Design on a Dime: Project One

(Feel free to scroll down past my tangent to see the before and after picture.)

With everybody talking about it, I just had to check out Hoarders- the show on A&E about people who are compulsive hoarders... and basically live in filth because of it. I think it's a sham- they all want to say they have some disease- and as we all know I have no tolerance for calling your weakness a disease. I mean, really, just get of your ass and clean your house. Pretty sure you can't take a pill to help with that. These people lose their children due to the conditions and still don't clean up! Good God, get your priorities in order.

That said, I have family members who live/ lived like this. Truly, with the bathtub filled with junk so it couldn't be used... with a small path leading through the house so you could hike through. And it scares me. When I see a pile of laundry in my bedroom not put away, I get anxious... every time I look at it. I am fanatic about everything having 'a place'. A place for everything and everything in it's place. And with a house from 1840 with no attic, garage, basement and 3 bedroom for 5 people, you better believe we need to adhere to this policy lest someday I wake up surrounded by clutter piled 4 feet high around me. Now, don't get me wrong, just because I have a place for everything doesn't mean everything is always where it belongs... quite the contrary with 3 kids... but at least when it comes time to pick up, everything has a home. This also plays into my obsession in taking things to Goodwill and always having at least one bag on deck to drop off.

Wow, that was a tangent to tell you that this is the time of year where I typically reorganize. You know, after Christmas, you get all the new stuff that needs homes. But since it is after Christmas, there is never extra money so I do the old reuse and repurpose method, which is what I refer to as design on a time.

Project One is the living room bookcase- oddly enough to this point it stored books. But we are fortunate to have book shelves all over the house and I don't need to the books that I have already read readily available- so I moved them upstairs. What I do need better access to is our growing collection of games and puzzles. As the girls are getting older, we are able to play more as a family and Acadia is getting to the puzzle stage (of which we have about 50!) Therefore, I moved all the games and puzzles to the shelf. I then stepped back and looked at the shelf... the stuff on it was not really attractive in our living room. So, I whipped up a curtain from spare fabric scraps and bought 2 tension rods for the top and bottom. It looks way better, provides much better access to often-used toys and only took about 1 hour and $5.
Before


AFTER(In my defense, the before picture is right after Christmas, where we still had gifts and stuff everywhere.)
Next up: a book sling for Annika's room.