Fun storage jars by Alessi from Red Candy

On Sunday my post Spring and new routines touched on some of the changes I'm making right now, and how my Spring cleaning is more of a Spring rearranging.  And there's more evidence of that today with some fun and funky storage from Red Candy.  If you've not come across them do take a look, I mean you just have to love a company who has "Shut up Beige" as their strapline, don't you?  

My shiny new storage jars arrived promptly and I found myself rearranging kitchen cupboards and storage to find the perfect home for them. The glass jars are by Alessi, and the little man that's holding on tight in there is called Gianni. In fact they're all called Gianni, I didn't name him. Honest. 

Here he is, holding on tight, while I take a closer look: 

GIANNI, HE'S QUITE THE ACROBATIC SHOWOFF

Every time I expected to hear a squeal from him... but in fact, it was more likely me that was squealing and chuckling in amusement.

The jars I have are, from left to right, the 90cl, 200cl and 140cl and I've used them to store chia seeds, muesli and raisins. And now think I have the smartest, healthy goods storage around. I opted for white, rather than the bolder blue or yellow colours, and although it also comes in black, I knew I wanted to use these in my cupboard and so I wanted something light and something that I can use for many years to come. If you're wondering what sizes they really are, the largest jar would easily store spaghetti or linguine, if that helps.

And even though I have the white - it's still not beige - and I've the added bonus of smiling every time we lift the lid off the healthy stuff. What better incentive is there?

And no, I didn't realise we had quite so many chia seeds either. I did wonder if they'd stick to him and he'd deposit seeds across my worktop without me noticing. But no, he doesn't, even though he's just about standing on the top of the seeds, I've rolled them around the jar to see what happens, and if static comes into play. But he's passed the test and can stay in my chia seeds. And I'll be adding chia seed porridge to the growing list of new routines, to help bring down my chia seed mountain...

And you may think they're wasted inside a cupboard, but I think if you're going to do storage well then it shouldn't all be for show. I do like a tidy cupboard, I've a number of storage baskets in each cupboard too and everytime MOH puts jars away with the label not facing the front, I shudder just a little bit. 

So here they are in situ. Three Giannis in three storage jars, and three times the amount of smiles. What do you think?

* This is a collaborative post, but all views and opinions are my own.

Adding the finishing touches to our porch

Usually when people talk about decorating their smallest room, we all know which room they have in mind. But for us our smallest room isn't that room at all, but our porch. It's so small that I doubt many people take more than two steps in it at a time, you can reach both the walls without having to stretch your arms hardly at all, but it does provide a bit of a buffer between our main living room and the busy road outside. 

It's also a functional space holding our fuse board and electricity meter along with our recycling, a few pairs of shoes, my wellies for the allotment and an umbrella or two. What it hasn't been for quite a while is pretty. But on Sunday afternoon that all changed. 

Hanging the pigeon shelves

In an unexpected spate of activity we hung the pigeon shelves which we'd bought a while back from Dormy House. We'd bought them unfinished in the sale, unfinished because we weren't certain what colour to choose and because they were significantly cheaper that way. My reasoning was if we bought them painted and then changed our minds it wouldn't be so cost effective, and as there was a strong likelihood that we would change our minds we (the Royal we, that is) might as well paint them to start with. Completely sensical, yes?

Well MOH needed some convincing, but he dutifully set about painting the units - we bought two sets, and my original plan was to hang them both in this small space. That's the bit that changed in the end, but more on that later. With one set of shelves painted MOH was keen to get it hung on the wall and out of the way in the Conservatory, which had turned into his painting studio for the duration.

In the end we chose Farrow & Ball Old White for the shelves, which is the same colour (and paint type - so not another tin of paint to store) we'd used on the bookcase and radiator cover in our main living area.  The walls are Farrow & Ball Skimming Stone, so all very neutral and purposefully so.  The only problem was that it was, well a bit beige. Or grey, depending on your viewpoint.

I didn't mind that so much as it's not a room we spend much time in, and having these neutral colours means it's relatively easy to keep clean. And with it being so small, let's face it it doesn't take long to give it a coat of paint. It is probably the most painted room in our house!

Adding some colour

A while back I'd been gifted a selection of Prestigious Textiles' new Java range, well looking at it again I realised that it matched quite nicely with our updated colour scheme now we planned to add Ocean (blue) and Mustard (yellow) chairs to our downstairs space. So I set about making a faux Roman blind with one of the fabrics.

I've mentioned it before but the sewing in this blind was minimal. Instead of being challenged by the sewing, as expected it was two of my other loves that came into play - ironing and maths!  And if you're wondering why it's a faux Roman blind, we never pull the blind here so it didn't need to cover the window, it just needed to be deep enough to dress the window.

It looks quite good, I think. And does inject some much needed colour into the space. I still need to get a cleat and find something suitable to act as a toggle for the blind cord, but all in good time...

So with my Roman blind hung and my pigeon shelves on the wall, it was time to collect some of the items I've been saving to store in them.  My aim is to add colour to the porch with the items we store here, but to keep it functional and as cohesive as I can too.  The black treacle tin has used stamps, while the golden syrup tin is holding the batteries we need to recycle. I love these classic tins and giving them a new use, but I think I'll have to keep my eye on them in case they just happen to fall into the recycling basket below with help from MOH when I'm not looking!

The Indian Tiffin set was a birthday present and I knew it'd look good here. I haven't worked out if I'll use it to store anything yet, but it does make me smile each time I walk past.  

The other purpose for the pigeon shelves was to store some of our cycling gear - we knew they wouldn't be large enough for helmets, but I've an idea for those (not yet implemented, of course).  

I've added the mini cool bag I use when we take lunch out cycling, and inside there's a flask with the same pattern. Some pretty tins, and some notebooks, you know the sort of stuff.

MOH has added a saddle bag and a pump - can you tell which of us is the less frou-frou?  

Ah well, they're supposed to be functional too - but perhaps I could make a little curtain for the less pretty sections...

So it's been quite a while coming together, but finally I think we're there. Our porch - our smallest room - is starting to add prettiness to its purpose.

And that second set of pigeon shelves? 

Well they'd be perfect in what I call my craft room and what MOH still calls the study. There's only one wall they can go on in there, so I need to work out how to make it work - and choose a colour, because I'm not sure this colour would work so much, and I might need to repaint some of the walls too, to get it just right.

But I'm starting to plan, and starting to be quite excited about filling it with craft supplies. MOH will no doubt roll his eyes and not understand why I need all that stuff, but I'll remind him he can call the spare room with his records and dart board his own, I think...

Shoe storage sorted.

Back in 2013 when we started to plan how and what to decorate and agreeing what should be in and what should be out, a shoe wardrobe was very much on my wish list. But it was deemed not to be, although I secretly thought I'd always manage to sneak it back in again somehow. You see, I do like a nice pair of shoes or two, and I may well have accumulated more than the usual number of pairs...

In my mind I'd have a wardrobe in the spare bedroom dedicated to shoes. It would have pull out racks with shoe trees on so it'd be very easy to decide which shoes to wear, and be easy to get to them too. 

I'd spotted some racks in IKEA which did just that, and seriously coveted them. However, because the decorating on our middle floor - where the spare room is, didn't take place until earlier this year the shoe wardrobe was put on hold and during that time many of my shoes were stored in a large cardboard box in the conservatory. Occasionally you'd find me in the box head first, searching frantically for the pair of shoes I wanted to wear, that I was sure was in this box. Somewhere...

As we got around to decorating the spare room I learnt that IKEA had stopped doing my dream shoe storage solutions, so further negotiations were needed to secure somewhere suitable to store them. The Expedit units were the answer, our solution was to combine a 2x2 unit and a 4x2 unit on each side of the room.

A deal was struck.

One IKEA unit primarily for record storage and another IKEA unit of the same size primarily for shoe storage. Yay. I'll let you work out which of us were claiming which unit...

Further negotiations were entered which resulted in MOH putting forward a good case for some storage in the shoe unit. Three cupboards I was assured would be enough. The rest was mine. This is how it worked out.

I'll admit it's not quite what I imagined, but it's clean, functional and looks good. And let's face it it's way better than rummaging in a large cardboard box! 

With the help of some pretty labels I can now easily find the shoes I want.

And yes the top right cupboard also has a pilates circle in and isn't so organised as the rest of the unit. But, hey it's got to go somewhere and boots were slightly trickier to fit in tidily. There are at least four pairs of knee length boots in there - and yes, I need all of them!

Don't ask me how many pairs I have, I still didn't count them. But at least now it's much easier to do that, if I wanted too!

How do you store your shoes?