Continuing the theme of quality-of-life improvements, a very simple one a year or so ago was reorganizing the cabinets in the linen hallway. When we looked at this place, I didn’t pay too much attention to what the POs used these cabinets for, because what did it matter? Nor did I have any grand plans for that area of the house. Originally, the walls of this hallway were the same puke-brown as most of the rest of the house, and the cabinet doors and drawers were white, but a couple of years back when our favorite house painter redid the north hallway, these all were painted a pretty green. Some before and after images–the last one is pretty true to the actual shade of green.
As you may notice, this area contains a LOT of storage. The closet at the end of hall contains the water heater for that wing. It and the rest of the cabinets and drawers in this hallway are original to the house. We assume that the Doc, who built this place, had a column of cabinets and drawers assigned to each of his three kids. Each column has a set of four large drawers, a folding drawer/platform above them, and a large cabinet with adjustable shelving above.
The problem with the cabinets: said adjustable shelving is very deep–too deep for me to easily reach the backs, above the first two shelves or so. This is one area of Purgatory that has seen a lot of shuffling about, changes, and reconfigurations since moving in. Currently the left column is used for linens, with the drawers holding items like extra pillow cases, heating pads, random photography backdrops and other miscellaneous fabric things. I was never a huge fan of collapsible tote bins, but now I must say they are awesome for storing sheet sets. Whenever I want/need to change the bedsheets, I can just pull out a tote that has a clean set of sheets within it and carry it to the bedroom. Then I use the same tote to carry the sheets I take off the bed out to the laundry. Once the sheets are clean and dry, it’s just a matter of folding them, dropping them into the cube tote and popping that back into the cabinet–so much easier than when it was just a couple of shelves with sheets stuffed atop them.
The middle cabinet and drawer column houses random craft and art supplies, with a few drawers being the perfect spot to store my yarn stash. The bins are mainly repurposed DVD storage containers, as my deep dark secret is that I have a small horde of random interesting bits and bobs that I use when I make random stuff–some of which is even kind of sort of art. Like, say, the crazy cork sculpture in the butler’s pantry.
Then the right side holds all sorts of random things like carry bags, spare bird toys and, most importantly, newsprint for the boys’ cages, which makes morning cleanup each day so much easier.
I’m sure I’ll tidy and reorganize the cabinets and drawers again and again, especially if I’m successful in making use of much of my crafting stashes, but this space is quite a luxury to have. So much storage means that the downstairs room of the studio building is no longer full of stuff, and slowly but surely the drawers and cabinets in the spare bathroom will no longer be full of random things.