Expanding Small Space | Front Entry Part Two

Things working well and making my life easier makes me feel SO happy inside!  I’m thrilled with the way our entry way is turning out – it’s much more functional for our family and my head feels so much more peaceful now that there is less clutter.

Here is the second part of our front entry redo.
BEFORE: 
Hanging organizers sometimes sound like the perfect idea – six extra shelves in a closet! They have their place, but this wasn’t it. It became a dumping ground for all the small things that entered our home.


  
Where do I even start?  AWFUL!  I started to organize this space but it ended up being our Tupperware “drawer,” and drove me NUTS!  I have since prioritized space in our kitchen to make room for a real drawer for our containers and kicked them out of this closet.


It had SO much potential and awful follow through! When we first moved in, I threw in organizers, and because we didn’t have time, I didn’t consider how we could best use the closet and just threw things in as we took them out of boxes.



Here is the bottom of the closet AFTER:


A place to throw hats and mittens without it looking messy…

Finally, a system for our shoes.  Grown-ups get two bins each, kiddos get one each.  Lucky for me, I have girls who actually love to spend time lining up their shoes “just so.” 



Look for pictures of the final product of the entire entry way on Friday!  It’s my new little piece of heaven!

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Expanding Small Spaces | Front Entry Part One

 

At the beginning of the summer, our little family moved.  My husband and I looked at (small) houses.  We even looked at one seriously but it didn’t work out.  When it became clear that all we really wanted was our dream house, but that we weren’t in a place to buy that perfect house yet, we made a conscious decision to rent.  For us, and many other people, we decided that rather than invest in a small house we might end up stuck in once we’ve outgrown it, we would rather choose to be “stuck” in a small space while renting temporarily until we could buy something we really wanted.

 

That leaves the four of us in a very happy 906 sq. ft. for the remainder of our current lease.  906 sq. ft. is plenty of space – families in New York City would kill for that much space, and pay a TON of money for it.  But putting everything that a family of four needs and wants into 906 sq. ft. means that you need a lot of creativity.  So rather than settling for our small space, we decided to settle in.

I’ll walk you through our small space in a new series to show you how to make the very most of your own space.  Even if you have a large home, it can start to fill up quickly and using your space efficiently will make your home more peaceful.

Here is where it gets real.  This series will require me to show you MY crazy spaces BEFORE I really dug in.  Be prepared.  These pictures have a bit of a “those who cannot do, teach” feel to them, and were after the initial unpacking. 

The first space I decided to redo was our entry way and front closet:

Can you even imagine why?!  It’s pretty awful.  (In my defense. we had 24 hours to unpack wihtout our little friends along, and we did unpack every box. Unfortunately, that left us with THIS mess.)  We have ONE front closet.  Total.



Our entry way is also our mud-room and command center.  Everything we need to get out the door is all in one space and everything that comes into that space gets dumped nearby, making me feel crazy! 


Here is improvement Number 1.  These hook rails from Target are the new love of my life.  I adore them – just ask my poor husband who hears about them all too often! 



I knew our closet didn’t have enough space for all of our coats, and with winter coming in Minnesota, the influx of “gear” is on its way.  They are PERFECT and cleared space in the closet.

Improvement Number Two coming tomorrow.   If you want to see the final product, you’ll have to stick with me.

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Basket love: toy shelf

I LOVE improving little areas in our home!  Check out the progression of our upstairs toy shelf:



There was nothing really wrong with this shelf, except that I wasn’t able to get as much onto it as I wanted.  The main level is where we play the most, and I wanted to be able to have more for them to play with, without taking up much more space. 


Easy solution: baskets!

First, I put all of the board books in a basket and had them facing out, maximizing the space and leaving more room for picture books.



The next issue were these two cute sets we had gotten our 3-year-old for Christmas.  They looked very cute in the boxes, but to putting them away was a job and the boxes weren’t practical.


Another basket, of course!  Now, we just dump all of the wooden food into this big basket.  It’s easy to clean up and looks much simpler on the shelf.


This looked great – just fine, BUT we still had more things that I needed to fit on the shelf.  We needed a bigger basket.


Even though they love playing with it all the time, I ended up moving the basket of food downstairs into the girls’ play kitchen and dumped all of the extra toys into one big basket across the bottom shelf.  Now we have a lot more for the girls to play with but it all looks a lot simpler with the baskets in place. 


A few accessories and a project organizer on top and it’s ready for playtime!

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