Good morning! 🙂 I hope everyone’s week is off to a great start. I’m off to visit my sweet nephew later this afternoon and I’m so excited!
Our little house has two bedrooms. Since we moved in I think we have been struggling with what to do with this extra room. We don’t have kids yet, we don’t really need a guest bedroom, but we do have a computer and books and a printer…office stuff! The furniture in this room has moved along with us many times over the years. It is pretty beat up and I’m hopeful that in the coming months and year (?) we can either paint these pieces or design a new room entirely. I have dreams of making this space a room where I can work but also a room where we can retreat to for quiet… a cozy room. I have a whole floor plan and design plan worked out for this ideal room. 😉 Are you surprised? Lol… BUT for the time being, the goal was just to get this room organized, decluttered, and useable.
Because we all know that when a room has no purpose, it becomes the trash room. Where things go to die. Or is that just me? Ha…
This room had become the place where we put things that we didn’t know where else to put. A catch-all for mail and papers that had not been filed. A place where things I didn’t want to deal with at the moment went to live. Not good. So at the beginning of January, I decided to really start tackling this space.
I shared these pictures on Instagram while I was in the thick of it. This was how the room looked for a couple of weeks — I would just work on it when I could and be grateful that I had a door that I could close. There was so much to go through. So much that had to be thrown away or recycled. So much that I donated. So much that I was ‘saving for later.’ So. Many. Duplicates. Ugh.
This picture was taken as the room started to take shape. At this point I had whittled away the big clutter and I just had a bunch of annoying little things to look through. Not my favorite!
And here’s our little room. I placed the rug on an angle as you enter the room to make it a little bit more interesting. Adding the tassel garland over the window is something fun in here until I figure out a window treatment someday. The mirrored closet doors are not my favorite feature but they serve a brilliant purpose in our two bedrooms because they make the small rooms appear bigger. Grateful for that!
This is our desk. I really hardly use this space, which is why I would love to make this room a little bit more relevant to how we live. We have a desktop computer that is rarely used anymore so ideally we would sell that and then buy a small writing desk that would be used for laptop work. But for now, this is what we’re working with. It’s all a process! I made this little ‘inbox’ for myself from the top of a cute box that I received a gift in at Christmas and I added some pretty paper from The Dollar Store to the bottom just for fun. Also, that coffee warmer on the right-hand is one of my favorite things ever!
My craft supplies got a huge overhaul. I don’t have a ton but what I did have was so disorganized and I was hanging on to so many things for later that I ended up just donating a bunch of things. Holiday treat bags are my nemesis. I’m going for simplicity this year and that means I don’t need things like special holiday treat bags, you know what I’m saying? I’m remembering that we live in just over 1,000 square feet and I do not have room for everything! On my little card table work station I have this caddy that I used for our brunch with family last month and some things that inspire me — sand from our last trip to Oceanside, rocks to be painted, and my Gramma’s beads that I treasure.
I send a bunch of snail mail, so a place front and center for that with no digging required was high on my priority list. I love having all of these things easily accessible.
These bins from IKEA have long-awaited a real purpose. For over a year they have each held their own special collection of random c-r-a-p. The ‘Current’ bin has supplies and items that I frequently access for any current projects I’m working on. The other two hold office supplies and also my gear for my Barre3 workouts. I have a whole bin that is EMPTY. So that was exciting!
Let’s talk books. I don’t think I will ever be someone who can limit my books to a certain number. But I only have so much space and at this point we only have one place where books live in our house, so I am limited in that way. I decided to be pretty ruthless about what I kept. Anything that I would really want to read again, I kept. The same went for my husband. Design books that really inspired me — yes. A few keepsake books — yes. Everything else was donated. Now that I have these parameters in place, it’s really easy for me to decide when I finish a book if I am keeping it or donating it. A lot of used book stores will buy your books back and then give you credit for their store, so I like to do that, too.
I stored our books in various ways on the shelves… Some by genre, some by author (Emily Giffin gets her own shelf!), some by the time period… I tried to keep each shelf in a ‘family’ of sorts so that when I finish a book that I want to keep, it will have a specific place that it fits into.
Bags on the floor are not my thing, but that’s where my work bags have been living for over two years. Command hooks are my favorite.
Finally, Kuma’s “house.” He is a dog with a bed in every room. This room and this “house” is kind of his storm retreat. If there is a loud storm, or if things are loud in general, or if he just needs some peace and quiet he goes in this little covered space that Grey made for him out of PVC pipe. I upgraded his ‘window treatment’ with a little bit of pom pom trim that I found when I was decluttering the craft supplies. Because he obviously deserves it, and also because it makes me smile every time I see it. 🙂 It truly is the little things.
Whew! If you’ve hung on until the very end, thank you! I’ll share more updates of this never-before-seen-on-the-blog space as they happen. But this room is proof for me that sometimes it’s not about the design or decorating being everything you’ve ever dreamed of — sometimes it’s just about feeling like everything has a place and things are organized. That alone can make a room feel brand new!
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