Now all of us pee in the bathroom

No Tom hasn't been sleepwalking (actually that's WAY more likely to be me, I am quite the chatterbox in my sleep apparently), but 2 members of our family have been going to the toilet in the dining area, which isn't very nice.

After writing the post from last week I started to wonder why we hadn't sorted our litter tray situation yet. It's one of those things that you live with for a while and really it isn't the best solution but you just don't get round to changing it as there are more pressing things to do. Reading the post back though and how many times I said that the set up we have 'wasn't ideal' or 'wasn't great' I realised that I really needed to look at it again.

The original plan moving in was to put it in the hallway (maybe under the armchair in there so out of sight) but turns out we have to keep them out of there due to a busy road outside the front door and because they pee on the doormat. Cats are so fun sometimes.

It ended up between the desk and turtle tank in the 'office' and when we turned that into a dining area it became less than ideal having the litter tray in there.

I was just in front of the turtle tank for months and we would scoot it round the corner into the bathroom when eating in there but I got sick of looking at it all the time. Also it was a high traffic area being next to the living room, bathroom and bedroom and having it in a thoroughfare isn't good as it puts the cats off using it, not what you want as they will go somewhere!

I moved it to under the dining table for a few weeks, which got it out of sight but really wasn't very nice. Whenever we wanted to use the table we had to move the tray into the bathroom and then sweep or even mop under the table. Not conducive to a nice relaxing meal, meaning we weren't using the table much. They also kept going behind the back table leg or under the benches, I think because they like privacy.

We never had it in the bathroom at our last place because there just was not the space (unless it went next to the bath, which ran the risk of me accidentally standing in it getting out of the shower without my glasses on...ewww), but I had a think about it and realised that there should be space in our bathroom here we just had too much stuff in there. I had a little move around and managed to clear a space for it. Really all I had to do was move the loo roll basket to the other side and put the wicker drawers under the sink, I don't know why I didn't do it before.

We just need to get used to leaving the bathroom door open when we aren't in there, but this definitely is an improvement we can use the dining table whenever we want to and the tray is out of sight in the bathroom. If I want to have a long bath I might pull it out into the dining room but that's going to be less often than vice versa when we wanted to use the dining room before. We had Sunday dinner yesterday and it was great to just be able to eat at the table and not have to spend time cleaning it. Also bonus is the bathroom has an extractor fan, so we don't get smells hanging around, and they are confined to the bathroom anyway if they do happen to be particularly stinky that day (I swear we feed them the same every day but some days the smell is 100% worse!)

Jazzie chose that moment to need a pee, so pan to the sink!

The drawers fit quite nicely, that's some sea glass on top of them in the dish that I picked up in Albania last year. I might just get rid of those scales behind the sink, I never weigh myself so I don't know why I have them.

Anyone else been solving some glaringly obvious problems? Feels great to make a big change by doing literally 5 minutes work!

Before the big declutter

I'll post our list for the big declutter on Wednesday, so if you're playing along at home get ready to get rid! See last weeks post here on the method.

I thought I'd share some before photos today because A.the whole flat is clean after a bank holiday housework blitz and B. I'm hoping it will look a bit different in a few weeks!

The Kitchen - Problem areas:
Top of the microwave
Countertops
Food cupboard

The thing on top of the hob is the oven shelves soaking in the overnight oven cleaner

The Living Room - Problem Areas:
Box under coffee table
Corners by the bookshelves

The dining room/hallway (not really sure what to call his room now it's no longer the 'office') - Problem Areas:
Shelves under the turtle tank

The Bathroom - Problem Areas:
Cosmetics
Built in cupboard

The Hallway - Problem Areas
Bookshelves
Cupboard
Music Equipment
Shoes
Computer Equipment
Chairs (we have 4 dining chairs and an armchair in here and never sit on any of them!)

This box is also still here, Tom needs to sort it out or it will just be labelled 'Sell' and become the start of the car boot pile...

The Bedroom - Problem Areas:
Under the bed
Ottomans

The bag on the bed is full of clothes that were on ebay and ended yesterday and I'm either sending off or if they didn't sell getting rid of elsewhere

So that's our flat as of yesterday, pretty clean and tidy but cluttered in some areas. I can't wait to get rid of some things and make some room!

Progress

We've been living in our flat 6 months now, so I thought it's a good time to look back and see what progress we've made (and what we still have left to do...which is plenty!)

Let's start with the kitchen, probably the room that's least changed

We've decluttered and added in some storage jars and storage solutions, also we've added in some finishing touches like the 'keep calm' sign. Still left to do in here are new mugs (thinking those DIY sharpie decorated ones that are all over Pinterest), new bread bin and mug tree, new canisters for tea coffee and sugar (thinking silver metallic) new recycling bin, maybe a rug or at least a doormat, new fruit bowl and possibly a window treatment. Also we still need to declutter some problem area like the top of the microwave.

You can see larger photos and more detail on the changes in the kitchen here, here and here.

Onto the living room

We got the new bookshelves and I changed the basket under the table for a larger one with a lid (It came with the ottomans from the bedroom), we also added in my DIY runner. Other than that the changes have been minor rearrangements of frames and CDs etc, I want to eventually get an ottoman or trunk to use as a coffee table, change the TV unit, add some art/photo frames on the fireplace (where we have been told we can put picture hooks, yay!), add more pillows to the sofa, maybe make a faux roman blind for the window (to go over the existing boring one) and generally add in a bit of colour as the room is a bit bland! Possibly thinking yellow to go with the Fender...

You can see more on the living room here and more on the DIY runner here.

The into the Office

We have some art on the tank and a mat under the cat litter tray, but the desk is now even more of a mess as we have 2 PC screens at the moment (anyone want to buy one?!). We are looking at the whole computer situation, as I have my new netbook (which came with one of those screens) so very rarely use the desktop, Tom uses it sometimes but if we had a laptop that did iTunes and Tom could play games on we could get rid the desktop, freeing up some space. This all costs money though so will be something we sort out gradually. We also want to get a new desk and new desk chair, and possibly a rug under the desk. The turtle tank will also need replacing at some point (see this post on the leak we had the other week!) but that's also something quite expensive that we will need to save up for.

You can see more on the office here and here

Then into the bathroom

This room, like the kitchen, hasn't really changed a great deal it has mostly just been decluttered and I'm trying to not buy more than one bottle of something at a time (you know when your shampoo is on offer so you buy 5 bottles...yeah I'm trying not to do that). I want to get some more art or something in here as it's a bit bland, I'm thinking on the back of the toilet as I like the lilies there in this post. Also I think we need a new bath mat as our has goe a bit off white, new towels probably soonish as well as I bought really cheap ones and they're starting to go a bit off colour (they also looked great in our last bathroom but I'd prefer black or white ones here).

You can read more on the bathroom here and here

The bedroom, it was gross before!

We've gotten rid of the 2 armchairs that were in there, reorganised my shoes, moved the trunk in from the hallway, got new wardrobes, got ottomans for storage on top of the wardrobes, rationalised the stuff under the bed and moved a lot of it out to the wardrobe in the hallway, brought the canvas in from the office, got new paperwork storage and generally tidied up! To be honest it still has a long way to go, I want to get a new bed, get bedside tables, rearrange the furniture so the chest of drawers isn't in front of the window (makes it hard to open the window), add some art or photos to the chimney breast (again this is where we've been told we can put picture hooks) get new bedding and a mirror, get some bedside lamps and bring a bit of a cohesive colour scheme in (so far we have about 10 different wood tones and 5 different textiles in here and it looks a bit crazy). It all seems to hinge on the new bed I so once we have that we can do the rest.

You can see more on the bedroom here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

Then onto the entrance hall way, probably the most transformed room so far!

I reorganised in here a few times before getting our lovely big wardrobe to put all our junk in, it's a room that isn't really used by us except to walk through when we come in and out of the flat and for storage, so really I want to give this space a use other than drying clothes. As we don't spend any time in here more often than not it's full of clothes airers with washing drying on them, so you come in the door and it looks like this

Not exactly a warm welcome. So our aim in here is to maximise space so we could actually spend time in here, I'm thinking a reading nook as all the bookshelves are in here.

You can see more on the entrance hall and how we got to this point here, here and here

Onto the outside space, really we have just planted some things and are waiting to see how they do but it looks better already in the back garden

We're just waiting for seeds to grow and plants to fill in, then we might get a few more pots and some pretty garden things but we will build it up over time. There's not been any change in the front of the flat, not a lot we can change really!

You can see more on the garden here, and here.

There's the last 6 months of projects and changes, it's nice to look back and what you've achieved sometimes and see how much progress you've made even though there is plenty left to do!

Bathroom Decluttering

I had one of those weekends a while back, where you just think 'right, I've been saying I must do this for weeks, this weekend it is happening'. I walked into town and bought 2 shower caddies on the Friday and spent Saturday morning reorganising the bathroom as I had been moaning about it being too cluttered for weeks but hadn't actually done anything about it.

Before:

 The metal bottles were also starting to leave rust marks, which thankfully came out after soaking in bleach.

This area is quite handy as we have no shelves in here but it was all starting to get a bit too cluttered.

I wanted to get things off the side of the bath and sink as it looked messy, it made it harder to clean and the bottles were starting to collect water behind them causing mildew.

After:

I attached a second shower caddy to this redundant shower unit, so one has all of our shower stuff and one has all the rest of our toiletries.

Much better! Now I can clean around the bath in 2 seconds, without having to move all the bottles

It also got all the stuff off this shelf, leaving room for some pretty ornaments, the star votives are wedding favours from our friends Sam and Ben's wedding. The owl is from our holiday to the Dominican Republic, I've had the turtle since I was a kid I think it's from the rainforest cafe, and I found the blue bottle in a charity shop (our spare room used to be blue).

I've also had these for years and really have no idea where they're from, but I moved them to the top of the cistern for now, although eventually I'd like to put something larger here to balance things out, as we have loads of little things in here but no focal point.

I wear glasses and have about 10 pairs (I'm not even exaggerating there), so there is often at least one pair in the bathroom (as I take them off before getting in the shower, then put a different pair on when I get dressed), I think this is meant to be a soap dish but I put it here to be a drop spot for me to leave glasses and hair ties etc so they don't clutter up the shelf above the sink.

 Much less clutter, and also easier to clean

 There are still some larger bottles behind the sink, and that's the scales underneath

It's so much clearer in here now and I can just wipe over everything when I'm cleaning the bathroom rather than having to move loads of bottles around each time. The caddies were 4.99 each from Argos, they do larger ones but it was actually cheaper to get 2 smaller and it means we can store stuff I wouldn't necessarily want in the shower (Like deodorant, face wipes) in the other one.

I spent the Saturday afternoon sorting out the bedroom and finally have pictures to share of it after our new wardrobes went in so will share those soon!

The Other Shoe Rack

I mentioned in the last post I bought 2 shoe hangers, even though all my shoes fitted into one. This is because I saw a picture on Pinterest that gave me a bit of an epiphany regarding this cupboard in the bathroom that I said I wanted to make better use of

It makes sense for us to keep the cleaning supplies in this cupboard as in our last house we kept them in the kitchen but we don't have cabinet space for them here. They were at the back in his picture in carrier bags, behind the ironing board and mop. I originally then put it all into 2 plastic boxes and stacked them at the back in the same place. However as there's a shelf at the back all of the taller stuff like the ironing board had to go at the front, so to get to the cleaning supplies I had to take everything in the front of that picture out of the cupboard, remove the box to get what I wanted out then put it all back in. This was a massive pain in the backside to do just to grab some polish so after having done it a few times I was ready to find somewhere else to keep this stuff. I saw a picture on Pinterest of shoe hangers being cut up and stuck to the inside of bathroom cabinets to store cosmetics, and I came up with this:

I used the second shoe hanger, just hung over the inside of the door with all of the cleaning supplies I would need on a day to day basis in there, so now when one of the cats pukes on the floor I can just grab the carpet cleaner (Always have a good spot cleaner if you have cats, espcially if you rent!). It also means there's a bit more room in this cupboard

So now I can also keep in here the medicine box and the lightbulbs (behind the ironing board) which were in the kitchen before and as we're struggling for space in there a bit it makes sense to move things into here. I want to find a shelving unit that can stand on that shelf at the back, then we can have shelves going further up to maximise the space in this cupboard and move more stuff into here from the kitchen (Placemats, christmas themed tableware) and also the bedroom (blankets and bedding in boxes), as it's the only built in storage we have I want to get as much in here as possible.

That's how we reorganised our storage space with something meant for another job, so always keep in mind you don't have to use something for it's intended purpose for it to be perfect for the job!