Storage solutions - Blogtoberfest day 10

Now in the middle of Spring (though with the weather in Melbourne you wouldn't know it), I have decided it is time to get a little organised and do a Spring clean. So been busy looking for some storage ideas for different areas of my home.

 

Source

Source- Love that these are old wine crates.

 

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The three photos below I love for toy storage ideas. Especially a fan of the magnetic strip for cars as my four year old boy has so many Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars and they just seem to keep multiplying. These photos have all come from the same place - source 








So another use for these plastic shoe holders. I think this would also work well for my daughters Barbies.

Spring or Christmas cleaning?

Now considering it is November, it is still considered Spring in Australia, but I really think the sorting or cleaning I did yesterday could more be called Christmas cleaning.

I started sorting through the kids toys, trying to decide what could be put in the shed and what to give to the Salvos. With Christmas being six and a half weeks away and my daughters 6th birthday being six weeks off, I have started to think about all the new toys that will suddenly descend on the house. This is not helped my my kids being the only two grandchildren on either side.

So yesterday I found myself busy sorting and thinking hard about storage, do I need another visit to IKEA? I think I might!

So what do you think, belated Spring cleaning or honest Christmas sorting and do you do this?

The hub of the home

In many houses the kitchen is the hub of the home and now with our extension and the new living space next to the kitchen we are no exception, though probably more exact for us it is the coffee table between the kitchen and family room.

This old table was put here quite by accident, just to get it out of the way but as soon as we did the kids gravitated to it. They do all their drawing and craft on it, play games and eat lunch and snacks. It is the perfect height for them and right in the middle of all the action.

The blue stools you can see in the picture above are great too as they are soft and the tops lift off with storage underneath. It helps that I got them for $10 each from Woolworths.

So we spent the weekend enjoying this space and Saturday watching our builder digging to prepare for installing the deck this week. So excited!

Shoes and bags - where do you put them?

What do you do with your shoes and bags when you come into your house? Is your place a shoes off kind of home?

Ok this is a post that says a little something about me which some of you may go, don't be so precious but here goes...

My house is a no shoe zone, has been for a while and since we have had the boards sanded and polished recently we are even more hot on it.

Of course this means my kids are well trained on this particular thing to the point of going into anyones house will immediately take shoes off. The issue I am facing at the moment is getting others to do the same. Some friends and family do easily but others need constant reminding to the point where it is getting uncomfortable. Would it be bad to put a sign in the hall saying Welcome - take shoes off here! - maybe a suggestion for one of you lovely graphic designers to do a print?


And then there is bags, now of course these are allowed in the house but the issue I have is where to put them? I am finding most people walk down the hall into the kitchen and drop them onto the central kitchen island bench. For some reason this gets to me, probably because it is my main food prep area (I like it to be clear). Or the put them on my lovely sideboard, pictured above and this I don't like much either. But I can't bring myself to ask them to put them in the nearby bookcase where I have a vacant shelf. My family who I can ask to move bags just look at me like I am a little mad!

So is there where you are going to tell am I am a little over the top? Maybe but even though I like these two things to be neater I do not run a minimalist, sterile house by any means. I love photos and kids stuff and things from our travels around the place, plus a big fan of bookcases.

So any suggestions? Do you have any house pet hates yourself?

Does size matter?

I have discovered recently that size matters to a certain extent but as long as you use what you have well and you cover what is required, bigger doesn't necessarily mean better.

Now before I go too far down this track I suppose I better explain that I am talking about house size! There is a general Australian trend for houses to get bigger and bigger hence the term McMansion. I have to say personally though that having inspected so many houses I have found the the medium size houses, with good storage and design are so much more appealing then the large ones.

Our house before we started the reno / extension was a two bedroom, one bathroom home with a toilet through a small laundry. We also lacked storage. This started to feel too small with two kids and regular interstate visitors (that would sleep in our lounge). Now by adding extra living space, two more bedrooms and extra bathroom and loads more storage the house feels huge but I know we will use every bit of space well.

A house much bigger to me means more cleaning, and also ones I have visited seem to often lack that homely feel I love. Instead one of my favourites is a friends double fronted cottage that isn't a big house by any means but is well designed and gives my friends and their three kids plus two dogs plenty of space to live. The house has such a warmth about it and you immediately feel comfortable.

What do you think? Do you love a well designed classic cottage or do you prefer a more modern larger house?

Hallway blue makeover

Those that have read my blog for a while may remember a post I did ohh some four months ago about painting my hallway blue and changing it from the dirty cream it was. Well It took us a while to decide on the blue (British Paints, Distant Shore) and with other continual renovation distractions even longer to paint it.

Love these Paris boxes that a friend bought me from a $2 shop. Great for keeping bit and pieces in. Have even managed to get Hubby to empty his pockets into these when he enters the door.

Now from the images below you can see we still need to paint and decorate the rest of the hallway..............

You can also see the edge of a cupboard door here (our linen cupboard) which you see as soon as you enter the hall. So am thinking of ideas to spruce the doors up.

Hope you have a good weekend, I may even try to finish painting the hall but with the weather so nice here in Melbourne I think I might just get out and about.

Before, during and after - walk in robe

Our walk in robe is finished and I love it. Before we had built in robes on the other side of which was our family bathroom.

Before

Now these have been removed the wall knocked through and new frame built to make a walk through robe and ensuite.

During

After

I know this looks very bare but believe me it is filling fast since these photos were taken.

Hope you all had a wonderful weekend. Ours was a busy one which included cleaning weatherboard now the brick is off the front of the house and I have to say it is looking fantastic. More photos later.

Christmas, birthdays, toys and storage

Well Christmas is fast approaching and we also have my daughter’s birthday five days before, so with this in mind I have started lists and shopping.

It quickly made me realise that I also need to think about storage or reducing the amount of kids toys in the house before they get all the new ones (especially as of January we will be living in half a house for six months).

As the only grandchildren on both sides they tend to get a lot. We are always telling family not to buy them so much but living interstate they see it as a great opportunity to make up for time not spent with them.

This reminded me that the second post I wrote on this blog was all about the toy invasion in our house – see here.

In summary I have found Ikea a great place for good, inexpensive storage options, use bookcases as much as possible and regularly reduce the toys by giving to friends with younger children or to the Salvation Army.

I also am looking at and recommending to others gift ideas that aren’t toys that I know the kids will still love, like a family pass to the Zoo, books, craft things and outdoor items including mini garden sets.

Love for bookcases - storage with style

I am now in packing mode getting ready for the builders to start in a few weeks and our bookcases are one of the first things I have started to pack as we have quite a few.

Packing up our books and seeing the emptiness left behind has made me realise that bookcases really are a feature in our house - they provide a wall of colour against our white walls adding character and warmth to the room.

I love how they reflect our families personality and style, housing our books, pictures, ornaments we have collected on our travels and different things my daughter has made.

They also provide what I call ‘storage with style’. Ours are filled with coloured boxes containing CDs and cane baskets filled with toys (you can buy all those pictured from IKEA). Not only do the baskets look great but my kids love them. Maybe I am just lucky but both my kids enjoy sorting through the baskets (they are just the right size for them) and then putting the toys back in them at the end.

The issue with bookcases though is if they get too untidy they don’t look that great. In my case I haven’t seen keeping them tidy as a chore (packing them up is though). The way I look at it is by swapping over ornaments, changing photos and other things you can give the room a little easy design re-fresh. Also if you are an avid reader like me it is great to pull books out and reorder just to remind yourself what you have.

The bookcase itself can also add a ‘style’ to a room. In our family room I love the warmth that our large bookcase made of recycled timber provides. Whereas the simple white bookcases in our lounge frame our white art deco fireplace really well. Our smaller bookcase in the hall acts as great storage for shoes and for displaying things on top to act as a nice welcome into the house.

My dream with the extension is to have a wall of bookcases in the new family area. I can’t wait to do this and restock our existing bookcases once the dust settles.

The toy invasion - how do you deal with it in the home

Toys and stuff that goes with children are everywhere in my house. As my husband says the soft toys are like gremlins, they just seem to multiply over night. We need more storage and joke that we are doing our house extension just so we can fit everything.

The problem with me is I am one of these people that hates clutter, I like things to be tidy and am passionate (or as some might say obsessed) about interior design and rooms being 'just so'. I have to admit I actually get a little stressed if things are a mess and look disorganised. Now I am not a minimalist, I love a house to have warmth and character and express the family’s personality, just in an organised way, so wanted storage options that also add to the style of the room. The other thing I am concerned about is the environment and so always feel a bit funny about the amount of plastic toys the kids get given.

After my first I managed to keep things tidy organised and clean, with just one we could store most of the toys in her bedroom which we can't do now with the two in the one bedroom (we have a two bedroom house).

So being the neat freak I am have had to work out ways to deal with the toy explosion, both design / storage ideas and with my environmental hat on looking at the reduce, reuse, recycle concept.

Reduce - could say well stop buying so many as lets face it most kids play with it for about two minutes then loose interest, problem is we are not the ones buying them. My kids are the only Grandchildren on both sides of the family and their grandparents love to give them things especially as they live interstate from us so don't see them that often. We are trying to put limits on gifts and get them to buy books or things to make rather then more plastic. The great thing about books too is they have no extra packaging to get rid of.

Reuse - we have joined a toy library, so every three weeks they have different toys to keep them amused. We also often select games or puzzles which take up less space. Have also started the de-clutter of passing toys on that they have grown out of to either friends or charities.

Recycle - not an option for most toys unless you look at it in terms of giving to others as above.

Storage with a design element - as for the rest; storage, storage, storage - that fits in with the style of my rooms and is not an eyesore.

One of the best things I have discovered is small cane baskets from IKEA, they fit well into a standard bookshelf (and one thing I love is having bookshelves around the house, they can add a lot to a room if kept ordered, almost like a feature wall of beautiful things and colour) and in them I can store small things like cars, Little People, train set stuff, tea set. I have also bought larger boxes with beautiful designs (IKEA) and cane baskets that also act as side tables (from Queen Victoria Markets).

Starting Point

Six years ago we bought a 1950's style two bedroom weatherboard (with brick casing, weird I know) house in a beautiful green suburb of Melbourne. When we moved in it had green carpet with brown swirls, first thing to go - it now has beautiful hardwood polished floorboards. We have also done a lot of other cosmetic work like painting, painting, painting, oh and doing up the front garden including putting in the prerequisite picket fence.

So as it stands we currently have two bedrooms (so our two kids share one), one falling apart bathroom and (the thing that drives me nuts) a toilet through the laundry, inevitably the messiest room in the house thanks to two kids and two cats.

To add to the mayhem we also have regular family visitors from Adelaide sleeping in the lounge / study and not much space for all the toys in the other living area.

So over the past six year as our family and therefore the amount of 'stuff' has grown, I have enjoyed coming up with storage ideas that fit into the style of the family area, trying to avoid too much clutter making the space seem smaller and looking at how we can multipurpose rooms.

I am starting to feel like the house is at bursting point though and so the plan is to do a renovation / extension over the next year. We have just started the design process for this.

What we have to work from - the good thing is the open living space, though a little odd in shape and so a bit pokey, does face North so gets great sun and the best aspect from an environmental design perspective. The flip side to this however is the South facing lounge/ study and main bedroom have thin windows and little insulation. The kids room faces West and is a heat box. All things we want to address.