What I Did This Weekend

I mentioned yesterday that I accomplished a big goal in my life over the weekend. I'm so excited to tell you about it!

When we moved into this house as a young newly-married couple, knowing it was only 800 square feet, I thought we'd only live here for a year or so. I never expected that three years and a baby later, we'd still be in this same small house. Our land lords are really great, and have made a lot of changes, including re-siding the exterior, installing new heaters last winter, replacing all of the light fixtures and windows, but it's still tiny!

To be honest, even though I complain about it sometimes, I like that the house is small - it means we're close to each other all the time, and spend a lot of time in the same spaces. We can't have too many belongings because, frankly, they won't fit! We do have a shed, so all of Micah's old clothes and baby gear are stored out there. This has really been a great place to live, even though I thought it would be very temporary.


This is the old paint, siding and windows. I need to take a new picture,
because it looks amazing with the new exterior!

I love doing crafts and making things for our house. But, in order to do crafts well, you have to have a lot of supplies and they take up a lot of space. I've been keeping most of my craft stuff in Micah's room, in an over-flowing laundry basket which has taken over half of his bedroom.

We had a major storage problem. Too much stuff, not enough places to keep it - and I want to use my laundry basket for laundry! That's where my big goal formed. I decided months ago that I needed to figure out storage for our stuff - and if I couldn't store it somewhere I needed to get rid of it! But who wants to get rid of craft supplies?

I had my eyes (and heart) set on a shelving unit from Ikea that I really love. It would have fit perfectly in our dining room, across from the table. Our old heater has an ugly vent that is still in the wall, and we don't use it any more. I wanted to not only figure out a solution for storage, but cover up the ugly vent too!

source

I love this shelving system, and the way I could buy baskets and have everything out of sight and put away. The problem, once I started looking into it, was the cost! I need to do this project on a VERY small budget. After I bought the shelf, probably half the size of the one shown, and the baskets, the cost was well over $150. Too much for my meager budget.

I've been seeing old dressers lately, that have been repainted and look really nice. I actually gave a dresser away for free on Craigslist a few months before I decided this storage issue needed fixing - I'm definitely kicking myself about that stupid decision!

A local second-hand furniture store (KC's Art and Collectibles on Main Street) had exactly what I was looking for. It was turned on it's end, and buried under a chair and some other things, but it's perfect! Once I saw it, I knew it was a great solution to our problem.

And the best part - it was only $50! Much less than I would have spent on the Ikea shelf, and way more character.

Micah finally has his room back - not that he spends much time in there anyway - and I have my craft supplies under control. I have the dresser about half full already, with something in each drawer, but there is still room for more craft supplies in the future!

My next step is to paint it, but that will be a long, slow process since it'll require sanding off some of the paint. I got a quart of white paint for free from Glidden a few months ago, so it'll be perfect for painting up this gem!

It feels so good to accomplish something I've been thinking about for months. I no longer have the stress of that growing pile in Micah's room!