The Room of Organised Mess

I live in a constant state of organised mess, that's according to my husband. And there is a room in the house that best embodies that - where things are stored in boxes, piled up in shelves to give a false impression of order. But that is better than no order at all, I would argue and he concedes (like he has a choice)!

I have a terrible habit of hoarding. I went to Gibraltar with a 20kg box and a suitcase, moved to the UK with two large boxes and two suitcases and five house moves later, we have an entire home with furniture to deal with. Most of these boxes are labelled 'Study', filled with books bought from the charity shop five-at-a-time, thick work-related paperwork and stashes of art materials that's been sitting in the shelves for months waiting for my creative juices to ooze out (and they haven't for the last year).

When we were living in a three bedroom terrace house, storage wasn't a problem but when we downsized to a bedroom and a half, it suddenly became an issue. So a Kindle replaced the big collection of unread novels and the paperwork were all scanned and shredded. What's left are all organised in boxes of different sizes, stacked up in our two year old IKEA Expedit bookcase (one of the few Ikea items I have no regret of buying) and the new Argos Maine bookcase (a more sensible purchase).

My dream study of course would be one where the walls are lined up with shelves and an endless display of books but for now this will do. And now that my sense of order has been restored, all I need to do is switch on the creative juices but why, oh why, is that such a hard thing to do?

Home No. 5: Project Living Room

Like most houses, our living room is the hub of our home, a multifunctional area where we have breakfast, watch television, entertain guests and showcase our creative treasures. 

Ours  have the features of a typical early 1900s Victorian terrace with a large bay window and a converted granite fireplace hearth sans the fireplace. When we moved in, the whole room was a blank canvas painted in neutral colours to make it easier to rent out. But because we are renting it out from a family member, we were allowed to do it up in our own style. 

We were going for a cottage style living room to match the size and the style of the house. Being the fifth home we have lived in, we finally invested in 'proper wood furniture' this time as our previous Ikea items did not really last that long. The oak tall bookcase (something I have long-wished for!) was bought from the discount store Swag in Darnall which came ready assembled and stress-fre. The TV stand was from John's old family home and the white leather sofa came from the flat we are renting out. By the bay window, we placed a couple of printed footstools from Dunelm Mill and to complete the look, we bought an electric fireplace with a wood-burning stove effect, an idea borrowed from last year's holiday cottage in Wales. 

My short obsession with home design led me to a webpage webpage which gave helpful tips in decorating the mantelpiece where travel souvenirs and special presents have found their place. And because I wanted a photo gallery, we've also put up one showcasing the stories of our travels. 

So yes, this is our living room - our travels, our stories, our style. 

Home No. 5: Project Kitchen

Our quaint little kitchen is one of the charming features of our new home with the mediterranean blue cupboards that gives it a cottage feel. The only problem was space, at least for someone whose latest obsession involved plenty of activities in the kitchen. But small spaces meant a lot of opportunities for creativity and there is a wealth of inspiration from the internet, my personal favourite being the Easy Living website. 

So with a few trips to my favourite shops, we managed to fit our ever-increasing collection of kitchenwares in this small space. It meant getting vintage-looking storage jars and bric-a-bracs from the charity shops at the bottom of our road, buying breakfast cereal containers from Wilkinsons and putting up IKEA shelves for the pots and pans. To solve the problem of not having enough shelves, we bought an Argos solid pine shelf and turned it into a pantry with the same look as the rest of the kitchen cupboards.   

The result was a very homely kitchen of our liking with still some space for my new favourite pastime of baking!

Home No. 5: Project Bedroom

Over the past few weeks, I have been obsessing over home designs and scouring the internet for inspiration. I can't believe the wealth of information that is now available online for interior decorator wannabes like me: Pinterest, IKEA and Easy Living to name but a few. 

When we moved in to our new home, we were confronted with a blank canvas. We had to buy all the fittings and decorate it as we wanted. This being the fifth house move we've made during the last three years, we have become wiser when it came to buying furniture which meant no more trips to Ikea to buy flat pack furniture that would not last. Instead, for our bedroom we invested in a solid oak chest of drawers from Swag, a discount furniture shop in Sheffield we have discovered from our previous landlord.  We inherited a 20-year-old solid pine set of wardrobes from Dad's cellar and kept our sensible metal Ikea bed frame and bedside tables. 

Once the essentials are down, it was a joy to shop around for furnishings. If I didn't have a sensible husband who kept reminding me about storage issues, I would have bought everything I fancied from all the shops we've visited. He did allow me to pick some ornaments for my dressing table like the vintage glass perfume bottles and jewellery box from Dunelm Mill. The curtains were from Home Bargains, previously bought on our 3rd house move and the nearly matching bedsheets are from Wilkinsons in Hillsborough shopping centre. 

My creative contributions are the styro letters I have picked up from a Pinterest post using up cycled materials from the furniture delivery boxes and painted over with black acrylic paint. The accessories board is a poor version of an Ikea mood board inspiration but it's still a useful one. 

Our bedroom may be smaller than our previous one but it's definitely comfortable and homely!

Home No. 4: Dorothy Road

Dorothy Road in Hillsborough is a street lined up with Victorian terraced houses where workers from the city's steel industry used to live. Decades on and after the soots from the factories have cleared and the houses have changed ownership, this street is now home to professional employees with young families and a handful of pensioners. 

These houses were built to last and last they do. In Britain, and throughout the Old World, buildings such as these endure hundreds and hundreds of years. Only a re-plastering a couple of times or so every century is required to keep these buildings as good as when the first ever occupants arrived here. Solid brick and stone built, they offer a build quality that most modern concrete or glass buildings can only dream of. As they say, if Paris, Rome, Vienna, Madrid, and most of the other great old world cities were built to today's standards we would not have had the opportunity to see them as we do now. It makes you think with a certain degree of melancholy how today's flamboyant cities don't just look very generic and bland but will deteriorate much more rapidly, especially those in the 'flat pack' countries such as China and the United Arab Emirates amongst many others. False economy, a not so efficient use of resources, and not thinking long term springs to mind. 

These houses look deceptively small from the outside but is actually spacious inside usually with three bedrooms including a converted attic, a kitchen with a separate dining room, a living room with a bay window, a large bathroom and a dry cellar. At the back is a good-sized garden that gets a lot of sunlight until late in the summer evening if you have a south-facing one. 

When we came to view No. 74, I fell in love with the place. Oozing with character that most newer builds just simply lack, it ticked all my boxes. John was dubious about its size, we have previously lived in a one bedroom flat and briefly in my mother-in-law's attic but I was very adamant. I loved the space, the furnishings and the garden. So Dorothy Road became House No. 4 in just two years in Britain. 

If we were living anywhere other than this country with no huge heating bills and plenty of sunshine, it would have been a perfect house. But alas, there were those things to consider and suddenly a huge pretty house by the end of summer suddenly felt cold and empty. There was the subject of keeping it clean too, a chore that needed to be done every weekend that usually fall on my husband's shoulders. It became too big for us to manage. 

But there were still no regrets about living there. It has taught us a lot about properties and what to look out for when we would eventually buy our family home. 

Kitchen Diaries

Mama was an exceptional student in her Home Economics class, she won a baking set for a cooking competition in her high school. Families and friends who have been to our house parties have complimented on her skills. Unfortunately, none of us her children have shown any such talent in our younger years. 

The kitchen of my childhood is not a place I would visit with fond remembrance. It is not associated with sweet aromas or chopping sounds drowned out by the chitchats about life. No, the kitchen was a mere place to cook the family meals (when we are banished from it) and to wash the dishes (when we are invited back, forcefully to do our tasks and for which we would find excuses to get away from). 

My skills in the cooking (or lack thereof) extended beyond the kitchen. They said that necessity allows creativity, it was certainly the case with domestic chores and me. When I was 16, I would often be left in charge of my younger siblings when our parents had to go away on work-related trips. How did my bookish and self-obsessed teenage self manage that? Easy, I fed my siblings with canned food and take-aways and bribed my 11-year-old brother to do the house chores. I got away with it too!

When I left home, I had very little domestic skills indeed, cooking the least of them. For a long time I survived on take-aways, McDonalds and sometimes, the kindness of friends who have better skills in the kitchen. But then marriage was a different story. 

After months of being left in a cold empty house by myself, I eventually learned to tackle domestics after the initial delights of owning my time. I realised that any good kitchen can make a decent cook (provided she has a cookbook). It also helps I have someone to cook for who will not fail to compliment every single meal I've made (of course sometimes I have to ask 'How was it?' to squeeze the compliment out). There was still hope for me after all. 

Our kitchen has become one of my favourite rooms in the house. I love the smells and colours of the spices and sauces lined together. I love the aroma of fresh coffee brewing from the canister. I love the artistic mess that my cooking sessions creates. Most of all, I love the stories shared and decisions made while we share our domestic chores.