A little change, a big difference

A little change, a big difference

Update: added photos of the new stuff

As Lisa planned in this post, we went to Ikea and bought some furniture. The past three days, we've been assembling and installing it.

It's amazing - just a few changes, but each of them makes a huge lifestyle difference.

My theory is that this is the best way to do home improvements: change one small-ish but significant thing at a time. That way, you really appreciate the difference it makes.

If you re-do a whole room from top to bottom at once, you get instant gratification, but it makes not much more difference than changing out one piece of furniture. If you one thing at a time, you get that wonderful experience over and over.

So the things we did over the past week:

• New bed frame - we went to Ikea and got this bed frame. It's wonderful - attractive, sturdy, easy to put together, and we no longer live on the floor like students! When you get up in the morning, you put your legs over the edge and stand up! You don't have to climb up off the floor! It's like we're adults! Hooray!
• Under bed storage - we got some plastic under-bed storage boxes from Ikea (2 of them to start). Nothing's in them yet, but they're under the bed, brimming with potential. :-)
  
• New garbage in kitchen - we replaced the kitchen garbage with a galvanized steel garbage can, one with a clip-on lid. Just from Home Depot. That cleared up the space beside the fridge, where we put a...
• New kitchen cart - on our trip to Ikea, we got this kitchen cart. We put it beside the fridge, where the old garbage can used to sit on an old sewing machine table. On the kitchen cart goes the microwave.

Now, the kitchen improvements have three profound and life-altering effects:

• massively more space on the kitchen counter - we had very limited counter space, partly because some of it's inaccessible, and some of it is holding stuff that we don't have cabinet space for. Also the microwave consumed a massive space. Moving the microwave suddenly more than doubles the available counter space, which is huge.
• electrical woes fixed - the microwave was plugged into the over counter plug. This plug is on the same circuit as all of the other over counter plugs, and the overhead light. Not a big deal, until you want to run the kettle and the microwave at the same time (which happens fairly often). Then the circuit breaker blows, and you have to make the long trek into the basement to reset it. This way, the microwave's on a separate circuit, and won't contend with anything.
• much more attractive - subjective, but true nonetheless. Moving the microwave off the counter massively declutters that side of the kitchen. Moving the garbage into an enclosed can cleans up sight lines. The kitchen cart matches the island we already had. The whole layout just works much better now.

Very fun. Just three purchases (none of them very expensive), and your life is changed in the bedroom and the kitchen, two of the most important rooms in the house.

That turned out great.

Lisa's gone this weekend back to Kitchener (back next week), so I'm sure once she gets back she'll have lots more things she'll want to do. In the meantime, I'm basking in the life altering effects of our new home changes. :-)