Tag Archives: organisation

decor tweaks Our Flat

Rast saves the day

October 25, 2012 – 2:05 pm

We’ve lived in our flat for over six months now, but I still haven’t properly shown you our bedroom! Sure, it’s popped up here and there, but never really properly. That’s partially because it looks like a slobby teenager’s room most of the time.

Man, I wish I’d staged that photo to look extra messy, but no. That’s an honest to goodness before picture.

Anyway, space in this room is pretty tight thanks to our extra long king size bed. There’s no closet and no room for a wardrobe. so we keep our clothes in the small built-in cupboard and on the clothes rail.

When that wasn’t enough, we moved in those metal Ikea shelves that we already owned, but it never really worked or looked good. Those shelves are great for some things (we used them in our last kitchen) but they really didn’t work here – they’re just not meant for storing clothes.

I wanted concealed clothing storage like a chest of drawers, but, as I said, the space is really tight. I was pondering this late one night (thanks, insomnia) when I remembered Ikea’s Rast chest of drawers. It’s super shallow, which we need for this space, and the fact that its only £20 and real wood sealed the deal. (But first I emailed the only person I ‘know’ who as this bit of furniture to ask if they’d work for storing clothes – thanks Ainhoa!)

Luckily my friend was going to Ikea just a few days after making this decision, so she picked me up a set of drawers and I assembled them yesterday.

Anyway, enough talking, let’s get to some pictures.

 

So… I like it but I don’t love it. That’s ok, I knew this would be the case – it’s a solution to a problem and it’s much better than it was. I feel like the room now looks like a college apartment bedroom, which is a step up from a slobby teenager’s! Even so, I’m wondering whether a lick of paint would help.

I figure I could either paint it white or a pale grey in the hopes of helping it visually disappear as much as possible. I could paint it duck egg blur, or Mizzle like the living room cabinet, because it’s a nice colour, it could work in here, and it would help tie the two rooms together a little. Or, I could paint it a bold emerald colour to go with a few other green things in the room. For emerald, I really like arsenic by Farrow and Ball (I also considered Green Parrot No 2 by Dulux, but, uh, you’ll see why I ditched that idea). I used Pixlr, picmonkey and a colour picker to knock up some extremely rough mock ups.

What do you think? Mizzle came up looking grey and nothing like it looks in real life. It’s such an odd colour… It’s more similar to the pale duck egg in the bottom row, but with a hint of green. I love it in the living room, so I might just give it a go… Arsenic looks great but I don’t know if it would draw too much attention to a pretty dull bit of furniture. White is the safe bet – but could I get it to match the white on the walls enough? So maybe grey? Or just leave it as it is?

Help! What do you think?

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decor tweaks DIY Our Flat sew sew

Turning a dresser into a cabinet

May 24, 2012 – 1:33 pm

Hello blog friends.

I finally got a chance to take a load of pictures of our new cabinet.

But first… remember this freecycled dresser?

Well, it’s now this:

Hold on a minute? Wasn’t that a perfectly lovely wooden dresser you just ripped up and painted? Well, yes and no. For one… the dresser was seriously light – the bulk of the wood was very thin pine (although to be honest, it was as light as balsa), with just a wafer of veneer over the top. It was nicely constructed, with dovetail joints in the drawers (which led us to believe it might be utility furniture from after the war). The veneer was damaged though, and because it was so thin there was no way of refinishing it, really, so painting it was an easy decision.

So I primed it

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and painted it (mizzle, by Farrow and Ball, “A soft blue grey reminiscent of a west country evening mist”) (ha!)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As for ripping up it’s bones? Well. The fact is we don’t need a dresser. We needed a cabinet in the living room to keep kitchen overflow in (I wanted the bedroom’s one teeny closet back!). And we are never going to need a nice dresser, because one of the funny things about my family is that ALL our heirloom furniture is chests of drawers. (You can see one here). For some reason, my mum’s family seemed to hoard them and now she has them all. They’re all much older, better made and more beautiful than this one.

So this one? Became a cabinet of sorts. BUT. For now, I’ve done it in a way that it could be restored. I sawed the bits of wood from between the drawers off in a way that they could be replaced with careful use of woodfiller and mending plates. We’re currently using two of the drawers as shelves and storing the other two. The curtain has been attached with a tension rod (UK readers: Wilkinsons has these for about a third of the price of Homebase, by the way). So far, everything could easily be reversed.

This picture also shows how we lived with the cabinet for a bit (with the curtain on) before committing to sawing off the drawer bits, to see if we liked it. We did, so one lunch time I got my saw out, and this happened:

Down the line, if this piece has a permanent life as a cabinet? I’ll rip up the drawers to make proper shelves and try my hand at using the drawer fronts to make cabinet doors.

Back to those knobs…. here’s some close ups of the contenders…

After careful consideration, I’ve decided I like the painted wood ones best. Some of you thought these were white but they’re actually the same “mizzle” colour as the cabinet. I didn’t white balance for all of these pictures. This picture though, is a very good representation of the greeny-grey colour. I love it!

The best thing about this colour? It happened by accident – I ended up painting at my mum’s and forgot to bring enough paint of any of the colours I was considering. She had a load of mizzle left over from her bathroom, so I used it. Serendipity is lovely, non?

A closer view of the things on the top. A bunch of flowers from that Mr V, my gorgeous Roberts radio (he also gave me that!), a framed receipt from this shop (it’s handwritten), and a “Socialist Sunday school” print that I gave mr v for his most recent birthday (see, I give him things too!)

I made the curtain out of this Ikea fabric. You can see the stitch line a little down from the top – I made the rod pocket quite large so it would go over the bump in the rod easily. It’s lovely and thick so it (normally!) hangs really nicely and should be durable. I probably used less than half the metre I bought so I plan to dot a few matching accents off it around the room.

It annoys me that it isn’t hanging evenly in this photo! It normally does (I even put some pennies along the bottom seam to make sure it does, sigh). But having finally got around to taking pictures… you know how it is.

So, there we have the story of my new old cabinet!

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Our Flat

Top tips for tiny rental kitchens

May 10, 2012 – 8:32 pm

Hello! Ever since I wrote my post last week about our teensy kitchen, I’ve been on fire thinking up ways to get the most from the space so I’m back with some of my top tips!

We’re renters, so while I could write a million posts about things I’d do in this kitchen if I owned it (pot rack, wall mounted lid racks, more sensibly proportion cabinets, extra shelving….etc), here are some ideas that anyone can do – whether you own your house or not).

1) Never underestimate the power of extra shelves. All of our cabinets are these stupid massive boxes with no interior shelves. They’re too shallow for the normal shelves you can put inside cabinets, but these half ones from Ikea give us just a little bit of extra vertical storage space.

(I know, I know, we could totally easily build extra shelves in here, but something so permanent is a little bit down the line, if we’re even here long enough to fully commit to customising stuff like that.)

Update! See some more extra shelves we added to make better sense of an odd cupboard right here.

2) Do what makes the most sense, whether it’s what people normally do or not. Mugs live in cupboards or on shelves, right? no! With so few easily accessible shelves, we’ve ended up with mugs in a drawer. Keeping mugs in our cupboards led to a whole load of wasted vertical space. Keeping them in the drawer makes the most sense, for us.

I might put down a pad in the bottom to keep them in place, or construct some sort of divider (like this?) if I think they’re at risk of breaking.  (It helps that we have no kids who will open and slam the drawer.)

While we’re talking drawer storage, I had these scrappy bits of quilted fabric from a project that I ended up not making, so I made them into pan liners so we could stack our non-stick without damaging them.

Hey, they don’t look perfect, but leftover fabric and batting is better than spending £4.99, right? (Hmm. Until this moment I thought those things were £4.99 each, not per three….probably would have been better to just buy them!)

3) Think outside the room! The advantage of small space living is that things can be the opposite side of the flat to the kitchen but still be easily within reach.

The kitchen is one of the smallest rooms in the flat so it makes sense to use the other rooms to store kitchen items. Right now we keep this stack of lesser used items in our bedroom cupboard (but I’m refinishing a cabinet to keep them in the living room, because I’d rather keep jumpers here). I’ve now moved these items into a cabinet in the living room, and jumpers live here, but a bedroom closet is still a great place to keep kitchenware (the living room just made more sense for us).

We also have this shelf of cookery books in the sitting room.

4)  Get stuff off the counter. As you can see, I’m ok with appliances on the countertop. (Sure, it would look clearer without but I don’t see any other choice here.) But! I do agree with keeping as much small, cluttery stuff off the counters as possible.

I picked up four of these hooks from Ikea (they’re actually from the Pax wardrobe range) and use them to corral onions, garlic and kitchen roll. The onions etc are this small wire basket and the kitchen roll is strung up using some black grosgrain ribbon. Oh, and gotta love a magnetic knife rack.

5) Back of the door! Buoyed by how well my cord and charger organiser worked, I bought this over-door organiser to whip the kitchen into shape. This time I decided to go for a bold graphic labeling system rather than adding pictures to the pockets. It’s not pretty but I love it because it’s really working well so far (and it freed up a load of drawer space).

What are your favourite tips for small space living?

PS. Smitten Kitchen’s top tips are here

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decor tweaks DIY Our Flat

Some small desk upgrades

May 3, 2012 – 6:50 pm

Is it Friday yet? It sure feels like it should be…

Anyway, here’s a few little changes that have gone on to my dear secretary desk lately (sadly, neither of them are picking up the top cabinet – seen here – oh well!).

First up, I finally gave up the ghost on the dead flowers you saw here last time (although the flower on the left is doing its best to die too!) and replaced it with some basil. Isn’t it funny how it seems weird to have basil anywhere other than the kitchen? Well, no windows in the kitchen… massive window by the desk.

I also added a few knick-knacks, a picture of my parents way back when and some postcards I’ve received lately.

Inside, I added my external hard-drive to one of the cubbies. Do you see it? Thought not! It’s been disguised with a sheet of patterned origami paper from Muji.

And I’ve run the power cord through the back with a big shoddy hole made by drilling lots of small holes. I was going to make some other holes for things like my laptop cord (I keep my laptop in one of the long horizontal cubbies), but I made such a bad job of this hole, I figured I’d wait until I’d bought a better drill bit (a hole saw drill bit?) so it looks a bit neater (as the other hole will be a lot more visible).

So that’s a few little tweaks I’ve made in our house this week. What have you tweaked this week?

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Everything else Our Flat

Too much stuff

March 15, 2012 – 11:50 am

I have a LOT of stuff. Moving twice in the last three months has made realise just how much stuff.

The verdict? Too much.

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Here’s a picture of the van when we left London. You must be aware that:
a) We were leaving an unfurnished flat so this is only a few bits of furniture
b) We’d already moved our bookcase, ottoman, books and about three other miscellaneous boxes to Mr V’s parents’ house
c) Mr V barely owns anything, beyond shared stuff like kitchenalia, and he’d rather have less of that

In the new flat, we’ve only moved about half my stuff in. The rest is still at my mum’s house down the road and I’m trying to slowly sort through it to ensure we don’t move stuff (again) that I no longer love or need. (Yes, I could have done this before we moved but life went mad and it all got a bit last minute). We’ll see how well this goes.

Getting rid of stuff doesn’t come easily to me. Boy, do I love stuff. What if one day I need that thing? What if I regret getting rid of it? What if what if what if? Don’t even get me started on the sentimental stuff. I really struggle to get rid of that. And clothes… what if I fall back in love with them (it’s happened). What if my shape changes and they fit again (also happened).

Oh well. Baby steps. 

How do you deal with getting rid of stuff? Are you ruthless or a wimp like me?

PS. I posted this in empathy with Catharine from Your Modern Couple
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trips

Pack painlessly every time

September 21, 2011 – 11:06 am

Psst… I’m working on an update for this post – with much less spartan toiletries!

Remember how I had too many miniature suitcases? I finally found an actual (rather than dream) use for one of them. I use it to keep all my travel stuff ready to pack into a bag at a moment’s notice!

I used to keep this stuff in a drawer, but recently thought a mini suitcase made both figurative and practical sense!

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I keep it at the end of the bed and it’s easy to open next to what I’m doing when I’m packing on the bed.

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So what’s actually in the travel centre?

First things first, toiletries and chargers. (If I go away for just one night, staying with friends or family, I can just pick up these two pouches and stuff them in a large hand bag with a change of underwear and a clean top. Done.)

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Your travel toiletries should not just be your normal toiletries put in a wash bag. I mean, they totally can be, but we’re talking about how to pack super-speedy without forgetting anything. So I like to keep a dedicated travel wash bag with a toothbrush (folding!), toothpaste (mini!), something to wash with (currently Dr Bronner’s in rose, I also like baby shampoo), stuff for contact lenses, and some painkillers (just in case). I always have my make up and a few essentials (floss and nail clippers) in my hand bag so I don’t worry about those. I have a mini-spritz thing of frizz ease rather than a conditioner.

I know this is a bit spartan (and I must admit its bulged since writing this post!) Your must-have toiletires will be different, but the basic principle is the same: buy miniatures and top them up, or buy empty mini bottles, label them with permanent marker and keep topped up.

Nb. Holly recommends having a travel shelf with all your miniatures on it. This doesn’t work for me as I’ve amassed so many. So I keep them in a box in the drawer with the rest of my toiletries and just ‘shop’ the box when my travel bag is getting low.

Just like my travel toiletries, I like to have separate chargers for travel. For things where I don’t have more than one (like my kindle charger), I store it in my travel stuff rather than anywhere else so I know I’ll have it with me. Useful fact: the ‘base’ unit of a kindle and an iPhone (and a blackberry!) are all the same so you only need all the separate cords and one plug.  I like to write my name and a phone number on my travel phone charger, as I’ve left them behind in so many places! For my camera, I normally just take a spare fully charged camera battery rather than the charger if I’m only away for a weekend. I barely use flash so the battery tends to last ok.

I also like to pack a teensy amount of drugs and other first aid paraphernalia in case of low-frequency-high-annoyance things that can happen. Things like a sudden cold can make you really miserable and I hate spoiling a holiday, so I carry a few bits of medication just in case. I spend a fair few weekends in the middle of nowhere, so oftentimes I like to know I have a couple of anti-histamine, some plasters, a tiny tube of antiseptic, spare contacts lenses…. Things like that.

In my case, this kit (in that tiny blue zipped bag in the first picture, that I forgot to take a separate picture with. It fits in my hand) includes eye bath solution and a plastic eye bath, because in the event my eyes play up I know it really spoils my day! What you need will obviously vary but I think it’s good to have a think and get that stuff together. To save space, I cut up a couple of pills off the main strip so I have a couple of a few different things (make sure the foil still tells you what it is!).

I used to keep  all my first aid stuff in a larger wash bag with all my toiletries, but I don’t anymore as I don’t need them if I’m going on a city break with a chemist on every corner, but I do if I’m going to a cottage in rural Wales. Having toiletries and first aid separate allows me to pack for the holiday I’m going on!

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Boring but useful. Cloth bags, airport liquids bags, carabiner and headtorch.

The little cloth bags are useful as shoe bags and laundry bags.

Head torch? Yeah, I take it even when I’m not camping. I often have trouble sleeping and the soft red light is good to read by without waking your room mate with a real light.

I like to carry a carabiner. You’d be surprised how useful it is, wherever you are. In Paris, I clipped my camera strap on to my handbag when I was on the metro, so it was slightly harder for a pickpocket to slip it out of my bag without me noticing. It’s also good to keep small bags and big bags together and other stuff like that.

Safety pins! These aren’t pictured but I try to always have a few with me (normally in a little baggie in my toiletry bag). When you’re packing light it’s useful to have a few in case of broken straps or other wardrobe malfunctions.

Airport liquids bags. These ones were just saved from last time we flew, but before we next go away (Holland! Next month!) I plan on upgrading those to two of these, which we can then fasten to our bags with carabiners.

Seem like a lot of hassle? I thought so too when I first read this tip from Mighty Girl: “One of my big tricks was a tip from Gwen, who suggested putting liquids in a see-through bag with a clip. It hooks on to the zipper of your suitcase, and it has changed my life. Life altering! You just pop it off at security, pop it back on once you’re through.”

But ever since then, I’ve noticed that I’m always holding up the queue at security, rummaging in my bag to find those last few liquids, and even when I’ve separated them, I get annoyed zipping and unzipping pockets. (I hate spending too long after the metal detector putting my shoes back on and getting myself all packed up).  So, £1 upgrade it is. I’ll report back on how it goes.

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Finally… The bags. I am always on the search for the perfect bag and this time I think I’ve cracked it. This bag is a miracle. It’s lovely and large (but still carry-on size and not too heavy when full). It’s got straps you can sling over your shoulder (a must for me) and the zip is long enough that you can have a good old rummage when it’s got stuff in it.

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I love it.

And look how small it packs! Just so we’re clear – the whole bag fits in this little zipped clutch thing. This makes it the perfect extra bag to pop in your suitcase but more importantly (in my case) it makes it perfect for living in a teeny flat.

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Mine was a present from that lovely mr vita (I think his clutter averse mind thought I’d throw all the other contenders away!) but you can pick one up here.

Then, I like to pop this magic rucksackin my bag. Sure, I look like a tourist when I’m wearing it but is good and roomy and, again, folds away to nothing if I want to use my leather handbag instead. Wonderful! Plus, it’s made out of recycled plastic bottles and comes in loads of colours.

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As I said, I just cleared this stuff from a drawer to this suitcase. I took the chance to clear out some of the stuff I’d put in here that I didn’t use every time I travel, like travel laundry gel and a multi-tool. One of the things I’m thinking of putting back in is a nightie, as that is something I often forget. I think that might migrate back in. I also go through phases of keeping my travel towel and a swimming costume in my travel centre. I should probably do that again… It was good! (I have this swimming costume and I love that it came in a little carry sack). Keep these in a good quality plastic bag so you can carry them wet.

This is just intended to show you how I get out the door for the weekend in five minutes flat. Here are some guides from more seasoned travellers than I, should you want more guidance:

Holly from Nothing But Bonfires – top tip – don’t forget a pashmina style wrap for flying. Perfect to wrap around yourself when the air is too cold or you want something to cover your head to sleep. She says pack gold shoes as they go with everything – I say leather goes with everything.

Maggie from Mighty Girl – since re-reading all Maggie’s packing list posts, I’ve got the idea to find a nice pyjama solution that works as clothes in a pinch, and I’ll keep that in my case.

The One Bag packing list – good ideas for packing light

My favourite travel tip I came up with by my own good self? Write your own guidebook.

Looking for more posts about travel? There’s a category for that!

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recipes

Recipes on the move

June 27, 2011 – 6:54 pm

My mum has this amazing recipe folder that makes me really jealous. It has years and years of recipes clipped from magazines neatly clipped and stuck into place, organised by the principle ingredient.

I have this:

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Yeah. I’ve been a lot better at the collecting than the organising and so they’re all stuffed into this massive folder, about 97.8 per cent uncooked. It’s so hard to find the one that I want that I pretty much always just look something up on the internet rather than looking through that behemoth. I’m also using Evernote to clip recipes I see on the internet rather than printing them off.

But. I spend a lot of time cooking away from home, and far far away from the internet. I spend a lot of time at my friends’ cottage in the wilds of Wales, at a small seaside resort down in Devon and camping in various off the beaten track places. All of these places have one thing in common: very very limited access to the mobile network (let alone fancy data or 3G connections). They’re also all places it’s nice to cook.

Mr V and I spent ten days in the middle of nowhere in central France last year and I took three cook books with me and really enjoyed having some old favourites to hand (as well as trying out a few new ones). But that was a holiday taken with just the two of us in the car,  when a lot of my holidays are undertaken by public transport or crammed in with all my friends plus luggage. I can’t just take my favourite cook books every where I go.

So I’ve given up on creating a nice recipe binder to use at home like my mum has, and instead am happy to use cook books and the internet at home and made this nifty little travel recipe book for when I’m away, with just recipes I’ve tried and tested and know I can cook for a hungry table of people without worrying that they’re horrid or won’t work. They’re the sort of recipes that some people would know off by heart but I seem unable to remember volumes and weights of anything, even things I’ve been cooking regularly for years.

Here tis. Ta da!

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I used this fancy exercise book that my friend gave me for my birthday last year. I gave it a plastic cover to protect it during its travels. It has these cute pink, gingham and lace pages with a sort of fake luggage tag to put the recipe name in.

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The fact it has this pattern on every page really helps with keeping things looking cohesive. Without that, it’d look pretty chaotic because I’ve taken a mix and match approach to transferring recipes – I’ve either scanned and printed them from books I have at home, printed them straight from the internet, or written them out by hand. I haven’t organised them much, just put anything savoury in from the front and anything sweet in from the back.

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I’ve also tried to think about what sort of things I might need to know when I’m cooking in the middle of nowhere without any access to the internet. So in the middle I’ve put a bit of a reference section with conversion tables, and I’m filling it up with substitutions from the Cook’s Thesaurus as I think of them (did you know you can replace eggs with mayonaise when you’re making cakes?). I also made sure to print out a full guide to how long to roast different meats based on their weights.

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Most of the pictures have come from the recipe itself, but I particularly like this page where I used a picture of the cake when I made it, so I’ve left some gaps for some of my own pictures when I next make the recipes.

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I mentionned earlier that I covered it with a plastic thing to keep it safe, what I didn’t say was that I bought one on the internet but when it arrived it was a bit flimsy and didn’t fit the book correctly. So I bought a better (sturdy, glossy) one (that fits) from Rymans.

But, I kept the other one (it was pretty cheap). I’ve tucked it in the back pocket of the new cover so I can use it to cover the pages of the book when I’m cooking. I’m a suuuuper messy cook. (So much so that the best way to find my favourite recipes in my cook books is to find the pages that have been stuck together).

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Aaaaaaand finally, a picture with my hand in it to show you the scale.

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To see some of the recipes that have made it into my tried-and-true, can’t-live-without-’em cookbook, click here.

What are yours?

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