Aki-home Love

Leave it to the Japanese to live such a cramped lifestyle in the city that they develop an entire decorating and storage culture around space as a commodity. Well this just happens to be beneficial to little old me because I live in a teeny tiny house. Phenomenal cosmic housing opportunity, itty bitty living space.(Yes, adapted from Aladdin.) Moving on... Aki-home is like the Japanese love child (totally legit, of course) of Ikea's modern design and Bed Bath & Beyond's range of products. It is actually the American version of Nitori, same products with a new American name. So, what? I am really excited to be able to get more Japanese products. (If you haven't already, read about my love affair with Daiso.) Update: I decided to drag the family down to the District at Tustin in order to attend the grand opening early. They were also doing a ceremony @ the Fullerton location, by where we live, but I wanted to go to the bigger store. The cultural benefit (sorry, no pics) was having the Monkey watch a taiko performance. I realize it's unrelated, but so are so many of my ramblings... Anyway, the result of said grand opening was the purchase of a rather useful coffee table that raises, lowers, and stowes away as needed. Yes, its messy, but I do have a great before and after set of pictures to show the difference. I had already started cleaning by the time I took the picture, too. I am a clutterer by nature and am always trying to fight it. So, here are the before and after photos. When the Elf was born, we scrambled to move several pieces of furniture around with the result being a very cramped living room. We also updated the couch to a small sectional after 2 years with a horribly uncomfortable sleeper loveseat from Ikea. All of that plus housing an additional child in the room made not a lot of space. Needless to say, this table is a welcome replacement for one that was really meant for the teeny tiny kitchen and a family of two.

Madeover Threads

I decided to take back the space claimed by all our linen, and since Blogger has not been working properly on my phone, this post has been sitting unfinished for a while. I even wrote out a post and then my phone died...grrr.

So, after scouring on Pinterest, I found a post where someone used dollar store baskets to re-do her linen closet here. This may not be the exact one I remember, but it fits the bill for this post. I just happened to pick the same color baskets because they contrast nicely with my white bookshelf.

Before organizing all the linens

The difference is noticeable! I haven't made labels yet, but that wont take long because I have a nifty little label maker. By the way, my label maker is thrifted. So, for about $13.00 I reorganized the linens in our house with the exception of our bathroom towels. Talk about low budget!

After dollar store basket makeover

So at least one small space in our house is organized. Don't let it fool you, however. We still haven't recovered from our move into this house about 3 years ago. Since then, we have moved furniture around in the house about 3 or 4 times, had 2 babies, built our raised bed (see The Bed Saga), and generally lost track of things in the clutter (I'm embarrassed to say).

I am slowly trying to take back our space, since we will be here a while more. So, hopefully I can continue the chain of inspiration to reorganize on a budget. 

How do you organize your home? Can you afford Container Store or do you, like me, shop at Dollar Tree?