Who needs a closet, anyway?

I don’t have a lot of dreams, but one of them is to have a proper place to put my phone/bag/purse/keys/hat when I come into my house.  Before we moved here, I couldn’t remember what our foyer looked like, but hoped it was big enough to put together a table station just for that purpose.  Alas, it was not to be.  The foyer is simply too narrow for even the slimmest of tables to be useful and not be in our way as we walk through. But I have an idea.

The closet:  This is our “hall closet” right inside our front door

The goal: Create a great out-of-the-way dump station for all of our stuff.

The plan: Remove the closet doors and find a table to go inside for all of our junk.  Build a boot box to put shoes and make sure there are enough hangers/hooks for our uniforms.  

The big problem is that I want to put a charging station there for our phones (which don’t work too well in our house anyway, thanks Sprint!) BUT there’s no outlet close by.  Our solution would have to be running something out of the closet, over the front door, and into the dining room.  Hmmmm……

Fun To-Do Lists

Well, sometimes they aren't FUN so much as OVERWHELMING, but as my sister's blog points out, they can at least be cute!

Click here to see how!  Reynolds Wrap Blog

Giveaways

The thing you discover about moving is you have SO. MUCH. STUFF!  Everyone once in a while I feel like throwing everything away and starting over.  But, then I find a mug that I got in Iraq that reminds me of something.  Then I spend an hour on Facebook reading profiles of people that the mug reminded me of.  It's a slippery slope.

But, moving a lot does give you a chance to get rid of some things, and at our farewell party, I tried something new.  Everything I wanted to give away, I told people to browse through and take.  Some things (fondue pot) we registered for at our wedding and never used.  Some things (Roomba vacuum) are awesome and I used it, but I'm ready to send to a new home.

Some things I had already given to folks via my personal blog but for stuff left over, I set up everything and gave folks post-it notes to take stuff if they wanted.

And....nobody really took anything.  Although a few kids at our parties enjoyed playing with the rollerblades.  A great idea that wasn't TOO successful, but the up side is that now everything is all together in one place for me to box up and take to Salvation Army!

Friday Tip Day

The great thing about being a Move-a-lot?  Getting to try new ideas in new spaces all the time, especially those I've been wanting to try for a while.  But, I often forget new things I've seen or colors I'd like to try because I look at so much design stuff.  So, today's tip is to start a design folder.

I'm an old-fashioned girl who likes the feel of paper, so I print pictures and tear things out of magazines to keep them for our next adventure.  Here's my folder:

And here's just a few of my collection.  (Currently OBSESSED with the outdoor space picture)

Look at that amazing hanging light in the bottom center picture!!

So, whenever we hit a new place or finally decide which room is going to be the guest room, I can pull out the folder, skim through all of these pictures and pick something I think is pretty neat to try.  And, if it doesn't work, we just move a few years later :-)


Have a great weekend!