The Orange Room

The play room/school room/extra room in this house is affectionately called The Orange Room because of the orange-y peach paint that is on the walls, and was there when we moved in. Well, I'd had it up to here with the orange room! It's super nice to have such extra space, but from when we moved in, I just felt we put things in there, and somehow it just wasn't laid out well.

My goal was to change that! I had a few ideas for cube storage and such to deal with our school stuff - but I really don't have a lot of money to dedicate to this little rehab right now, since we are doing some major renos to the house on the whole. But I just needed it fixed now, or at least improved for my own peace of mind!

We don't keep any toys in the bedrooms (or any other room) outside of a Playmobil table in Kenna's room, and our spare tv, crafts, books, school stuff - all of these need to be smushed into the only spare bedroom we have.

Here are some very real pics of the orange room right before the revamp.Very real.

View from the door. Lego all over the floor - and !!! I just figured why clean it up as I was about to destroy it, in order to put it all back together again.
Tv cabinet is to the left, toy bins to the right.

Tv cabinet and game storage. It never fit well in this spot and always blocked half of the closet door

The weird corner. An old desk, printer underneath, and an open styled filing cabinet I use for school

Sorry the lighting from the window made this pic very dark and I tried to lighten it. Maybe that's ok though:-) It's a messy corner with a little desk and plastic totes - and school books everywhere (new stuff for next year has arrived and no where to put it...)

The toy bins

Okay, well, it was almost like - where do I start?! I was able to transform this room for a grand total of $10!!

Here are pics of the "new" orange room. Unfortunately still orange...lol:-) Paint is coming later, but that's out of my domain right now. Everything is a process!

View from the door. There are two stains on the carpet that was a from a marker or something that got caught under the edge of the couch in it's old position without a lid on - I thought about trying to get it out - but I'm not going to bother since it's all getting replaced soon enough:-) (The white stripes on the couch is so that the cats don't scratch the leather)

Opposite wall from the couch. TV cabinet & kids games storage, toy bin, and a school shelf

The closet, which contains my crafting supplies, and some school binders, books, "extras" etc

This has a few toys on the top rack bins, but it's mostly school supplies. A bin for dry erase stuff, pens & pencils, pencil crayons, flashcards etc. I really love having them in bins like this!

I got all the old books put away, all the summer stuff in their school boxes, and next years stuff sorted well! 

I threw out the desk that had been in there, holding basically just the printer, and then "stuff" - it was just unnecessary. The tv cabinet now holds the printer, and everything was able to be sorted and put away in a proper place. I moved the childrens desk up stairs to the boys room. A place to do quiet work when the distractions of the dining room table are too much for a trying-to-concentrate child.

The plastic totes that had been stacked 4 high in the corner - I swapped them out with the black totes in Brooks closet - there is only 1 dresser in their room (Grey's clothes), and Brooks uses totes on the floor of the closet for pants, shirts, pj's, socks & undies. It works pretty well! Anyway, I wanted a less busy look in the orange room, so using all black totes works well. Now Brooks has a colourful closet:-)

We do our school at the dining room table, mostly, which means lots of carrying books back and forth. My initial idea with the plastic totes is that each kid has their own tote for their books. I used this idea even back at our old house. But it's never worked out because the totes are too heavy and large for the kids to carry. The idea is a good one though! So here is where my $10 cost came in. I'd love to someday invest in a "cube storage" bookcase idea, with the removable baskets. I decided to make it work with what I already have.

I used the black plastic totes, and inside them placed smaller cloth totes that I already owned! They fit plenty of books perfectly, and I think it will really be a good solution. And if it's working, someday, I can buy the real deal.

These are the totes that I placed inside the plastic bins - the bins aren't super deep, so these fit well "sideways" as you can see in the pics above. They are from Thirty-One, and I had been using them in the front hall closet for hats, mitts, sports clothing (when it's baseball season, I keep all the socks, shirts, pants and hats together so I'm not tracking them down in each kids drawers each week).

So the $10 comes in because I needed new totes for that shelf, since taking the other ones away for school books:-) So, real pic of my closet! One tote (they are larger than the Thirty-One ones) for sports stuff and hats, and one for winter stuff. The gap in the middle is currently filled with things I need to return to friends - they've left things here accidentally:-) 

I bought these totes at Walmart for $5 each.