One Room Challenge - Spring 2014: Week Two

Wow! This week has flown by...It's now Week Two of the One Room Challenge. Last week I talked about my inspiration for my Mud Room. I have a lot of ideas swirling around in my head. (You can see some of them on my ORC Pinterest Board.) But I knew I had to spend this week getting the structure of the room in place.

First thing to accomplish was adding more storage space to the Mud Room. Like I said in my first ORC post, this room is going to be high on organization, but low on budget. So I did a little looking for shelving that was in my price range. I really wanted to go with this from Ikea since something similar worked so well in my son's bedroom, but the dimensions were off no matter how many times I measured. (Like I thought they would magically change!) After a little more looking, I came across this from Target.

After putting it all together....

I ended up with this....

 In retrospect, I actually like that they have doors I can close and that the shelves are adjustable, something I wouldn't have gotten with the Ikea shelving. Funny how everything works out in the end. I have some thoughts on how to dress up the door fronts a little to make them, well, not look like I bought them for a low price at Target. More on that in the upcoming weeks.

I really liked the window-seat-flanked-by-two-cabinets look, but it made the hats and bags I had stuffed in the storage space under the bench look like an eye-sore.

So here is the part where I reveal, that yes, I have a problem.(Ok, now I feel like I am on Fess Up Friday!  I hoard bags. It is a sickness I tell you.  But you never know when you are going to need a bag and what kind...right??!!! Anyway, I needed to find a better place to hide my shame store my bags.

I grabbed a large bag I had (See there are uses for them!) and thought it would be perfect to store my bag collection in it. First I neatly folded each one. Then I lined them up inside the large bag, so they could be easily pulled out later with out disturbing the other organized bags. I put them into one of the new storage shelves, closed the door and *Poof* problem solved.

I then had this storage space under the bench that needed to be utilized. This took a little bit more thinking, but a few days ago it hit me that this would be a perfect place to solve another one of my problems. My lovely children do not seem to confine themselves to expressing their artistic talent on just paper. Oh no, they love to create 3D art work, that is very hard to store. I had most of it lining the window ledge, but I thought it looked too cluttered. The space under the bench became the perfect place to contain and display their art work. I need to do a little more styling, but this is what I have so far.

 
So that is where I am now at the end of the second week.
 
Now head on over to Calling It Home and see what everyone else is up to at the Linking Party.
 
Be sure to check back here tomorrow for my round up of my favorite pictures from my fellow linking participants.


And also linking up with Remodelholic, Serenity Now.