My Messy Little Secret - Pod 1

It's true. I have a secret. Don't tell anyone.

Doesn't everyone have one of these, though?

Some time ago, the Man and I purchased this lovely piece from Ikea:

It's currently residing in our 150 sq.ft. living/family/great room. It was bought with the intention of using it for extra storage. I was tired of looking at the kids stuff, books, board games, stereo, notebooks, dvds etc lying around. All we had were 3.5 bare walls [and one of those has a window across most of it] a sofa, loveseat and a coffee table. (Since then, we've added an end table [ooh la la!] and a thrifted bedside table cum end table.

I may have mentioned this a time or twelve, but I'm not exactly an ideal housekeeper. As I write this post I am looking at 3 empty used mugs on the table. (Why he needs a new mug every time he makes a new cup of tea, I'll never understand.) So, it seems to have happened that my Shangri-la of a storage unit has become the fifth circle of hell. That is where Satan stashes his stuff in a mad dash when guests are coming to visit, right?

Yep. Shelves, clearly do not work for me and my family. What you see there is a mix of books, paper, craft supplies, dvds and various flotsam. I hit the end of my patience when the Girl tried to open the door just a crack to find a certain colouring book. When I asked what she was doing, she explained that she didn't want anything to fall out. *sigh* At that point, I took a trip around the house on a mission. Surely, the solution lay somewhere. To my great relief, I found a couple semi-unused baskets. I emptied them of their useless contents and refilled them with purpose!

To be perfectly honest, I recycled/threw away most of the stuff in there. The books found their way back to the bookshelf in the basement, large toys went into the toy box, dvds went back to the dvd boxes near the dvd player (novel idea!) and the phone charger the Man has been looking for these last few weeks went back to his bedside table. The rest [colouring books, blank paper, craft supplies and small toys] went into this configuration:

Much better, don't you agree?

And guess what! There are 8 more pods to go through....