the means by which other people shed their unwanted possessions. Unless your relationship as a couple has a question mark hanging over its future, now is the time to pool your possessions and dispose of duplicate items , , there's no reason, for example, to give two can openers houseroom."

Storage: Get Organised by Terence Conran, published by Conran Octopus, 36.50

Space module

MODELROOMS sounds like a place where Erin O'Connor curls her eyelashes, or Kate Moss checks her loose powder.

But this new product, comprising a basic box kit with magnetic boards and small magnetised pieces, explains the often complicated reading of room plans into an easy, three dimensional set that is easy-peasy for the budding designer and homeowner alike. When its creator, designer and presentation model-maker, Katie Galvin, first unveiled her innovative product at a recent UK interiors' show, property expert Sarah Beeney, from Channel 4's Streets Ahead, deemed it genius", in the way that it simplifies room plans.

At this year's MyHome. ie event in the RDS, guest designer Linda Barker also enthused on the modelrooms kit, saying that it dispenses with the need to demonstrate size and scale with fiddly bits of paper. Basically, the kit has set-to-scale furniture, appliances, doors, windows, walls, etc that can be assembled to create your own room plan, and these can be used with special cards with suggestions for space planning. Once you have your room plan in place, explains Galvin, you can take this to a kitchen or bathroom sales company, an interior designer or an architect, and show them exactly how you want a room to work.

Plans are generally difficult to interpret unless you are a qualified designer, architect or builder. The modelrooms kit gives people the opportunity to create a clear room plan without any skill or training. It gives people the chance to put all their ideas in one place, and see for themselves what their rooms may look like without having to trawl salesrooms and hope that someone can interpret their dream design."

Galvin, who has worked on projects with the Dublin Docklands Development Authority, and awardwinning practices such as O'Mahony Pike Architects and de Blacaam & Meagher Architects, has over 15 years experience in design and architectural model making, but it was when she was constantly approached by householders to design custom models of private residences that she realised how much more cost effective it would be to come up with a basic kit. Engaging friends and architect colleagues, she designed a prototype using magnetised pieces and a metal base and so modelrooms, and a whole new way of explaining space, was born.

Further info, and to buy online, visit: www. modelrooms. ie Full kit, 100