a little more living space

You know how I said that it was really cold today and our apartment was a mess so I was going to spend the day tidying? Guess who made good on that promise!

Since our little mold thing happened, most of Peanut's toys and books have been living in stacks on the floor. Eventually we moved them into laundry baskets. She couldn't find anything, it took up a lot of room, the living room was a disaster all the time and it was totally unsightly. Well no more: we have achieved order. The pics are all clickable and have notes on flickr.



Toy storage. Peanut's trunk holds soft toys (we purged a bunch recently, but we'll probably do it again in a little while) and the red unit holds hard toys, puzzles, blocks and books. The red unit is actually a chest of drawers we found, sans drawers, on the sidewalk in our last neighbourhood just before we moved. Until the mold adventure, it was sitting in the living room with stuff stacked on top of it and the inside entirely unused. Waste. of. space. When the mold ruined one of our two bookcases, we kept the shelves that went in it and discovered that they fit - sort of - inside the chest of drawers. We popped two of them in and had shoved it full of books that were rendered homeless by the loss of the bookcase. I had always planned to get rid of one of the sets of runners to make two shelves instead of three so that it would be a good fit for toys. I was feeling particularly industrious today (I'm going to blame hormones and nesting instincts) so I got out my tools and got rid of one of the sets of runners. It was big fun with a rubber mallet - you've got to love old school, glue-free mortised joinery!



The Christmas play kitchen and a little table and chairs Peanut uses for drawing. Before this afternoon, the red shelves were where the kitchen is now, the kitchen was where the table is, the table was where the trunk is, and the trunk was where the red shelves are now. The new layout works so well that I think we'll definitely be keeping things like this for the foreseeable future, so I'll hang a magnetic board and a magazine rack over the table to hold magnetic letters and art supplies, respectively.



Peanut in her space. She's so much happier now that she actually has room to play and can find everything, and I am incredibly happy to be able to see the floor! I still think that we have too many toys, and there's actually a wicker basket with some toys in it that hasn't quite found a home yet, but overall, this is a huge improvement and another corner of our living space looks and feels far more finished.

Maybe tomorrow I'll tackle the bedroom. Maybe.