Tuesday 8 February 2011

Our Rearrange - Before shots!

Im keeping this short today not because I don't love you all. Because I do, dearly. But I'm working on having a "family first (FF)" year - I'll post more on that another day, and that means I need to be up and at em with the birds (and babies) early tomorrow, which means I need sleep. The start of FF meant that things around our home had to change, practically. We moved in a year ago with a baby and a toddler. A year has passed and we now have two toddlers - what we NEED from our living space has changed drastically. What my FAMILY need is very, very different from what we needed this time last year.

So after much deliberation, I jumped off the fence and right into making our home what we need it to be NOW.

Here's what it looked like on Sunday morning when we left for church. I cant seem to find a picture of the play room, but it was a small office like room, a little too narrow for the kids to play comfortably in.





























Above is the kitchen nook - this is just on our kitchen and was arranged so that I had a good floor space for the boys to have a place to play downstairs (we are in a town house our lounge is upstairs), for Asher who was four months to have a good place for tummy time, crawling etc when I worked downstairs.

Its no longer needed for this - the boys spend most of their time in the playroom as I no longer have to watch them both every second, and Levi is more trustworthy to be left alone with Asher.

Our focus has become a place to have family meals. Read about the dining room below.


























When we moved in here the major compromise was this room. Its a converted garage with no window, and this house has no dining room. Its also got no heating, so its COLD in winter, and dark in summer.

I knew that with some good lighting (to be purchased) a large mirror on the painting wall (to be purchased) a shelving unit for the right hand wall (to be purchased) that this could work well, even without the window, as the door opens onto a full length glass window. It required a LOT of time, and a LOT of money, and as we are renting and we have landed up traveling abroad twice this year for reasons beyond our control, we didn't have the money and couldn't see a good reason to invest it each month. So it was put off, and used for storing all the "to do's" Everything on the table was baby stuff to be passed on, and maternity clothes to give away. The dresser was a porcelain dumping ground as I wasn't anywhere near decorating this room.

CONCLUSION - wasted space, wasted furniture, no where to have family meals. The kids ate early, and we ate at the tiny kids table (see kitchen pics - Asher is sitting on it!) as thats just what we did. Looking back I cant believe it!







































Looking the other way down the table you can see the door to the right and just how boring this room was. TO BE FAIR it was normally way neater than this - I took these pics right after sorting toys, clothes etc and all this was waiting to get moved on.

I think that sometimes we are just too tired and too caught up in life to realise that we've changed, and what we need has changed. Im fortunate that now that I'm "free" from a number of things that were distracting me (pregnancy, nursing, moving house, visitors, sleep deprivation etc) that all your get go spirits have inspired me to do what I would normally do - SORT IT!

I need to head to bed but tomorrow I'll show you how we've sorted out our kitchen nook, and maybe a glimpse of the old dining room. Oh - and there was NO Sweet Sunday because I starting sorting this lot when I should have been baking. But you know, family first!

x

1 comment:

  1. can't wait to see the final product!! ;)

    ReplyDelete

I love hearing from you! Thanks for your comments. I'll do my best to answer questions as quickly as possibly, but with three tiny humans, it can get busy around here. Thanks for stopping by!

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