Tag Archives: organization

When I moved into my condo, I tried to unpack as much as possible as quickly as possible so I could feel settled in my new space. But as I unpacked, I realized that some things I thought would work in my new space didn’t seem to fit the way I wanted them to. It was a crazy adjustment to move into a space that was about 3 times the size of my old home. But I have tried to make things work as much as I could since I didn’t want to buy a ton of new things.

But there were some things that just wouldn’t work no matter how I tried to get them set up. I had to get a new couch because my old one looked so wrong in my living room. I got a new tv because it was hard for me to see the small tv clearly from the distance between my couch and tv (which was probably about 4 times further away than my old home). But that also allowed me to use my old tv stand in my office since I hadn’t found new office furniture that I liked. Things have been moving around in my place and I’ve tried to figure out new ways to use things so I didn’t have to sell or donate a lot, but it hasn’t been easy and it’s been a slow process.

But over the past week, I’ve been able to make a few small changes that seem to have made a big impact on my home. One was a purchase and the other was unpacking things a bit more.

In my living room, I have a lot of empty space. I do like a bit of a minimalistic style, but not quite as bare as things have been. I have slowly been adding things in and trying to figure out what else I could possibly want, but it’s been hard to decide on anything. I would like to maybe add more artwork, but I don’t have anything in mind so I just keep looking around to see if anything inspires me. But one space that has been bugging me is the empty space between my couch and sliding glass door. It’s not really a functional space to use, but I also didn’t want my couch to be off-center to fill it in. So I just kept looking for things that might fit in there like a light or high-sitting end table.

And one day, in my random online searches I happened to find a nice floor lamp that would fit the space and was on sale! And this had glass trays on it that could serve almost like an end table. Because my couch is so tall, only one of the trays would be visible from the couch, but that worked for me. So I ordered it and it arrived only a few days later.

To build the light, I won’t go into the frustration I experienced. I will say that the person who designed it really didn’t think the process through and I had to keep balancing pieces of glass on my feet while I built the other sections. But when it was done and in the space I wanted it to be, I felt like it was the perfect addition!

It’s a really big lampshade, but that’s exactly what I needed to go there. And if I ever want to have light in my living room but not the lights in my ceiling, now I have another option.

After getting the light and putting it together, I was inspired to do some more organizing. I have been putting off working on my office and organizing more because I was hoping I would get a new desk soon. But I have been struggling to find something that fits what I want and need, so I have no idea if I’ll get a new desk any time soon. But I wanted to finally get out the last few things that have been in boxes waiting for my new office furniture so I could finally feel like all my things were out. There are a few things that will have to wait until I figure out my new office setup because I don’t want to hang things on the walls if they might need to move, but that was only a handful of items compared to what was still in boxes.

The first task was going through the boxes and seeing what I actually wanted to keep. And of course, there were things that I realized that if I hadn’t needed them in over a year, I could get rid of them or donate them. These were mainly random things that I had held onto from my old home. For example, I had some old IDs that I had on a corkboard in my old office area, but I have no need to keep them now. I also found some things that went with items that I had previously gotten rid of, such as the extra shelves for my old makeup stand which I think I got rid of almost a year ago. But I forgot that I put those extra pieces in a box and closed them up when I moved.

I decided to use my old tv stand as a combination of a bookcase and a display case. I don’t have a lot of physical books anymore, but I still have some of my favorites that made the move with me. I would like to have more actual books eventually, but I want to work on building an interesting library instead of the random paperbacks that I used to have. Most of the fiction that I read now is on my Kindle, so I don’t buy a lot of books. But there are some collections of classics that I’d love to have in the future. But for now, I just wanted to get the books I had in boxes out and fill in the space in my office that has felt so blank.

This is still a work in progress. I actually want to switch where things are in my office so this would go under the window and my desk would go on this wall, but I can’t move my current desk because it’s starting to crack. So moving things around will have to wait until I finally get a new desk. But at least for now, I have things out and on display and I can feel like my belongings are not just in boxes.

I do still have a few things in an open box that I haven’t decided what to do with or can’t put up just yet, but considering that I got things down from being in 2 boxes and a storage tub, this is a huge improvement.

I know that even in my old place, I was still organizing and redoing things all the time, even after living there for over a decade. And I’m sure I’ll be always redoing things in my current place too. But at least things are finally unpacked and I can feel like I have moved in just a little bit more.

You Might Also Like

1 Year Of Living In My Condo (or I Do Feel Settled In) Making My House Look Fancy (or Doing Some Upgrades For The New Year) Not Fully Able To Unpack (or I Think The Move Prepared Me For This) I Really Did Give Myself An Easy Monthly Challenge (or This Month Will Possibly Be Easy As Well) Recognizing Some Weird Habits (or Continuing To Work On Being Used To My New Space) I Feel Like I’m Always Buying Stuff (or Some Small And Big Upgrades)

I’ve been living in my condo for just over 9 months now, and I feel like I’m still getting used to it. I was worried about the move being weird, especially since I was staying in the same neighborhood. I joked that I would probably accidentally pull into the wrong driveway at least once because I had been going into that driveway for 12 years. I’m still shocked that I haven’t made that mistake yet, and even before I was fully moved out, my old place just didn’t feel like home anymore. Maybe I’ll make that mistake someday, but at least for now, it hasn’t happened.

But I’ve been noticing other odd habits that I think have carried over from living at my old place. I had such a routine being in that home for over a decade and so many of them were specific to that space. But because they had become routine to me, I guess I carried them into my new home and it took me until now to realize what I was doing.

A lot of these old habits have to do with how I put things away or store things. I’m so used to having very little space and even less storage space. I found a way to make a 400-square-foot home not feel tiny and cramped, but I think a lot of that was luck and how I put things away when I brought them into my home. I had only so many places I could put things like my purse or keys and if they weren’t in that location they made my place feel messy or I couldn’t find what I needed when I needed them.

Now that I’m in a home that’s almost 3 times the size, I’m still doing some things the way I did when I had less space. I’m trying to find places to store things that feel a bit more random and weird. I don’t need to store things behind others in closets or squish things into drawers anymore. It took me until this past weekend to realize I had the entire top of the closet in my guest room/office to store things and I finally put some things away in there. I’m used to putting things away in specific areas, but they aren’t always the best places now that I have more options. I went through this a lot with what I stored in my bathroom compared to before, but I guess it never really connected that I needed to do this for other areas of my home.

I am still getting some furniture that I know I need to store items, but I’m hopefully getting my new tv stand in the next few weeks so that will give me a bit more storage space in my living room. And I’ll probably keep my old tv stand in my office for a little while and use that for storage until I get the library bed I’ll be putting in there eventually. I still have things in boxes that I’d like to put away when I can, even if the place I put them isn’t going to be where they stay for a long time. But I’m realizing that it’s not a big deal for me to have to rearrange or reorganize things as I continue to get more furniture or more set up in my home. And as I do that, I hopefully will find more of these storage habits I have held on to and see how I can do things better in my current place.

I know that it’s not easy to break habits I have had for almost 25% of my life. I need to remember how much space I have now and how I can put things where I want to and not just where it has to go because that’s the only place they can fit. And I’m sure I’ll create some other odd habits with storage in this place too and if I move in the future I’ll have to break those. But for now, I just want to really allow myself to take advantage of how much space I have and feel like I can use it the way that seems right to me now and now just how I am used to doing things.

You Might Also Like

Cleaning Up And Giving Things Away (or Finding More Space In My House) Taking Advantage Of Having Extra Space (or My First Overnight Guest In My Condo) More Empty Space In My House (The Cleaning And Organizing Continues) Building Upon My Monthly Challenge (or Continuing To Work On Shopping) Still Waiting To Get Things Started (or Continuing To Work On Patience) Doing Even More Organizing and Redecorating (or Continuing To Change Things In My House)

I’m pretty familiar with building different things for my home. I have done this as long as I have lived alone and had to build different storage things for my college dorm. I’ve gotten so many things over the years from places like Ikea, Target, and Amazon that require to be put together and I feel like I have gotten pretty good at doing that. Sometimes, it does require a second person, but usually I can figure out a way to do it on my own. Sometimes that means I’m holding things up in weird ways, but I’m always really proud of myself when I complete a project and I have something new in my place.

I have had to build some random things for my new place, but I haven’t had to do a lot since so much was done in the remodel. I used to have to build things for storage or organization because my old place lacked it, but the new place has been much easier to set up. But that doesn’t mean it was perfect. And we didn’t want to ask the contractor to build things that I knew I could get at a box store and could likely put together myself. And that’s what I’ve been doing most weekends.

I’ve been searching online for the perfect things that I wanted to get, and I waited until the floors were done before I ordered things. And now, they have been coming in.

The first thing that I built was actually 2 different pieces. I wanted to turn the closet in my office/guest room into a bit of a pantry or storage area. At my old house, I had the utility room that I used for this idea. I would mainly store things like extra cleaning supplies, toiletries, and my tools. And I didn’t have a great place already set up in the new place to do that, so I wanted to build some shelving. There were a few ideas of what to build, but I settled on some nicer-looking storage shelves. I didn’t like the idea of just wire shelves, and I found a strong shelving system that looks a lot more finished and complete than a lot of what I found online. I ordered 2 units because I wanted to fill half of the closet.

They arrived about a week apart, so I build one before the other. And despite some of the reviews online saying they were hard to put together, they were pretty simple. I finished the first one in about 20 minutes and the second one only took a bit longer because I wanted to make sure I got the shelves to match. But I think they look exactly what I was looking for now that they are in place.

I still need to organize the shelves a bit better, but this got a lot of stuff out of boxes that I’ve had on the floor and that makes me very happy. And when my parents are visiting me this fall, my dad will help me make these a bit safer by attaching them to the wall so they won’t fall over if there is an earthquake.

And this past weekend, I worked on a new bookcase for my living room. I will be using this as a way to display different things I have and not really for books, but I wanted something to help to fill out my living room space. Originally, I was going to get a new entertainment center, but the ones I was liking were very expensive and would be something I would need to take time to save for. So I got this bookcase knowing that it might be moved to a different spot eventually, but it would be a good thing to have for now.

This build ended up taking much longer. It didn’t come with instructions, so I had to find them online to figure it out. And I don’t know how I did this, but I actually built it incorrectly. It’s fine the way that it is, but each side was flipped. So where the shorter section is now is where the longer one should be. I think it’s fine that it’s this way, but I think it’s pretty funny that I managed to do that. And once it was completed, I got it next to my tv so I could see how it looks. I still need to move the tv a bit further over (and get a new tv), but I think my living room looks a lot better!

I want to say that I don’t think I have any more things I need to build for a while. I will eventually have the bookcase bed for my office/guest room that my dad and I might try to put together, but that might also be something that needs to be done by a professional. I’m not going to worry about that for now since I won’t be ordering it for at least a few months. But even though I think now that I have no other projects to build, I know that something will probably come up and I’ll be doing another project soon enough.

You Might Also Like

A Few More Projects At My New Place (or These Might Be The Last Little Projects I Do For A While) A Busy Family Weekend (or Continuing To Set Up My Home) A Bookcase Makeover (or A Free Upgrade To My Space) Cleaning Up And Giving Things Away (or Finding More Space In My House) Another Busy Condo Weekend (or A Working Visit For My Parents) 2 Busy LA Days (or Getting More Renovation Planning Done)