Bread Bin to Spice Rack

Our kitchen is pretty new and lovely, so we aren't planning to do a lot in here other than try and keep our stuff under control and keep it looking tidy. There are less cabinets here than we had at our last house so we need to find storage solutions for a lot of things, like spices. We kept them in a cabinet at our last house but there's no room for them here since all the cabinets are full. I looked around for a while for a spice rack, but most seemed to be wall mouted ones which we can't have, and the counter top ones I did see either didn't hold enough jars to house our collection or I just didn't like them (And as it will be on the counter top I'd have to look at it every day so didn't want to settle for something I didn't like). So one corner of the kitchen looked like this for a while, the spices are all in that carrier bag.

So on the same shopping trip as when I got the ottomans in the last post I bought this:

It's meant to be a mini bread bin 11.99 from The Range (although it wouldn't fit a loaf of bread, maybe only about 4 bread rolls)

We keep the most used ones like salts, pepper, basil, mint and nutmeg on top for easy access.

Then the rest all go inside and are hidden away. The canvas behind is from HomeSense bought a few years ago now, we also have these other two, they were under a tenner each I think.

Much better, although there is still too much out on the counters for my liking so there will be more reorganising to come.

Junk in the Trunk

We downsized to move to our current flat from a two bedroom to a one bedroom, although we didn't lose a lot (if anything) in floor plan as we do have those 2 hallway areas that make up for it. However we did lose the garage and the attic which were both full of stuff at our last house. This means that although we got rid of a lot of stuff before we moved and are still getting rid of things now we are eager to get our hands on any storage solutions going.

After our trip to The Range to get our book shelves I went back to get some things we saw there but didn't buy at the time. One was this:

A set of one large and 2 small hampers, £49.99. Which is a bargain for how much storage space they allow, they were destined for the hallway.

I just wanted to make the room look better and a bit more usable as one side looks like this which is fine (Although the bookshelves don't match as 2 were in our spare room and one was in the living room at our last house)

But turn around and hiding behind the door is this mess

So I filled both our new hamper and the old trunk that's hiding under all that mess in the picture above with smaller items

All of Toms music equipment I sorted into this small chest of drawers that we have had for years, it's even filed (You can tell I'm not the musician huh?) into top drawer microphones, headphones and misc small items like plectrums, second drawer pedals and bottom drawer cables. I restrainied myself from labelling the drawers. I'm really not that sad that I file everything just, well, um, ok yeah I actually probably have some kind of organisational system for most things. My nickname really should be Monica, although my need to organise everything has found me a job that I'm told I'm good at so it has it's up side!

Much better! The view now when you walk in the front door

And to the left the shoe rack

And to the right the bookshelves and our spare chairs (Freecycle finds that I repainted that colour a while back, I'll do a how to at some point) and Toms amplifiers.

I got this old chest for £10 from a guy who was selling the whole contents of his house, he had such an interesting attic full of stuff like this and I could have bought about 10 of these from him if we had room for them! I'm planing to clean it up (Not too much though as I like the worn look) and maybe even use it as a coffee table.

Although this room is mostly for storage and we don't spend a lot of time in here I do like having some pictures and pretty canvases in here as we pass them every time we go out the door.

Our post and key bowl and some pictures of our beautiful nieces

The obligatory lint rollers by the door - we have 2 cats! Underneath is a box full of our gloves, scarves and hats and our bike pumps etc and backpacks. The canveses all came as a set of 3 from Asda a while back.

That was the first change to this room, I expect there will be loads more as we would like to make the room a bit more useable not just a storage area. The eventual plan is to get a large wardrobe or storage cupboard so that we can store large (Toms amplifiers, our suitcases) and small (tools, board games) things in there. There is so much stored under the bed that it's all starting to poke out the sides and it would be great to get some of the larger items like the Christmas tree out from under there (as I never considered it before but where the hell do you keep the Christmas tree when you don't have an attic?!). The hamper could then be reused in the bedroom to store all the bedding that is currently shoved on top of Toms wardrobe in an ikea bag. The smaller hampers don't have a home as yet but I'm sure I'll find somewhere for them before too long.

The other thing I bought was a solution to an issue in the kitchen, more on that in another post. 

P.S like the snazzy title? I thought it was hilarious when I thought of it...not so sure now

First Upgrade!

The first upgrade we made in the living room was quite small, although it made such a difference in the room.

We bought our old DVD/CD stands for I think £5 each from a friend. However I pictured taller shelves either side of the fireplace for DVDs, CDs and some photo frames or ornaments as soon as I saw this room. Unfortunately we can't put shelves up on the walls, there is a damp proof coating under the plaster that cannot be perforated so we cannot hang anything on the walls below 1.5m. As this is a lower ground floor flat it's more likely to have damp or mould problems so I'm more than happy with these rules, as having had issues with damp/mould before I want to avoid it as much as the landlord and I'm glad they've taken the precaution.

Although I can still see those floor to ceiling shelves in my head, white shelves maybe with built in cabinets at the bottom for storage (something like these), and it is disappointing not to be able have them but that's what being a tenant is about, sometimes adapting your plans to the property not the other way around.

So back to the point, our current DVD shelves were too small and too narrow and we had 3 not 2 so it resulted in this:

Not a great look and it also made for a useless corner that just collected things

We were on the hunt for some taller and wider shelves, but as the skirting boards are very thick the shelves were going to be a few cm away from the walls either side and were never going to fill the whole space and get that built in look I was hoping for.

I thought about buying shelves wide enough to fill the whole space then DIYing a solution to having a narrower base, but this would have made them a bit useless if we moved as they would have been adapted to fit such a specific space and being a tenant it is always good to remember when buying furniture that you may need to use it again in a different property. Personally I don't want to invest too much money or time into something that won't be useable if we move, as eventually we will leave here, even if it's not until we buy our own place.

We wanted bookshelves rather than DVD stands as they're more flexible, we want to keep these for longer than the last ones and if we end up moving or using these in a different room they can store a multitude of things not just DVDs or CDs.

So we ended up going for these

 They are narrower than I planned but it allowed for this

Storing things like the laptop, wii fit board and a guitar down the side of each one meant less clutter in this corner, yay to less clutter!

This also meant a reorganisation where our pictures were, well just an organisation really as there was no thought into it before they were just unpacked and leant againast any spare wall space.

Due to the stereo being on the shelves on the right it meant the extension cord we use to power it, and all of our other entertainment stuff (There are only 2 sockets this side of the room), was exposed, so I put a photo frame over it for now. This is meant to be a temporary solution but I actually like it more than cable tidies!

This is on top of the shelves on the left, a frame of momentos from our holiday to California last year. The sign hung on the shelves was a present from Tom! I wonder what he's trying to tell me...

More holiday pictures (From Yosemite and Furteventura) and some ornaments (turtles and my apprenticeship award) in with the DVDs on the left.

More pictures (Also from Fuerteventura) in the shelves on the right, and as our CD collection expands we can start to use this shelf if needed

Toms guitars, his pride and joy, which used to be on the wall in our previous house (Along with a frame wall, hence why we have so many picture frames scattered around), but now he has on stands.

So that's our first little upgrade. The bookshelves are from The Range and cost £54 each. They're solid pine and are just stained that darker colour, so if the mood struck me I could paint them if I wanted to personalise them a little more or if we moved to a new place and wanted them another colour, I have an ever increasing amount of books so even if we moved and couldn't make them work in the living room for DVDs they would never go unused!