More Accessory Storage...

Tom remarked the other day while we were putting away clothes how he has his wardrobe to store all his clothes and I have my wardrobe, chest of drawers, the old bedside tables in the corner (my underwear, tights and socks are in them), my shoes in the trunk and my bags and belts under the bed. For someone who doesn't buy clothes that often I have a lot of them and I definitely spread them out! So I've had a clear out of the wardrobe, and I also noticed that actually my shoes took up only about half of the available space in the trunk, so I thought it would be good to get all my handbags and belts into here as well and have all of my shoes and accessories together!

The only problem is the space that was left was high not wide so I needed to layer my shoes, but the box from our old laptop fit perfectly on top of the bottom layer of shoes

 Then I put the shoes I wear more often on the top

The storage box my bags were in while under the bed fit perfectly next to them

Then I put the lid on and laid my belts on top

I moved this picture off the turtle tank as I was worried about it getting damp (it's been replaced by a wipeable print that I'll share picture of soon) and put it on here for now, although eventually I want it to go over the bed once we have agreed with the landlord where we can put some picture hooks (yay things on the wall finally!)

Voilà!

And there is an actual space under the bed now, how long do we think that will last?

Bedroom Progress

After the new wardrobes arrived the bedroom looks so much better already

 We will get another ottoman for Toms wardrobe at some point I think

Although there is still a bit too much clutter on this side for my liking Under the bed looks better, we swapped the bedding out of the ottoman that's on top of my wardrobe for things like Christmas decorations, empty boxes and other stuff we aren't going to need very often. Because I can't reach into the ottomans it has to be things in there I can wait for Tom to get!

I also moved this canvas off the top of the tank in the hallway onto the trunk

This side of the room looks a bit bare and the other side looks a bit cluttered so I think I might move some things away from the window to balance it out a bit more at some point. The thing leant against the radiator is a guitar stand that apparently doesn't work very well so I'm going to see if Tom might want to get rid of it, the pile of frames underneath the radiator I'm hoping to find places for in here, and the thing on the radiator is Minty's cat bed

It's not exactly pretty but she loves it :)

Shoe Storage

Since we got our new wardrobes I had to find a new place for my shoes as my wardrobe won't fit anything hanging over the door, so the shoe rack had to go. My day to day shoes live by the front door, but there's not really enough room in there for all of them. Luckily as we had the new wardrobe in the hallway my lovely old trunk was empty and just waiting to be put to use.

 Ta-Dah!

The bedroom was still a mess when these were taken, as you can see in the top picture we still have 3 wardrobes in here, but it's looking a bit better now as my old wardrobe went to someone on freecycle and we've tidied it up a bit in there. I'll share the pictures soon!

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