Thursday, July 1, 2010

Rearranging the Living Room

There is a long-standing joke in our family: When we're bored, we move furniture. Well, I haven't moved our furniture around a lot since we moved in, but I've been pondering on it and getting a 'hankerin' to do it for a long time now. BUT I actually had a purpose in moving everything, besides just being bored. We have a lot of furniture compared to the size of our living room, and I had been trying to think of ways to make the area seem more open and roomy. In conjunction with that goal, the entry way closet was a horrendious mess. I usually keep it pretty neat, but a lot of stuff had just been piled in until you couldn't even get in the closet, let alone find something. So I made some goals and started thinking about how to achieve them.

The Closet:

1. Make everything in the closet easily accessible.

2. Organize the closet so it would be easy to maintain and therefore not get jumbled again.

3. Put my hopechest in the closet, completely cleared off so I can use it as a gift wrapping / mailing prep station. (all the gift wrapping supplies are in the closet)

4. Eventually, make stations and organized places for things like flowerbed tools, Cadence's outside things, etc.

The Living Room:

1. Make the space seem more open and less cluttered.

2. Get Cadence's toys out of the middle of the walkway between the living room and dining room.

3. Create a space just for Cadence to play, away from all the no-no's :)

I finally figured out some of it (obviously, the closet isn't finished to my specifications yet, but it is good enough it has stayed uncluttered over a month now.) and started working. Tony came home from work one day, the closet was clean, the hope chest was out of the living room, and the CD racks had mysteriously disappeared (I put them in the closet too. His CD changer holds 100 CD's, so we rarely actually get a CD off the rack.). He walked in and said something to the effect of, "Wow, you finally broke down and let your true nature come out." After that snide comment, I made him help me move the bookshelf, along with all of Cadence's toys.

I promise, it had never been this bad before. Just looking at this picture makes me cringe.

As you can see, Cadence's toys and books often - ok, always - spilled out to block the walkway from the living room to the dining room...

...and through the living room. Yikes! (Another time I'll talk about our basket rotation - fun!)

Here is the closet in it's current state. Much better eh? As you can see, the hope chest fits perfect, and as soon as I'm finished clearing it (there's not much to clear, I just have to find a place for the lamp, since the booster seat is usually at the kitchen table) I can use it for wrapping gifts or whatever I need.

We have everything in here. Above this rack is all our camping gear. The top box is things to donate, the next box is Cadence's outgrown clothes (when it's full I add it to tubs in the attic), bottom shelf if gift wrapping supplies. In the tubs on the floor we have gifts we've bought cheap or throughout the year for specific upcoming occasions, and just to the right of that, gift bags and boxes. Also in this closet: coats/jackets, some instruments, packing gear, suitcases, all extra bags, baskets, etc., the CD racks, Cadence's outside toys and gear, and some flower bed supplies. Wow! That's a lot of stuff crammed in that square footage - and now, we can easily get to all of it!

Here is Cadence's new space. Now she can spread out her toys some without cluttering up the whole living room and blocking our walkways.

Without the bookshelf and CD racks, this side of the room is much more open, and let me tell you, walking without tripping is amazing! Now it looks a little off balance to me... hmmm... maybe I'll get to move more furniture ;)

From this angle, you can barely even see Cadence's toys, yet they are all out and she's been playing!

Well... that's my very long winded way of saying:
Furniture Move
Space Open
Cadence Toys
No Trip
Stuff Can See, Closet
Yay!

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