Hi Honeys
I hope you're having a fabulous weekend and that all is well. I'm having a personal countdown here till the clocks roll forward on the 29th :) Spring is such a wonderful time of year. Evenings (and mornings for us in Scotland) get lighter, temperatures start to creep up a little and sunshine causes the gardens to gently yawn, stretch and wake up again after their long Winter sleep.
I love to watch our garden change, the lavender start to bloom again and the roses start to bud. Of course it also means (hopefully) it won't be long till I can pin my laundry outside to dry. Joy! Laundry really is my favourite household task, I adore it! For now though, I can enjoy the first signs of Spring, dream of long Summer days (and lots of laundry) and continue with the work in our home. Which brings us to......
Do you remember how excited I was when we managed to finish setting up our little organizational nook in our lower hall? This wee spot in our home has been a blessing, keeping us on track with mail sorting, recycling (mail gets sifted through as soon as it arrives and we have a recycling bin right there to drop unwanted stuff into) meal planning (you can still download the menu planner here) appointment making and even giving us somewhere to store things like paper hankies, ready to grab on the way out the door.
It's been working so well that I really wasn't planning on changing a thing about it, then on Sunday I noticed an interesting little pine unit at the Argos web site. It looks like this.....
Image & Product Details found here
You know when you see something and it just "speaks" to you honeys? Well this little unit did just that :) The bonus is that it was also on sale too. My original thought was that it might work in our kitchen, to hold plates or possibly to display some pretty little kitchen things, just because & just to make me smile :)
For example, I have two gorgeous breakfast sets, (a matching plate, cup & egg cup) which were gifts from my best friend Miriam, and they're still safely in their boxes because I'm scared of anything happening to them. I would love to display them, and I so will as soon as I can figure out a safe way to do that, but this unit didn't seem "right" for the kitchen and I'm really happy with how our kitchen walls look right now. Then it dawned on me......
This little unit might be perfect in our lower hallway! Grouping together not only our much loved organizing systems already in place but also adding a few too! Do you remember what our little home hub looked like honeys? Here it is....
The lower part of the hallway is still basically the same in that it still has our little recycling bin right by where we have our mail sorting pockets, we still have our little TV tables (which we use to chat online with my much loved BiL every week) and our little caddy, used to hold assorted sized envelopes, cards & address stickers, all ready to be used to organize outgoing mail. What's changed is the upper part of the walls, which now look like this.....
Such a small change really but it's already made such a difference. It's made an already very effective organizational hub work a little harder and do a little bit more. I'll show you what I mean. Let's first have a closer look at the bottom shelf of this little unit.....
I smiled just then :) Sorry, I can't help it, I just spotted the photo of our furbaby and bless her she makes my heart smile all day long :) Sorry, back to what I was saying :) This little unit, like so much these days was supplied flat pack. So, having used the Argos "click & collect" service, Hubby set off to collect this unit and two adorable little shelves for our bathroom I'd also spotted (more about them in another post honeys.)
Having picked them up and returned home, he quickly popped this little unit together. From the first moment I loved it :) If shelving units can be cute this one is adorable, well to me anyway but I'm odd that way :) It's supplied with three sort of large round knobs to hang things from but I asked Hubby to check if one of our two spare (what can I say I love them and as I've said before we only get to Ikea maybe twice a year so....) Bygel rails would fit instead. As you can see honeys, it did! yaaaaaayy!!
So, onto the Bygel rail went the original three Bygel containers which hold, as before, the pens and a micro fibre cloth for use on the weekly planner/whiteboard, batteries for the remote controls & clocks, and packets of paper hankies & hand wipes ready to grab as we go past & out the door.
In addition, we've added two plastic Bygel hooks, which we're now using to hang our lanyards from work for work ID, locker keys etc. Such a simple idea but it's great to have a place for them to go at the end of the work day.
Above them, there is our diary, to keep track of work holidays, my doctor & hospital appointments etc, and a couple of my ever present notebooks to jot down ideas and things to remember. Next to them there is a photo of our baby Jade. She's the centre of our home so why not add an extra smile, just because :)
Next to Jade's photo are three pretty little ceramic cookie jars. These are used to store chargers for our mobile phones, our E-readers and tablets. It's so great to have a central point for these chargers. They're all kept safe and tangle free in the cookie jars, and have a home to go back to when we're done using them. You might remember another similar little cookie jar in our kitchen? It's being used to store stock/OXO cubes and is one of the rare items being allowed space on our kitchen counters.
So, onto the upper shelf of the little pine unit. We've used it like this.....
As you can see honeys right now it's home to our pin board/planner and our shopping list, both of which used to hang on this wall. Next to them we've put a small box containing a memo block. Small squares of paper which we can use to scribble a quick note to add to the pin board, or a phone message etc.
So honeys, what do you think? Here's a before and after shot......
For now we've left the unit plain pine but I think that at some point, whenever we manage to get the hall and stairs decorated, we'll paint it to suit whatever colour scheme we decide on. It might look really pretty in gloss white actually. Of course first we'd have to deal with all of that awful Artex on the walls. Not a fashion trend I was ever a fan of really but we have it all over our home, a legacy of the previous occupants. That will not be fun to get rid of, I'm sure :/
So honeys, any thoughts? Is there anything you can suggest to make that top shelf look a little better? It's functional right now and everything there has a purpose, but I can't help thinking it could work, and look, better. I'd love to hear what you think.
Till next time dear ones, stay warm in the chilly bitter winds we're being swept with right now. If you're lucky enough to be blessed by living somewhere lovely and warm, enjoy! I'm so happy for you and maybe even a little jealous :) Sending heaps of hugs honeys xx
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