We needed to let the moving company move all of our belongings together. Matt needed the house set up so it was functional for his use until I could join him after our wedding.
The solution was to fly up here (with my parents) so we could set it all up over a long weekend. Then Matt would be set to live and our house would be nearly situated by the time I arrived to live here a couple of months later.
One challenge to overcome: we do not have a pantry. We had at least a couple of huge boxes of dry goods to store. What were we to do?
When my sister, Tracey, and I were children, Dad taught us to use hammer and nail to build things. One project we worked on together was shelving for our rooms. For my room, Dad and I built two narrow, tall pieces of furniture with 5 shelves and two shorter ones with 2 shelves. We stained them dark brown.
Over the years, I've used these pieces in all sorts of configurations to store belongings. Even though Matt and I thinned out a lot of our belongings before moving...Even though I had no idea where I might put these shelves because I'd already laid out the house for our furniture and there was literally no room left...I still determined to bring them along. Just in case. Just in case I might need them. (I knew I wanted them.)
When we met with our storage dilemma, my Dad suggested using the two tall shelves for food storage in our dining room (to flank the sides of our china cabinet). Although I didn't have another suggestion, I didn't like the idea. I thought it would detract significantly from the look of the dining room. (Not only would we have two random pieces of furniture placed in the corners of the room, but we'd also have all of our pantry items visible to our guests.) Shortly thereafter, Matt suggested the same solution. I quickly agreed. Dad was quick to tell Matt, "Well, see there. She doesn't listen to me anymore. Now I know who to talk to if I want to suggest something to her." Ha!
I still didn't like the idea, but after hearing the suggestion twice, I thought it was a practical (hopefully short-term) solution to two problems. Where to put the food stuffs and where to put the shelves. :)
After moving in and living day-to-day life here without a pantry, it became more and more evident how our short-term solution needed to be a longer-term solution. As I shopped for all the things we needed to set up our house (and keep it organized), I found these:
Small black bins that looked about the right size for our homemade shelves. I bought one, tried it out and to my very pleasant surprise...they fit!!!
I chose black so they'd draw less attention. It took 3 trips to the store and 2 online orders to get all 10 bins.
As I filled them and slid them in their place, the look of the room was drastically improved. My organization improved tremendously as well. When I attempted to slide the last two in place, I found that the openings were too small! Oh no!
Using my Mom's ingenuity (which I didn't know I'd inherited), I ripped the seams of the trim on the canvas bins, cut down the cardboard inserts, cut down the canvas and stitched the trim back to the top. My alterations may not be perfect, but they sure were effective.
Here is the final result:
Once finished, I thought this turned out so well that I put the 2 smaller shelves in the kitchen for more pantry storage.
Problem solved.
No comments:
Post a Comment