A True Home Improvement

So, our house is much too small for our family.  Let's put it that way.  However, the price for our house is just right for our family.  This creates a situation of home improvement, wherein we need to be able to fit a ton of regular family stuff into a small space.  Usually, this means we obtain much taller storage solutions that use the same amount of floor space and provide lots more stuff-room.  Here's our latest stroke of genius.

We were ex-psyched for IKEA to open in Denver last summer.  We immediately put into motion our plan for a better living room, using IKEA's Billy Bookshelf system.  The living room is WAY better, with more storage space, more floor space, and a lot more contemporary style.  Then we did the same in our dining area, also using Billys.  THEN we got the super-brilliant idea to use Billys in our bedroom.

Before this, we had a hand-me-down dresser with three drawers per person.  It was about 3 feet tall, which is good if you want to stash a lot of papers and useless crap on your dresser everyday -- right in arm's reach.  This dresser setup was not ideal for us for several reasons:  we have more clothes than we can fit in 3 middle-size drawers, our room was ugly because of all the stacked up, dusty, useless crap we had piled up, and we had painted, vinyled the walls, and hung pretty curtains, and the dresser wasn't fitting in with our plan for a cute, modern-looking room.

 So, Billy comes in the usual 11 inch bookshelf depth, but then also now it comes in a 15 inch depth.  That's what gave us the brilliant idea for our bedroom.  An 11 inch bookshelf would be lame for clothes, but a 15 inch deep bookshelf is perfect.  We decided to DO IT! and gave the dresser to the Young Women's Yard Sale.  A Bold Move, since we didn't have a replacement yet, eh?

We went a few days later and just DID IT.  We bought two brown-black 15-inch deep Billys.  One for each of us.  It's super fun to put up something pretty and practical.

Our clothes fit -- ALL our clothes.  I have thermal underwear in there!  Fleeces!  Sweaters!  Shorts!  Everything I wear all year, plus a lovely Heirloom Jewelry Box my dad made AND my "dresser-top" toiletries.  Seth even had room for a couple shelves-worth of shoes.  Now the ugly laundry basket lives in the closet instead of right out in the open as you walk into our room.  It's better all around.

The other awesome thing about Billy is that it's A System.  You can add any number of doors in all different styles or you can add a height extension.  It all works together to make the storage solution that works the most awesomely in your space.  It seems like a commercial up in here!!

It was a few weeks before we were able to go and get the doors.  They're not expensive, but especially when you need four of them at one time, they're not giving them away either.  These were the best doors for the job.  They're a little too sleek for me, but whatever.  They're the best ones.

Billy is a blessing from Heaven.  We can walk through our room before we make the bed -- there's room for pillows and blankets on the floor and we can still walk around!  A dream come true!  

Of course, the better dream come true would be to build that Master-Bedroom-Over-the-Garage I've been envisioning since before we moved in.  But THAT's a dream for another day.

Right now, I'm just grateful to have a room that looks better, works better, and IS better.