New Thing: Furniture Assembly

I've been losing an organizational battle with this particular piece of furniture in my dining room. It has become a catch-all for all things kid and craft related. It holds coloring books, markers, glue, bubbles, sidewalk chalk, crayons, puzzles, McDonald's toys, you name it, it's in this stupid shelf/cabinet thing. I SO wish I had taken a before picture.

Enter IKEA. It is quite possible that IKEA is my favorite. (I was going to say store, but I don't feel like that is enough. I was going to say place on earth, but I think that might be a little much. So it's somewhere in between.)

We had purchased this shelf at IKEA for our son's room and loved it. So I asked Rick if he could swing by on the way home from work one day and pick another one up. He did, but he didn't have time to assemble that night, and as you can see from the photo above, assembly is required. I tend to default to Rick for all things assembly-related, but I was itching to get started, so the next morning, I rolled up my sleeves.

I started at 8:15, and by 10:15, viola!

I had intended for it to go into the corner vertically, but once I had it assembled, I realized how much more beneficial a horizontal placement would be. For one thing, the top would provide storage and for another, both kids could easily access every drawer. Win win!

The big job was organizing everything into the cubbies and drawers. I ended up taking all the outdoor things (bubbles, sidewalk chalk, etc) and putting them in a basket to be kept in the entryway closet, and I think I threw a few things out, but everything else was neatly arranged onto shelves or into drawers. The front of the drawers are smooth, white plastic, so I grabbed a dry-erase marker (from the newly organized "Art Supplies" drawer) and labeled them. There was even enough room for a "Mommy's Stuff" drawer!

Since this picture was taken, I have secured two turn-in-type trays from the dollar store and placed them on top. Whenever one of the kids finishes an art project, instead of it floating around for a week until it inevitably ends up in the recycle bin, it goes in the tray. One of my best ideas!