I love this concept!
Follow the bouncing ball.....
....... My dad purchased a home in Arizona (rental unit) and brought back a small desk from that place. (This retirement area sells units fully furnished because they are most commonly used as rental units for snow birds.) DH & I had slowly been downsizing and replacing our combination his/hers/ours bedroom furniture. DD was slowly getting my childhood furniture. We were finally down to the last piece. DD really wanted the vanity from my/her set. I still needed a vanity. She asked grandpa if I could have the small desk to use as a vanity, so she could have the final piece of her furniture. He agreed and we had all the transfers done within an hour!
I removed the icky old hardware and replaced them with a style that goes in our bedroom. I also found very inexpensive glass for the top to protect it from my essential oils, carrier oils, and makeup.
DH & I met when we were 30 and had both been living on our own for years. Combining two households was interesting. We both had dining room tables. Mine fit the space in our apartment best, so we used his as a desk there and ate at mine. When we purchased our home, neither of them worked well in the eating area. We used mine as an eating table until we had enough cash to buy what we really wanted, then we donated mine. We have used his as all sorts of things over the years: changing table, project table, sewing table, etc. It is a tad too big for the room it is in, but we just make do anyway because the chairs that came with his table also match the table we purchased together and our house is small. This way, we have 4-6 chairs in the kitchen at the eating table and 1-2 chairs in the room with the multi-purpose table and 1-2 chairs upstairs. They float around wherever needed and all fit nicely around the eating table, when we need all 8.
Over a year ago (maybe two now?), I took just about everything out of our family office and evaluated its usefulness/purpose and joy-factor. The corner TV unit was not fulfilling any needs except holding a TV and taking up a whole lotta space in the process. We gave it to a friend who needed something just like that. We couldn't really rearrange the room much to make up for that weird hole created. I moved a rolling craft cart to the corner to hold the TV temporarily while I let the "challenge" simmer a bit. We had the perfect cabinet for the office downstairs in the project room, but I never realized it before. I swapped the cabinet for the craft cart and reorganized the contents of each to best match the function of each room. We purchased a very inexpensive shelving unit ($20 for solid wood) for the TV and the printer and other items that had previously been in awkward spots. The net result was the room has better function and looks well balanced now.
In November, we reorganized the project room again. (We had a major flood in May 2009 and this room served as our mini garage while we got the house back to order.) We decided to change the configuration of our shelving unit in order to free up some more space. We had previously stored our bicycles on top of the wide unit since we didn't ride often while I was pregnant and with our young child. Since our DD has been riding bikes, though, we have been keeping the bicycles outside under the front eaves. They are locked together (3 different style/sizes bikes) and are protected fairly well from the elements. We decided to convert the shelving unit from wide (6-8 feet?) and four-feet tall to narrow (3-4 feet?) and seven feet tall. All I had to do was buy two new supports ($5 each). We had everything else already. The room flows much better now!
When we moved items out of our bedroom into DD's bedroom (my childhood furniture), we ended up with a bookcase from DD's bedroom that didn't fit anywhere upstairs. I moved it to the project room temporarily. When we made the above changes in that room, I found a great home for it.
When we put together the wood shelving unit for the TV and printer (etc) in the office, we had two extra shelves. We decided to cut down the supports and created a whole other [short] shelving unit for our storage closet in the project room. In the end, we got two solid wood shelving units for $20 total!
On a much smaller scale, whenever a lid to a container goes wonky or breaks, I use the container to hold small items in the pantry or another area of the house. On vacation one year, we got a foot-shaped tin full of salt water taffy. It is a colorful and pretty tin. I gathered all my shoelaces (crafty ones and "real" ones) and put them in there. DD
this!
I have a close friend who works for Brighton and I have quite a few of their pretty heart-shaped tins. I use the largest one to hold my magnetic pin "cushion". When I travel to classes or craft time with friends, the pins stay in the tin instead of falling all over. When I am home, the tin sits out in the project room and looks like a piece of pretty decor. I use the smaller tins to hold a variety of items around the house. When Brighton switched to drawstring cloth bags, I wasn't disappointed!
I used the first bag/pouch as a cell phone holder for a long time. DD used the others for various things.
