Plastic versus metal

Sorry for the long absence, I have not finished anything blog worthy in a while. There is one biggish project I am doing and then there is the HUGE project of those boat cushions which is pressuring me. For now I will show a very very small thing we improved.

Once upon a time I made a post about organizing the tools cabinet we have in the vestibule. The order is still working, but the shelves are heavily loaded none the less. The tiny brackets holding those shelves are plastic and few days back one of the brackets broke. Luckily that is all what happened, the three brackets left hold the shelf on place, but imagine what would have happened. The heavy shelf would have collapsed most likely collapsing all the rest of the shelves underneath it. The tools and paints we have in that cabinet would have been all over the place. That is why we changed the brackets to metal ones. Those should not brake.

(Sorry about the dreadful pictures.)

Incoming mail slot

Besides some unfinished sewing and knitting I have been very unactive around the house. We were sledding three weekends ago and the sleds are still by the front door outside. I have a pile of Christmas CDs on the coffee table that I cannot seem to put in place. The kitchen is a constant mess and we only finally last week did the basic cleaning we are supposed to do in every two weeks, but I don't know how long it had been since we had done it last time and I don't even want to know. After removing the shelf from the entry and placing the metal cabinet there I've had the incoming mail slot cube on the floor forever. On Saturday that finally found its place.

I screwed it on the wall next to the metal cabinet. I drilled two holes on the back plate of the cube and then screwed it on the wall. I have made the incoming mail cube few years back from plywood to specifically fit the old shelf we had in the entry. The cube has a slot for A, for me, for us together and for unpaid bills. The incoming mail cube has been the best working organizing system we have in the whole apartment, especially the unpaid bills slot. We see in an instant if there is something that needs our attention. The other slots we empty once in a while. It was very important to find a place for this mail slot cube.

Metal cabinet

You saw this metal cabinet partly already. I found it from the metal trash from work, I had been looking for something like this for quite some time. It barely fit into my car, but I'm really happy it did. I'm not sure A is that happy about the cabinet. He thinks it's hideous and would fit way better into a garage or similar. A said the cabinet might be better painted white. But I don't know, I like the old, scratched look.

Anyway he did help me to break into the cabinets, only two of the doors had keys, the rest were locked. Ignore the boxes on the floor.

On the picture on top is the shelf we used to have in the entry. I found it so dull, handy yes, but so dull. So what do think, are you with me or with A?

Oh yes, and linking to

Changing the belt for a treadle sewing machine

When we moved the sewing machine slash table from the bedroom to the entry we at the same go changed the old belt of the sewing machine to a new one. The old had broke couple months ago and we had bought a new leather belt, but had not yet changed it.

I had been stressing about changing the belt, but in the end it was really easy. First we placed the new belt on it's place, pulled it tight, but not too tight and marked the place. We cut the belt from the mark and then added the clip that came with the belt.

We used a big needle to make the holes for the clip. It was a bit difficult to make the holes large enough but we pushed the needle in a few times and eventually it got larger.

Here is A trying out the treadle sewing machine. I think he got hang of the treadling faster than I did.

The sewing machine wasn't still on the right spot. We moved it under the mirror in the entry. We also thought of moving it in the office, but the office is a bit crowded.

The inconvenient entry cleaning

I remember having this same problem in last spring clean. The problem being that I have an issue with A's stuff. We have separate boxes for mittens and such in the entry for me and for A. I have very few items of clothing in the entry atleast compared to A. He has about triple or quadruple the amount of clothing stored in the entry than I do. When I've done the cleaning and washing of my things I feel that I've just scratched the surface, but I cannot go through his things. Firstly I don't want to, those are his things and secondly I have no idea which items he has used that need washing and also I'd like him to go through them and donate the things he does not use, but that seems impossible for him. You should have seen him last year when I almost forced him to go through the boxes. It was so slow and he found use (in his mind) for all of them and explained to me where he has got it and how important the thing might be in the future. It was so hilarious but also frustrating to me.

Also I'm afraid this spring clean came too early this year, I think that was the case last year too. I washed some of my scarves and such (more about that later) and then realized that I cannot do the grand switheroo from winter stuff to lighter stuff, because it's actually still very cold at times. Now I cannot put the washed items to the storage and I must use them and maybe wash them again before I move them to storage later. That is a bit dull.

Well anyway my plan for the cleaning is following

Vacuum the entry and the vestibule
Take the carpets outdoors and give them a beat
Polish shoes
Wash the down jacket and put it in the deep storage CHECK
Declutter and wash items from the mitten/hat boxes CHECK
Declutter and wipe the umbrellas and the umbrella stand
Wipe shoe racks
Declutter and organize the drawer unit CHECK
Organize incoming papers
Empty outbox

And again some before pictures. There are four doors plus two openings to other rooms, so it's quite a tricky space. Here is a tour.  Clockwise, starting from the entry closet.

Here under is the vestibule. It's located right behind that door with a window you saw in the pictures before. 

I have one box where I have all extra mittens, scarves, hats mixed up all together. Then I have two baskets on the top shelf of the entry closet. On the last ones I keep things I use on the season-to-date, on the other one are more neater pieces of clothing and on the other one are outdoors gear and pieces I use in the garden or when doing dirty work. I went through the boxes and decided to wash most of the pieces, which was a bit dumb decision like I stated earlier. I washed the darks and the lights separately with wool cycle in the washing machine. I almost threw in with the dark ones the red scarves I have. I thought that since those have been washed before that the reds wont dye the darks. I'm glad I didn't though and washed them by hand.

It looks like I had killed someone and I'm trying to wash away the evidence or that I'm bathing beetroots. The redness is just overwhelming.

I also washed my down jacket, I used the wool cycle on that too. The wool cycle on our washing machine is very fast only 30+ minutes so I was able to wash three loads in one evening. After the down jacket had dried I folded it in a box and placed it on the top shelf of the clothes cabinet in the bedroom.

The last thing I've done so far is to go through the stuff in the drawers, well I used most time on the top one and just quickly decluttered the other ones. In the top one we keep some keys and locks, extra reflectors, foreign money and also A keeps his sun glasses there.

I found atleast five reflectors to throw away, but most stuff is actually needed. Except that I found there seven sun glasses, but A claimed he uses them all. I picked a box for them and put them all on the same place. Otherwise it was just rearranging things.

I need to continue the cleaning over the weekend. I haven't really done much yet.

Tool cabinet organizing

When I organized the closet in the office I was left with some empty space in the entry tambour. The place used to hold our camping and sailing gear.

The space is right at the ceiling level so it's not very easily accessible. But our tools cabinet is packed with stuff and there are things we do not need that often, so those could be stored there.

Here is what the tools cabinet looked before the organizing. It's located right under the cabinet you are seeing above.

It was jam packed. I had organized it earlier, but there were so many things and so tightly that when ever we tried to take anything from there we had to move out other things that were on the way and it was just not very handy. All the stuff was so hard to put back in place so as a result some tools had accumulated in the entrance.

I cleared out all the stuff from the cabinet, except the first shelf, that has car maintenance stuff. I picked out all things that we don't use often. Also we used to have the Dremel and the drill in their original boxes which was a pain. I removed them from the boxes and desided (well, that was actually A's idea) to store them separately.

After I got those out of the way I started to organize the actual tools cabinet. I organized all the tools into piles just to see how many different items we had. I did throw out some things and put few things to the donation bin. For instance we had gazillion hex head wrenches, I threw most of them to the metal recycling bin.

The cabinet is quite deep and I really had to think things through to make even the stuff in the back accessible. To one shelf I desided to add a shelf that was only about 20 cm /8 in deep. I had used that type of narrow shelf in my clothes cabinet and I had found it to be real convenient. I did not have any shelf board at home but I did have some planks. I attached two planks side by side, to make an appropriately deep shelf.

I didn't bother to paint the shelf, this is a tools cabinet after all. It does not need to be pretty.

Also I made a chest of drawers from two shoe boxes. I happened to have two similar shoe boxes.

Then I filled the cabinet again. And ofcourse labeled everything. Here is the after. I'm quite pleased with the shelf with the red box, it has even some extra room and some handy temporary set down area.

Here is one detail. The cabinet is originally meant as a clothes cabinet so it had a clothes rack. We've found it's handy for the saws. We just push the saw between the rack and the above shelf and they stay there quite nicely. The depth of the cabinet is just right for the regular saws, the japanise saw is a bit longer so it's stored in an angle.

Carpet -suffix one

So I desided to keep the thicker carpet, suprise suprise. I quess there was no turning back, I liked it so no one could have talked me out of it. I am sometimes bit stubborn.

So what then, I now had an extra carpet to put somewhere. I could have sold it or donated it, but I desided to reuse it. See this carpet in out entry tambour (as I called it in a previous post), it's dull, it works fine, but I've never enjoyed it's appearance. If you would look more closely you'd see that it's not actually only grey, it also had green and yellow dots in it.

Under the carpet is bare concrete, so it definitely needs a carpet, or somethign on top of it. I generally enjoy the feel and looks of natural materials and the sisal carpets in general are made for entries.

I used the old carpet as a model and cut the same shape from the old livingroom carpet with a carpet knife.

 

I cut the new one slightly bigger than the old one had been because it had been originally slightly too small. But ofcourse in some parts I cut the new carpet too big and I needed to adjust it a bit after placing it in the entry tambour.

But all in all this was such an easy change, with the old carpet as a model I finished this transformation in half an hour. I love to find new use for things I no longer like in their original place.

There will also be a suffix two for the livingroom carpet, stay tuned for that on wednesday.

Closet decluttering and shoe hideout

First I must say that I'm very very proud of my clothes closet, it is mainly because all the clothes I have fit to my closet and it's very well organized. But what makes me most proud is that even my jackets (including winter ones) that are not in active use at the moment and my gowns all fit there. I even have some shoes there.

What is not kept in the closet is the jackets I use at the moment, some shoes and the semidirty clothes ( I mean clothes that I've used once or twice and that I will use again) Here you see what my clothes closet looks like. I combined two pictures because the closet has sliding doors so when the other side is open the other is closed.

1) shoes, mainly winter ones 2) wool coat or trench coat, depending on the season 3) shirts, long sleeved, three shelves 4) shirts, short sleeved 5) trousers, shorts 6) underwear, swimwear 7) gown, a big hem one 8) long black gown and a polkadot gown 9) stockings, leggins, a box of summer shoes in the back 10) few dresses, skirts and blouses 11) wool socks 12) renovating and painting clothes 13) belts and shoe bags.

The clothes closet organizing is something I think I've always been good at. I remember that even when I was a teenager I had my clean clothes folded neatly into the closet when everyone else I knew just seemed to use the bedroom floor as a closet. I think this is a weird detail in my personality because I'm not actully interested in clothes at all. I rarely shop for clothes and I usually like very plain ones. I normally wear jeans, a top or a shirt and a gardigan of some sort. Occasionally I wear tunics. I hardly ever wear skirts or dresses. I often use funky earings and fun coloured socks to chear up my look.

But eventhough I like my closet it does not mean that it couldn't be better. I know there were things I don't use anymore and the fact that I just have room for them is no excuse to keep them. So I removed everything except the boxes from the top from my closet and wiped all the shelves. Some people try on all their clothes when they deside what to keep and what to toss, I don't do that, I usually remember how I feel about the garment and remember if I have used the garment in a long time or not. This time I found only a small pile to donate.

I was hoping there could be more to donate but there were also garments that went straight to trash so some decluttering got done. Here is what my closet looks after the decluttering and cleaning.

Then to the shoes, I usually wear the same pair for months but occasionally I do need different shoes, like for jogging or for rainy days or for parties. It's amazing how many different shoes one needs. And the worst thing is that some of the shoes hardly ever get to be worn, but yet they are needed (okey a minimalist would disagree).

I have a super secret shoe stash, can you locate it from this picture? The picture is from our entry closet. No and the shoes on the picture are not mine, none of them.

Here it is! A helps me to take this pic. I'm quite sure you could not figure out where my shoe stash is.

There are my high heels, some summer shoes, a pair of sneakers and boots. I love that this is all hidden, all these shoes are used pretty rarely or if often I swop things there seasonally. Now my boots that I wear on spring and fall went back to their proper home (all cleaned and polished ofcourse).

Entrance

I consider our entry to be huge, but compared to it's size, it does not actually have lot of convenient storage space. Our entry is a place we have to pass if we want to go from one room to another, so it means that the entry mostly has doors and openings to other rooms. And it means that there is not that much wall space there to have storage on. There is one closet, a shelf and a chest of drawers. This is plenty for us, but I do not know how a family of four could cope.

Entrance tambour left and right side, photo taken from front door

Here most homes have also an entrance tambour (shown above), I'm not totally sure about that term, but in homes where the front door goes straight out there is a small room in front of the door so that when you go out you first go in this small room and close the interior door after you, then you open the front door and warm air inside will not escape. I'm not sure if this is mandatory in all buildings in Finland but it's very common anyway. Even many stores have these.

I thought I could start the hybrid cure of the entrance by clearing all the stuff out in the open that just was misplaced and doing a basic cleaning there. I did not declutter a single closet or storage basket and I did not take out spring jackets or put the winter ones away. That I will probably do on thursday. But here are some before and after shots. (I cheated a little, the things by the shelf are going to charity, and I moved them away while taking the after shots, but they would not normally be there, so that's my excuse)

Before and after of the entrance after the tambour

On the peg board we generally have some coupons and postcards, things we like to be able to see often. 

Most stuff on the floor in the before is stuff that is going to charity

This shelf contains one of the most important organizing tool of our home, the paper slot. It is the white piece, with vertical dividers, that you see on the fourth shelf. It has slots for me, A, us both and for bills. It is where we put all the mail we receive that is not junk. In the landing strip (shown below) we can categorize everything and then we use the slots. From here we find all the papers actively in use and once in a while we go through the papers and throw them to either trash or put them to folders in the office. 

Before and after of the landing strip

This landing strip is a place that requires constant cleaning, maybe because we have to walk past it to get to any room we tend to leave there stuff that happens to be in our hands.