Restyling a Bookcase: Less is More

There are days when I get on a clutter purge frenzy.

I could be in the middle of a Parks and Recreation marathon (Netflix will be the end of me, y'all), and I'll look around the room and suddenly get this itch.  Where did all of this stuff come from?!

Having a two year-old doesn't really help the situation.  She finds things buried deep in drawers and in all kinds of hiding places and decides, "I think this will look better catapulted all over the living room floor."  

My purge frenzy this time around though was really cleaning up my own mess.  

I'm still a work in progress on the minimalist approach.  When I look at a bare wall, I start envisioning what to hang on it.  But after living in this house for over a year, I'm starting to realize that if every single blank space had some sort of decor on it, it would feel really cluttered.  And I'd probably look around and wonder again why we have so much.  

So blank space is good.  It gives me room to breathe.  

One day in the middle of watching a plot line with Leslie Knope attempting to reason with a crazy Pawnee citizen demanding that Twilight be placed in the town's time capsule, I glanced over at my faux planked bookcase and realized it was suddenly too "eclectic".

Before:

I confess, I have the hardest time letting go of sentimental pieces.  I'm getting better.  But all it took was moving a bunch of our books upstairs in our office and utilizing a few baskets in our pantry for some necessary storage.

So I still got to keep the things that are priceless to me.

Like this birdcage from one of our wedding centerpieces with our lovebird cake topper that my father-in-law hand carved and painted.

And a little gold finch he carved for our first Christmas together.

My mother passed down an old sewing machine from my great-grandmother several months ago.  It makes me wonder how many Easter outfits she crafted on it.  Sometimes I wish antiques could talk.

And in the midst of clearing out a closet from my parents' house, I discovered a pair of old bookends that I remember always playing with at my grandmother's house before she passed away.

They belonged to my grandfather who I never got the chance to meet, and those two little horseheads are the only things I have of his.

I thought about polishing them up, but I sort of love the patina on them.

My mom is a librarian and passed her love of books down to me, so when she found these antique art history books years ago, I sort of stole them from her.  (Hey, they were in a closet for a really long time. Don't judge me.)

I accompanied them with a wooden rattle my father-in-law made for my husband when he was born.  He made it from one piece of wood and a pocket knife! Pure talent.

The old sheet music that I rolled up and placed under a thrifted clock dome belonged to my mom when she used to play the flute for weddings in the '80s.

And, of course, I had to find a place for our family Bible too.  We use it for devotionals if we can't make it to church some Sundays.

When I started teaching at a new school two years ago, I bought that sweet little wood framed chalkboard sign (below) that said, "The world is a brighter place because of you."  It was always the message I tried to convey to my students.  (Love those silly teenagers, y'all, with all your hearts.  One day, they will be the ones taking care of us in our old age.)  

It wasn't until after I bought it that I realized it had a capitalization error in it that bugged me to no end.  So I made a game out of it to see which students would notice the error if they stood around my desk.  (I can't tell you how much I spent on candy every month to reward my kids for literature reviews and grammar games in my classroom.)

So now, I feel much more clutter-free.  I love that so many of the items on my bookcase are a part of our past and have a story to tell.  They're worth so much more to me than anything I could find in a store.

The baskets at the bottom, of course, are for hiding the toys Olivia decides to toss all over the living room floor.  I might be working on fighting my clutter, but I'm afraid she's a lost cause right now. ;)

Toddler clutter thrown everywhere means she is exploring and growing, and I'm okay with that.  Embrace life's many phases, right?  And if my Parks and Recreation is replaced with a thousand repetitions of Frozen, I'm okay with that too.

This bookcase will be appearing in the April issue of Reloved Magazine, so you might be seeing it again!  I'll be posting our master bathroom makeover reveal tomorrow too!  All kinds of exciting stuff is happening around here.

Do you have any sentimental items that you love to use in your decor?  Do you have a hard time getting rid of the clutter too?  Or a toddler who decides to decorate in his/her own way?  

Blessings,

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DIY Rustic Industrial Jewelry Organizer

Yay!  I'm back!!!  I missed y'all, seriously.  It was so much fun handing the blog over to Heather, Erica, Karen, and Erin last week while I took a little break, but it feels good being back in the DIY saddle all refreshed and ready to fill you in on some behind-the-scenes action.

If you were a lucky lady who got some jewelry for Valentine's this weekend (or, hey, bought yourself some bling because self love is just as important), then I'm hoping you'll love my latest bathroom makeover project.  

For years, I've kept all of my jewelry crammed into a jewelry box on my dresser where it all somehow gets tangled and lost, and it's constantly a heaping mess.  I was determined to get it organized and beautiful and for as cheaply as possible ('cause that's always how I roll).

This was my jewelry organizer's humble beginnings: 

Stylish, no?  Ahoy, matey! It could actually be cute in the right room, but nautical seems out of place in my house.

I bought that sailboat picture at Goodwill for $2 because I liked the frame.  And the wood piece was just a scrap leftover from our bathroom window makeover.

After ripping out the picture and removing the glass from the frame, I used my tried and true frame distressing technique.  I didn't have any Vaseline this time around, but since we're in the depths of cold season, a little chest rub did the job. Always look for the bright side, right?

This weathered, chippy finish was the end result.  And I LOVE it!  The silvery finish peeking through the Krylon Dover White spray paint is absolutely perfect.

I still had a roll of chicken wire leftover from our hallway lights, so I measured the frame and cut out a piece with the dimensions I needed.  Let me tell ya, working with chicken wire is tricky business, but y'all, heavy iron skillets are good for more than just cooking cornbread. ;)

This stuff rolls right up without a heavy weight on it.  (My skillet may or may not have had remnants of cornbread still in it from dinner.  Don't judge me.)

I used my manual staple gun to secure the wire around the frame.

I made sure to pull the wire as tight as possible and secured it with a staple every two inches or so.

And my earring holder was done!  

For my necklace/bracelet holder, I used my DIY barnwood staining method on my scrap wood piece to match my bathroom plank wall.

Do you love it as much as I do?  I'm hooked on this stain!  And it's way less messy than the can stuff.

Since everything else in my project was free from using leftovers in my craft stash, I decided to splurge a little with these really cool industrial knobs I found at World Market.  

I measured and marked where I wanted to place the knobs next.

Then drilled the holes.  

(By the way, don't drill into your table like it looks like I'm doing in this shot.  I cheated and posed this one since it's pretty challenging to juggle a drill and a big digital camera at the same time. But you get the idea.)  

Once I screwed in the knobs, that was it!  

The whole project probably took all of 45 minutes and cost me about $17.  I guess it pays to be a craft supply pack rat, right?

So now I don't have any jewelry crammed into a box and forgotten.

And it sort of serves as wall decor on my side of our bathroom counter.

This thing could have been cheaper with some basic 50 cent hooks, but I think those cool knobs were well worth it.

The silvery finish peeking through the white of the frame and the knobs work perfectly with our bathroom mirrors too.

Would you even believe I'd forgotten all about that pretty jade necklace that was shoved into the back of my jewelry box before?  Finding accessories in a hurry is going to be so much easier now than pawing through a tangled mess of it.

If you want to try this one for yourself, you can find old picture frames at your local thrift store for $2-$5 each and a 1x2 pine or oak board and a roll of chicken wire at your local hardware store for around $10-$12.  Or, if you prefer, you can buy it online here: (Click the images below)

I'll be revealing more of our bathroom makeover for the next week, and if you haven't been keeping up already, I've been showing off sneak peeks of it on Instagram.  

If you enjoyed this project, be sure to check out these too: (Click the images to find the posts)

Blessings,

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The Most Frugal Way to Organize a Pantry (+ Free Printable)

Cheers to accomplishing New Year's resolutions in the first week of January!  Huzzah!  

We won't harp on the fact that the rest of my house is an utter trainwreck right now.  But, hey, the pantry is organized, so the rest of this place doesn't even matter.  

I thought this would be a fast process, and I would have this thing done by last night.  Ha!  I wish.  But our pantry is finally in order, and I gotta say, I love how cheap it was almost as much as I love the final look.  Whatever you do, do not spend $500 on food storage containers because I found three much cheaper options.

Okay, y'all, can we stop for a second and appreciate how far this space has come?  Excuse me while I cringe in shame.

It physically pains me that I'm even showing you these before shots right now.  Having a toddler who explores all of the shelves in her reach, being on-the-go most days, and having those obnoxious builder grade wire shelves that make every box of food fall over was a disasterous combination.

I couldn't even think anymore.  And I've noticed that my mood changes along with the clutter in our house.  If we have hit a disorganized state, I'm stressed out to the max.  

So I emptied that entire pantry, and said goodbye to my countertops for the day.  My entire kitchen was covered in food containers.  

I honestly had wanted to organize our pantry for a long time, but the price of my "vision" was pretty steep.  After doing my homework and finding that even the cheapest pantry storage options in Walmart were at least $5 per container, I resolved to finding something more budget-friendly.

(Yes, y'all.  I'm cheaper than Walmart.  Hey, I take it as a compliment.)

So here ya go- 3 cheap pantry storage options:

1.  Wrap cardboard boxes in pretty paper or fabric with labels.  I collected diaper boxes for a few months with this plan in mind, and they work perfectly!  The only cost was the $8 roll of paper I used. You can see my DIY pantry crates from yesterday's post.

They look pretty snazzy for only $8 for 10 big pantry boxes.

2.  Use Dollar Store Containers.  So those handy clear containers there...did not cost me $5-$10 a pop.  I found them at the dollar store!  (Dollar Tree to be exact if you live in the U.S.)

I bought 8 tubs and 10 containers with pourable spouts.  I cut out labels with black cardstock I had lying around, labeled them with a white chalk marker, and taped them on.  I could have gotten fancy with printed labels, but I kept it simple.

I'm not totally sure these are air tight, but they are doing awesome so far.  And they're much more air tight than the store containers all of the food was in before anyway.

3.  Shop your home for baskets and bins.  I sort of have a basket addiction.  They come in handy a lot around our house, so when I needed a little more food storage, I put a couple of baskets from our living room to good use.  They were only holding clutter anyway, which forced me to organize that little bit too.  Win win!

While searching our house for other baskets, I found a couple of wire ones to hold my cook books and Lola's pet supplies too.  And I repurposed a galvanized bucket sitting on a bookshelf that served a better purpose as a potato bin.

I keep walking by the pantry and find myself just staring at it in awe.  How many people can say that, right?  Actually, don't answer that.  I'm probably just weird.

I happened to already have those glass containers from earlier last year when I first attempted the pantry organization process and sort of lost my steam.  They're great in here too though.  I bought them at Walmart last summer.

I resolved to create a pantry inventory list to hang on the wall in here too.  I usually have a running list in my head of things I need to buy when we run out, but I never fail to forget at least one item every week.  

I'm hoping this solves that dilemma.

And maybe I won't have to spend as much time writing out my grocery shopping list each week.  

You can print the pantry inventory list for yourself here:

Pantry Inventory Printable

In the end, here's how much our entire pantry makeover cost:

Paper Wrapped Diaper Boxes     $8.00

Dollar Store Plastic Containers   $18.00

Can Dispenser Containers           $18.00  ($6 each from Walmart)

Repurposed Baskets and Jars       $0.00

Total cost:  $44.00

Now the trick is to actually keep this place organized.  We'll see how that goes.  

If you liked this organizing post, be sure to check out these too:

(Just click the image to go to the post.)

Do you have any frugal organizing tips for the pantry?  Or even other parts of the house?  Or at least strategies to keep a toddler from rearranging shelves?  There might not be any hope for that one.  Good thing she's cute. ;)

Blessings,

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