apartment organization – Uncovering Real

It’s week 2 of the Apartment Tour, and as promised, here is the world’s cutest dining table. Seriously. It’s adorable.

Retro Red Formica Kitchen Table

It called to me one day when I was listing furniture on FB Marketplace and I.could.not.resist. The joys and dangers of being able to make your own design decisions are that you might end up with an original cherry red formica table sitting in your house as you get rid of everything around it in preparation for downsizing.

No regrets.

I LOVE this table. I’ll post more pictures on Instagram and Facebook this week and talk about the different steps I experimented with to bring her back to shining glory, because she is so adorable she needed her own photo shoot.

On to the rest of the Dining Room Design!

Storage was key here to make both the kitchen and dining room work. I had measured ahead of time and was pretty sure three of the Ikea Hejne shelving sets from my old basement would fit well across the back wall of my new dining room, but I was still a little nervous when it came time to actually assemble them.

They are within a half inch of the molding on either side!!! so perfect! It’s like they’re made for the little nook here. I was positively giddy when we slid it into place.

My step dad finishing up dining room shelf assembly on Moving Day.

It’s taken me arranging and rearranging a few times in order to find a placement that fits my “functional, but make it pretty” aesthetic, but it’s getting there.

As with most of my spaces, lighting and plants are my biggest go-to for making things pretty. I added an antique red lamp (passed down to my kids from their great grand-parents) and put it on the same remote as the kitchen ambient light, so I can easily turn them all on/off at once. The white bins really streamline what could be a cluttered look and are currently taming everything from snacks to canned goods, and less frequently used baking tools and pans. They are a mix of Ikea and Bed Bath and Beyond, which are nearly identical, other than the handle shape, which is low key driving me insane. My next step will be labelling everything, but I’m waiting to see if my arrangement sticks, especially though the addition of more back-to-school snack storage. I’m past the climbing toddler stage, so I didn’t even bracket the shelves to the wall, making this freestanding unit a totally rental-friendly storage solution for us.

My other favorite rental-friendly find for this space were the curtain rods. Nothing warms up a space like curtains, but I’m trying to avoid a day full of patching holes from molly screws when we move, so I went hunting for non-traditional curtain hanging options. I found some hardware that hang from existing blind mounts (which I used in another room) and some that tension mount inside a window opening, but I really wanted to maximize the width of the window opening here, so I wanted something I could hang wider than the window.

Enter the “Easy Install” curtain rod. They hang with two little nails per bracket, so I can hang them anywhere I want, without needing buckets of spackle when they come down. About the easiest curtain installation I’ve ever had. I’m a happy girl. I found mine on Amazon, but I’ve also seen “Fast Fit” easy install brackets from Walmart, which seem to be about the same thing.

two little nails per bracket to hang these curtains. that’s it!

I gave the dated chandelier a quick, free, mini make-under (before and after pictures to come on Instagram and Facebook) and everything else was repurposed from other spaces in my house, which helped balance out the cost of the room, after buying the table, curtain rods and storage boxes.

I’m loving how the storage shelves make the kitchen and dining room functional, while giving me a place to display some sentimental treasures, like my daughter’s New Better Homes and Garden’s Cookbook, displayed next to her great-grandmother’s vintage Betty Crocker cookbook, bridged with the rolling pin my mother gave me, and several generations of pyrex.

Functional, but make it pretty. And sentimental.

What are your favorite kitchen/dining room storage solutions in your spaces, or that you’ve seen someone else use? I’d love to hear!

Enter your email address for spam-free notifications of future posts:

Happy Monday and welcome back to me!

I recently moved and it’s been a bit of a whirlwind deciding to sell, staging and selling my house, finding a place to live and all the crazy and changes that come with moving.

I recently had friends over for dinner in our new apartment and one of them looked around and asked, “Oh! Did you choose this place because it feels like a treehouse when you look out this window?”

I laughed.

I “picked” this apartment because it was the ONLY place with the main qualification I was looking for: keep my daughter in the same school.

(OK, so full disclosure: there was also a house for rent in town. for THOUSANDS a month above my budget. umm… no.)

This apartment was not exactly love at first sight.

The showing was rough – it was cramped, stained, cluttered, dark, and the current tenants were there when I went to look at it, so I couldn’t even view one of the bedrooms.

Speaking of bedrooms, it has half the bedrooms I previously had.

Half the square footage overall actually.

That part shouldn’t be a problem, though, I thought. I mean, I literally spent months chronicling my massive decluttering efforts here, even pretending to move at one point.

Why, I’m practically a minimalist! (she said, dripping with sarcastic self-awareness)

It turns out, pretending to move as an emotional exercise and actually.downsizing.fifty.percent.of.your.living/storage space are apparently two different beasts.

But I love a good challenge, and my COVID casualty jobs have not yet returned, so I decluttered and prepped like it was my job.

I gave items to people I thought would truly need/love/want them. I listed so many items on our local swap and sell sites that I had one woman who used to just stop by on her way home from work just to browse what I was putting up that day. I hosted a garage sale. (This time with planning and signs and everything!) I filled my driveway with items and posted “free” notices.

And after a couple weeks of purging,

releasing,

selling

and gifting,

the moving van showed up.

The moving men began packing items and loading the truck, making small talk as they packed.

When one asked where I was moving, and heard it was a two bedroom apartment, they surveyed my inventory and kindly offered to let a few items get “lost” in the move or fall off the truck to help us fit. 😉

Not a great testament to my decluttering efforts.

But I shudder to think of what the process would have been like if I hadn’t started the minimizing process this past March.

So here we are, sitting in our new-to-us home, surrounded by builder’s beige and feeling a little like I’m back where I was 20 years ago, moving into an apartment complex. Except this time I brought a couple kids, a lot more furniture and a slightly different design aesthetic (not that my proudly apple-stenciled kitchen, frog-stenciled bathroom and flower-stenciled bedroom weren’t the height of fashion in the late 90’s).

It’s been a couple weeks since the moving truck left (after it delivered ALL our remaining stuff) and you know what?

I’m falling in love.

Everything is different and a chance to create a space that works for us. And I love creating.

I don’t intend to live here for very long, and when it’s time to leave I want to:

Not spend a lot of time and money returning this place to it’s original state.

-and-

Get my security deposit back.

-and-

I still want it to work for our family and feel like home in the meantime.

So I’m pulling out all the creative solutions I can borrow, copy and dream up to create a functional home we love in the time we’re here, uncovering what really matters and what’s really real along the way.

Follow along for what’s worked, what hasn’t, tips and ideas, before and afters, and lots of messy middles, because that’s where I tend to live (in design, in life, whatever).

and check out updates on Facebook and Instagram here.

Tag: apartment organization

Apartment Tour: Dining Room

Plot Twist! Minimizing, Moving and Falling In Love