the chaos formerly known as our living room

I love our living room / dining room.  It’s big, airy and always has lots of light in it.  It’s the sweet spot of our home and is the place where everyone lives all the time.  Coincidentally with all that living, it can be challenging to stay on top of the mess . . .

Some of the challenges we faced with the previous set-up:

• We have very little closet space.  Whatever didn’t fit in existing organizational structures was left for the living room/dining room.  Since we moved into the house I have had to store extra bathroom towels and my lady-products in a laundry hamper that has lived in various corners of the room.  🙁
• There were toys EVERYWHERE.  We had no good way of storing toys, so they lived on our floor in various piles . . . or in our couch . . . or under the TV stand . . .
• Our table became the household catch-all.  Not ideal when this is the table we eat at all day long, and doubles as an office desk for the hubs and I.
• We put our computers at risk.  I work entirely from my computer at home.  Mike has a work-issued laptop.  We have come entirely too close on more than one occasion to mopping up spills with our computers . . . yikes . . .

With an early Christmas gift from Grandma and Papa and a whole weekend to do some patching, painting and organizing we were able to make some exciting progress on the chaos formerly known as our living room.

This is what we were able to accomplish with the back wall of our living room . . .

I am such a fan of these bookshelves from IKEA.  My parents bought us two and combining those with the one we already owned, we were able to create a great storage solution to our clutter issues that spans the entire length of our back living room wall.  I don’t love the bins that are sold to compliment the IKEA bookshelves, so I was thrilled when I found 15″ storage bins at Target. They fit perfectly in the cubbies and are more modern and sleek looking (bonus they are not scratchy or rough on little hands like their IKEA counterparts).

This organizational storage system has lifted the clutter from our floor and our table and has given us space to put our computers when they are not in use.  Elijah is extremely happy to have bins for his toys that make finding them so much easier.

Oh the joyful bliss of organization . . . our lives might never be the same :).

Thanks Grandma and Papa for the early Christmas gift and for helping us install it before the holidays!