Buckets of Organization

A couple years ago I shared the storage problems of our last apartment kitchen. It had very little cabinet storage, but we came up with an affordable and functional solution for our tiny kitchen. Thankfully our current apartment has plenty of kitchen storage, so that's not the problem this time. The office area, on the other hand, leaves a little to be desired in the storage department.

We tucked the desk into a nook near our balcony, and we realized there are very few places to hide all of our my crap computer desk necessities. If there's one thing that drives me crazy, it's having all our little odds and ends out for everyone to see. Call me modest, but I like leaving the inner workings of our office space to our guests' imaginations. Nobody needs to see that stuff!

Our computer desk does have a small drawer for hiding things. It's perfect for things like bills, pens, a couple of cords, and notepads. However, that drawer isn't large enough to store away all the pens, pencils, highlighters, and scissors I've managed to accumulate over the years. I even threw away handfuls of old pens and pencils when we moved! How these little collections manage to grow so large is beyond me. Maybe it has something to do with my hoarding tendencies?

Apartment living has its challenges, and we're no strangers to having limited storage. Enter Ikea fintorp rails, hooks, and buckets. Those nifty little buggers create storage in the least likely of places. They don't look too bad doing it either. We hung one rail with three galvanized buckets, and that gave us plenty of places to store the little odds and ends that won't fit in the computer drawer.

Ikea sells the fintorp rail and accessories as a kitchen storage item, but nothing says you can't use those items in your office. I'm even thinking of using a couple in our guest closet to hold some of my craft materials. They have no limits, those fintorp rails. Use them anywhere.

We still have a little work to do before the office area is completely organized. It's a good start though. There's a reason I didn't show you the floor to the right of our desk. I have a basket down there, and it's full of picture albums, coupons, and spray paint. No one ever said it's perfect in here. We're a work in progress.

How do you solve your storage problems?

Sea the Potential: Our Office/Guest-room

Before moving to Florida, my husband and I never lived in anything bigger than a one bedroom apartment together. We're pretty happy with the "spare room" in our current apartment and the extra space that comes along with it. Having more than one bedroom is reason enough for celebration alone! Sadly, though, our first office/den/guest-room is kind of, sort of a mess. (See evidence below).

Obviously, at the moment, our office/guest-room looks like nothing more than a place to discard things that have no place. However, I think that with a miracle some more creative storage ideas, the floor will be clear sometime next year in no time. Seriously though, this will eventually be a room for relaxing and resting.

Our extra room will also be the place where I blog, scrapbook, and whatever else I feel like I wanna do. Gosh! (Sorry, now and then a little Napoleon Dynamite slips out). I know that our office/guest-room looks like a disaster area now, but I promise it will look much better once the new office desk arrives and things get put away in boxes and baskets in the shelving unit. Promise!

My major inspiration for this room is the sea. Honestly, growing up on a lake I've always loved the water, and if the color blue were any more soothing I'd be drooling right now. Now that my husband and I live in Florida, it seemed an obvious choice like he even had a choice to deck out our office in sea-inspired things. Heck, I may even print some photos I've taken recently and slap those up on the walls too. If you're a guest at our place, I hope you feel "at home on the beach" in our sea-inspired room.

I know it's hard to sea the potential of our office/guest-room at the moment, but I swear it will be a welcoming and organized room eventually. Try not to fret. {It's our bedroom closet that scares me the most}. Hopefully the desk I ordered arrives soon, and then I can put the pieces of the puzzle together. I can't wait to share our guest-room with you all once it's more organized! If you're going to visit us in Florida, you'll have a place to relax soon enough.

What's the inspiration for your favorite room?

Kitchen Problems... and Solutions

Last Friday I promised some photos of our Ikea purchases in action. We bought some Ikea items for a few different rooms in our apartment. However, today I'm going to focus only on our tiny kitchen. I say "tiny" because our current kitchen quite possibly has one fourth the storage that our last two kitchens did, and that's being generous.

Our current kitchen has me dealing with one of those you-don't-know-what-you've-got-til-it's-gone moments. The last two apartments that we lived in had kitchen islands. How I wish we had a kitchen island right now! Lack of kitchen storage forced us to put some dishes into our storage closet, and I realized that we would need a shoe horn in order to put everything else away in our tiny kitchen. Thank goodness there was a little extra room in the pantry for storing some things.

Our major problem is that we have lots of kitchen items and not enough places to store them. Isn't that a fairly typical problem with apartment living?

I stored most of our pots/pans in our only lower cabinet. Yes, we only have one lower cabinet. The architect of this apartment (or possibly interior designer) should be spanked for that. Seriously. My guess is that the person who designed this kitchen has never even set foot in a kitchen. If they had, we might have two lower base cabinets. Don't get too excited!

The only place for some creative storage seemed to be inside of our kitchen pantry. I saw a bare expanse of wall, and a light bulb went off inside my head. My initial idea was to install some hooks and hang the pots and pans, but then we spent an evening at Ikea and everything changed! My husband actually spotted these Fintorp rails and it was love at first sight. I grabbed the coordinating hooks and off we went into the sunset into kitchen organizing heaven.

After a little bit of blood, sweat, and tears elbow grease, we had ourselves some extra kitchen storage. No more pots and pans on the ground inside of our pantry! It's really fun solving storage dilemmas with a little bit of creativity. (Did I really just say that? Nerd!) The designer in me loves seeing every bit of space utilized, so going vertical with storage seems like such a simple, but not often used, solution for our storage issues. We bought some extra hooks just in case I found some other things to hang from our new rails.

So far I'm really liking our new kitchen storage solution. Who needs base cabinets when you can install railings inside of the pantry?! Yeah. Score one for the small kitchen. Even the Swiffer wet/dry mop found a new home. Not to mention our coffee making funnels and a couple of random utensils found a new place to hang (pun intended) too.

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Maybe some day I'll be brave enough

to tackle this part of the pantry:

For now, though, I'll enjoy our

new and improved kitchen storage! (:

My First Ikea Experience

Just this past Sunday, I forced my husband asked my husband nicely if he would "pretty please" go with me to the Ikea in Tampa. First of all, let me tell you that I had never been to an Ikea before this past Sunday. I had heard so much raving about Ikea that I'd been dying to go there myself! I like to call this my first "experience" with Ikea, because after spending time at Ikea I know it's truly an experience and not just a measly visit.

Those darn Swedes have designed every moment of your Ikea experience, from the escalator at the entrance to the path you follow through the store. The escalator takes you to the showroom where you can "test drive" everything, from shelving units and desks to sofas and kitchen cabinets. After winding your way through the showroom, you head downstairs in a giant elevator to locate the goods that you "test drove" just upstairs. You view things, test them, find them, and then buy them. Everyone wins. I think?

Our main purpose for spending time at Ikea was to find a shelving unit for our office/den, but we also managed to pick up some other "organizational helpers" along the way. I blame the winding path through Ikea's showroom for making me lose my focus. Either way, we did get the shelving we were looking for, however, we did bring home some other lovelies too. Oops.

After browsing every square inch of Ikea the showroom and warehouse area, we brought home some goodies including the Expedit shelving unit, a couple of very handy Fintorp rails and hooks, and some other assorted things like boxes, baskets, and a closet organizer. I'm going to justify this collection of items from Ikea by saying that the prices are really affordable. You really do get a lot for your money, but do beware of things adding up quickly since you'll probably "need" many of the things that you see.

You can find just about everything under the sun at Ikea. Seriously. Everything. Be prepared to spend some time at Ikea, because it's not one of those stores that you just quickly run into for something. The size of Ikea alone can overwhelm you. Not to mention, the winding path through beautifully designed spaces can be a bit distracting. (As you can see from two pictures above). Take your time and enjoy the "Ikea experience". They even have a restaurant/cafe just in case you get hungry while browsing.

The incredibly interesting design of almost everything affected me the most during my Ikea experience. I couldn't help but feel inspired by so many out-of-the-box solutions for organizational and small space issues, and that is something I can appreciate since we live in, what I think is, a relatively small apartment. All in all, my first Ikea experience was a good one. (:

What do you think about Ikea?

Love it... or hate it?

* Join me on Monday

and see how we're using the items

that we purchased at Ikea! (: