Category: At Home

Storage Wars

To be 100% honest, I have never seen the show that this post is named after. Storage does seem to be a war a lot of the time, though. “Me vs. My Stuff.” Sometimes I win, sometimes the stuff wins…

This week, I have been doing a lot of thinking about storage. Not for myself, because the storage situation in our current house is a nightmare (No idea what we’d do without the basement as a catch-all), but because an old friend of mine asked for some advice on reorganizing her closet.

Armed with measurements, pictures, and two “rules” to keep in mind: 1) consider a limited budget, and 2) no plastic bins (due to smell of off-gassing VOCs and environmental concerns) I proceeded to to research online for smart, well-designed storage options to maximize a space that, to be honest, was pretty much already “at capacity.”

Color: I went with storage pieces in a coordinating color palette: light wood tones and white. Lots of storage options come in these colors, so it’s an easy theme to go with, and to me it’s important that visually the space looks clean and crisp, especially when storing a lot of different items–it is easy to get overwhelmed by competing colors, patterns, and textures, and having some continuity can help tame the chaos.

Click the image below to be taken to my Storage Pinterest board where you can access each item at it’s respective store.

Items, in what I consider order of importance:

  1. One of my college roommates (who had a TON of clothes) got a drop-down secondary closet rod. It literally doubles the number of normal-length shirts one can hang up. The one I have selected here just hangs from the existing rod, meaning that there is no permanent installation! With an adustable length, it can accomodate the right number of shirts, and still have some space left on the high bar for dresses and other long items.
  2. Shelving: Storing items in stacked boxes is fine, if you don’t need to access the items in the bottom ones! Utilizing a shelving system with pull-out bins helps make items accessible, yet concealed. I especially like this system for shoes: a few pairs of shoes can go in each bin sorted by color or level of formality, and even men’s shoes should be able to fit. Other things like “tech junk” that is rarely used but seems like a good thing to keep around, scarves or other soft accessories. I do not own an EXPEDIT but I truly think that the repetition of the square shape can help any craziness seem a bit more orderly. Plus, with the open back, the large versions can even “float” in the middle of a room, defining space and providing storage at the same time.
  3. Laundry bin: Purchasing a large, durable and attractive laundry bin makes it possible to tuck it in the corner of a room and gain some real estate in the closet. Also, if you’re like me, a laundry bin stored in the closet will overflow onto the floor and the carpet ends up 100% obscured by dirty clothes. Putting it out in the open is a simple reminder to do laundry once it’s full (at least, this works for me). Here’s a cheaper DIY option for those with less coin, but more time on their hands.
  4. Hanging garment bags. I would LOVE to get one of these for myself to keep my out-of-season coats or special-occasion dresses in. Things have a tendency to get dusty, and I don’t want to have to sift through my not-frequently-worn items to make sure I didn’t tuck something in the back of the closet. I don’t want a ton of these cluttering up my closet, but corralling these particular items in a specific “pod” would be super-organized and super-functional!
  5. Shelf organizers. I can see these being a game-changer for anyone trying to organize multiple items on the shelf. Books, purses, other boxes… keep things from cascading into an empty space when one item is removed temporarily.

Stay tuned later in the week for some more organization goodness, featuring many of the items I blogged about today!

Welcome to my World

After a marathon session of editing and uploading photos last night, I finally have updated the home tour page with photos of the new place!

Can you call a place new when you’re already in month 6 of inhabiting it?

Anyway, here is a teaser shot. Click here to be taken to the full tour!

Gettin’ Low

Remember those blog resolutions I made about making sure to take more “before” and “during” photos to make my posts better? Remember how it was just a couple weeks ago that I proclaimed them to the world? I have been getting better as evidenced by my recent drawer clean-up, but, um, we made a change and forgot to shoot “before” pictures. Wop wop. Any habit takes time to develop, though. Anyway! Moving onward. No time to cry over unshot photos.

When we got married my parents got us a basic Hollywood bed frame to get the mattress and box spring off the floor–the below photos shows the setup from our old place, before we got our queen-sized mattress and with the bed at full height. It was perfect at the old apartment because the room itself was GIANT and everything had plenty of room to hang out. This particular bedspread (a “full/queen size,”) hit the floor and hid the Hollywood frame and all our under-bed storage. The bed scooted around, but not as much. I think the rug helped.

Unfortunately, with both Doug’s and my parents being “carpet people” we had never anticipated that on hardwood floors the wheeled bed frame would scoot all over the room, all the time. I am only slightly exaggerating.

You see, on carpet, it’s hard to move things. Especially with thick carpet where everything settles down into nice little divots that are a pain to get out of the carpet after rearranging furniture. On hardwoods, moving things is so easy. Now, add wheels to the object in question and you are in for a life of constantly repositioning furniture. Yes, even with the wheels in “locked” position! Take a simple act like sitting down on the bed to put shoes on. Scooooooooooot. How about when Mosey runs into the room at full speed and leaps on the bed with a toy in his mouth? Scooooooooooot. You get the picture. Tired of moving the bed back against the wall and/or squeezing through my measly walkway between the bed and the windows (the bed and subsequently the nightstand were totally scooted as far into the corner as possible) I decided to take executive action. Mattress, box spring, meet my friend, floor.

“Effortlessly styled to look lived-in” or “Messy room” …you decide.

Happily, losing those few inches and ditching the headboard actually makes the room seem much bigger. Considering the height of Doug’s wardrobe and the dresser (which is really close to the bed–the room is small), having the bed at full height made the room feel super crowded. Having lowered it gives the space, well, space and adds a sort of relaxed, bohemian vibe. At first I though Doug would object, seeing how he’s a million feet tall, maybe crouching all the way down to the floor would be an inconvenience for him–but he likes it too. And now it scoots around but only an inch or so at a time. It is so nice.

I’ll write up some more info on the bedspread presto-change-o at another time! :)

What do you think? 

PS: both of the couches in our living room are constantly scooting around the room all the time as well. Any advice/tips for keeping furniture put on wood/tile floors?