A tidy living room is not a tidiness problem. It is a storage problem wearing a disguise. If the remotes, the chargers, the post and the children's felt tips have nowhere to live, no amount of tidying fixes it — you are just moving the same objects between surfaces every evening.

These living room storage ideas are about giving everything a home, so that tidying takes two minutes rather than twenty. Most of it comes down to four pieces of furniture and one decision about each of them.

Closed or open? Decide that first

Every storage decision in a living room is really this question: is this something you want to look at, or something you want to stop looking at?

Open shelving is for the things that earn their place visually — books, a few objects, photographs. It is cheaper, it keeps a room feeling light, and it gives a wall something to say. The catch is that open shelves need editing. Anything you put on them, you are choosing to look at every day.

Closed storage is for everything else, and "everything else" is more than people expect: the router, the cables, the spare batteries, the paperwork, the board games, the things that arrived in the post and have not been dealt with. A room with nowhere to put those will never look calm, however often you tidy it.

The working rule is roughly two-thirds closed, one-third open. Most people get that ratio backwards and then wonder why the room looks busy.

A tidy living room is not a tidiness problem. It is a storage problem wearing a disguise.

The sideboard is the workhorse

If you buy one piece of living room storage, make it a sideboard. Nothing else holds as much while taking up so little of the room, and nothing else gives you a proper surface at the same time.

Inside goes the stuff nobody needs to see. On top goes the lamp. It is the single most useful piece of furniture in most Highland living rooms, and it is usually the last one people think to buy.

How to style a sideboard: the rule of three

Styling a sideboard trips people up because they either leave it bare or cover it completely. The rule of three fixes it. Group items in threes, at three different heights:

• One tall thing. Usually a lamp. It anchors the group and gives you light at a useful height.
• One medium thing. A vase, a plant, a framed photograph, a stack of two or three books.
• One low, horizontal thing. A tray, a bowl, a shallow dish for keys. This is the one people leave out, and it is what stops the group looking like a row.

Two further rules make it look considered rather than arranged. Leave about a third of the top clear — empty space is what tells the eye this was deliberate. And group your three toward one end rather than centring them, then balance the other end with a single larger item, such as a leaning picture or a mirror.

TV units: the cable problem

A TV unit is judged on what you cannot see. The screen is the easy part; the mess behind it is what makes a living room look untidy from the sofa.

When you are comparing TV units, look at the back before the front. Three things matter:

• Cable cut-outs. A hole in the back panel is the difference between cables running tidily down behind and cables draped over the top. Check there is one, and that it is where you need it.
• Depth for a router. Routers are deeper than people expect and need air around them. A shallow unit with a closed back will cook one. Allow real depth, and make sure air can move.
• A shelf for the box. Set-top boxes need line of sight for a remote unless everything runs over wifi. An open shelf or a glazed door solves it; a solid door does not.

On height: keep the unit low and long. The centre of the screen wants to sit at roughly seated eye level, about 100cm from the floor, and a low unit keeps the visual weight down where it belongs.

Bookcases zone a room

A bookcase does two jobs at once. It stores a great deal in very little floor space, and it can divide a room without anyone building anything.

For storage, go tall rather than wide — one tall bookcase holds more than two low units and uses wall height that was doing nothing. For zoning, a bookcase turned side-on marks out a working corner or a reading end without closing the room off. Anchor it to the wall or floor if it is standing proud, particularly with children about.

The styling rule here is 60/40: around 60% books, 40% objects and clear space. All books and it reads as a library; all objects and it reads as a showroom. Lay some books flat in stacks rather than standing every one upright, and the whole thing relaxes.

Drawer and basket units for the small stuff

Remotes, chargers, headphones, hair bobbles, the felt tips. Small things are what actually make a room look cluttered, because there are so many of them and none of them have a home.

A drawer or basket unit within arm's reach of where you sit is the fix. Within reach matters — storage on the far side of the room does not get used, it gets ignored. If your lounge is tight on floor space, our small living room ideas cover fitting storage in without crowding it.

Wine cabinets and console tables: the extra surfaces

Two pieces worth knowing about, because they solve problems the obvious furniture does not.

A wine cabinet gives you closed storage plus a surface in a narrow footprint, and it does not have to hold wine — glasses, spirits, serving things, or simply more of the stuff you would rather not see.

A console table is the answer for a wall too narrow for a sideboard, or for the space behind a sofa that is otherwise dead. At around 35 to 45cm deep it barely intrudes, and with a drawer it takes the daily clutter. It also doubles as a compact desk, which our home office ideas piece goes into.