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Sunday, November 16, 2014

Spare Room Makeover

We've been living together in our London flat for almost a year and a half and I'm absolutely in love with our little home but there was always an area we both found daunting/shoulder shrugging....the spare bedroom! 

See, from the beginning I sort of treated it like a spare closet for all my seasonal clothing and shoes while my husband sort of used it as a dirty clothes hamper and printer copy shop. It only really came into good use on the rare occasion that we had company which usually fueled a manic cleaning frenzy to hide our shameful stacks of clutter the day before our guests arrived. Then the second our guests left it went right back to being the junk room again. Most people have a junk drawer, we had a junk room!

Finally, I reached my breaking point after our wedding when my sisters, who were inhabiting the spare room for a week, went back home to the states and I was left with clean up duty. At first I cursed my sisters for leaving such a pig sty and I got so frustrated that I couldn't find anything I was looking for for about 2 weeks afterward. Then it dawned on me, this was no one else's fault but ours! We were the culprit of such chaos within our home. Then I started thinking how nice it would be if we could actually have a proper use for this room and make it part of our daily life. After all, not many people in central London are lucky enough to have a whole spare bedroom and we were totally taking ours for granted. 

And that was that, I decided to do a complete makeover on our cramped spare room and to get me super motivated, my husband promised me a brand new tumble dryer as a prize! This was especially exciting given that our old dryer was on the fritz for about a year and we resorted to hanging damp clothes over heaters all around the house (I'm sure other UK residents know this drill) so YAY no more crispy crunchy towels or jeans!!!! 

Here are some before and afters then I'll talk about exactly what I did and how functional the room is now.
BEFORE
AFTER
Ok, so I got rid of a lot. Literally two big trash bags of clothes and shoes that we don't wear went off to the charity shops. Then I went on Amazon and ordered a new desk from Ryman and some cube racks for the closet and for my shoes. The cube racks are super inexpensive and extremely versatile, I would highly recommend them to anyone wanting to organise their closet space. 

Our new desk is pretty awesome too! It was kind of a pain to put together but well worth it. The two big drawers are perfect for storing odds and ends like scissors, tape measure, printer paper...etc. and now we both have an area we can use as a proper workspace. I now spend loads more time in this area doing school work and compiling recipes for my cook book. My husband does his script writing and research here too. It's also so nice to have a beautiful view of our city while working. And when the mini office area isn't being used for work/assignments, the desk doubles as a perfect laundry folding table! Ps....I'm OBSESSED with my new tumble dryer. Like, don't even get me started. Huge upgrade!

Well, hope you didn't find this too boring and housewifey but I'm just so proud of my work. Does this inspire you to re-do a room in your home?? Tell me about it. I may have some suggestions to share!

Xo
Phylicia Jackson-Jones 









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