Showing posts with label storage. Show all posts
Showing posts with label storage. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 30, 2014

mini updates to the new house

although i feel like i haven't given many updates to the new house, we've been busy bees making it feel like home.  small touches like moving a plant to a different location or changing the duvet cover from an OFF-white one to a WHITE one makes such a big difference!

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new white pintuck duvet cover.  ( find it here )
cliché? maybe.  but i knew i wanted white, and i couldn't find another one reasonably-priced that i liked.  i'm the kind of person who has to FEEL it before I buy it, so just ordering one online wasn't going to cut it. we had the pillows from our old apartment, and the blue thing at the foot of the bed is a scarf.  i had been wearing that scarf a lot lately, tossed it on the bed changing my clothes one day, and decided i like it there! now it's decoration for the foot of the bed instead of a practical accessory to wear.  oops?

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new shoe cabinet.  (find it here)
when we first moved into the place, we found ourselves each leaving 5-6 pairs of shoes by the door.  that's a LOT of shoes. it got really cluttered really fast. this thing holds 2 rows of shoes per "drawer", meaning we can each stow away at least 6 pairs of shoes!  this also helps us in managing our shoe collection taking up the entire floor of 1 of only 2 closets in the whole apartment.  it also has a small drawer at the top, perfect for stowing our reusable grocery bags, sunglasses, all the "junk" that didn't have a home in our old apartment.  the only bad thing is that the base trim is taller than the legs can accommodate for.  if you look closely at the bottom of the second photo you can see that the back of the cabinet is supposed to sit above the trim, but instead rests against the trim.  we need to put something clever beneath the front legs to raise the cabinet.  i'm thinking something like bed risers, but not tacky.  not that bed risers are tacky, but they would look totally tacky used in that spot in that way.  anyone have clever ideas?

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new guest bedroom bed frame!  ( find it here , but we got the queen one)
i think i'm most excited about this one.  what I really wanted was a old iron bed frame with big thick rungs and a headboard AND toe board.  however, i didn't win that craigslist waiting game , and we settled for ikea instead.  it's not ALL bad though, this frame was just $129.  and even the ugly, gawdy, thin-rung vintage frame on craigslist were more than that.  i could only find full-sized vintage ones anyways. btw the balls/finials are missing from this photo, you'll have to wait til the finished room to see them. (aka, we were lazy and didn't finish it yet)

now we just have to get the mattress delivered tonight (eek!) this new bed! i am so excited... i feel like a real adult (and slightly guilty) with a "spare bedroom" and all.  but, in our defense, we "are" getting married and plan to have kids sometime in the future ;)  in the meantime... who's coming to visit?

cheers.
jenn

Tuesday, April 15, 2014

embracing the tiny kitchen

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sure, yesterday morning i knocked my head on the corner of an open cabinet above my head, and sure we run into each other, and sure our sink practically only fits just a cereal bowl....

...but is it weird that i'm actually LOVING the tiny tiny kitchen?

here's why:
  1. it has the "kitchen triangle" - if you draw a line from the sink to the fridge to the stove to the sink it makes a triangle.  i never knew how much this really mattered until i had a kitchen that was actually laid out this way.  so many brownstone apartments get stuck with long and narrow kitchens, making the only practical layout one with EVERYTHING on one wall, and NOTHING on the opposite wall.
  2. i can get almost anything without moving my feet - ok maybe i'll take a step sideways or backwards, but still, i don't have to go across the room, into the pantry, on top of  stool just to get the sugar... it's 1 step and an arms reach away from where i do nearly all my prepping.
  3. i'm forced to purge - do i really need 4 pairing knives? do i really need that mango corer? (sorry mom) do i really need to have 4 bottle cap openers and 2 wine bottle openers? no, no, no, and no. it really does feel good to get rid of things we don't need, but kept because we had the space in the old kitchen. and when's the last time we used the deli slicer anyways?
maybe i'm still on the high that i finally OWN my home instead of rent, but we're learning more and more everyday that "more" space doesn't always mean "better" space.  finding more efficient ways of tetris-ing storing things is so fun!

check out a little (very little) kitchen tour below.