everythingistaken's Profile

I would add a couple of shelves or some artwork (maybe pulling in the colors from the accent tiles?) above the toilet, but maybe that's just me.

As for the shower doors, if you live in an area with hard water shower doors are a huge pain to keep looking nice. Even squeegying them off every time you shower only helps to much.

I have an old ConAir Cordkeeper (which also has a folding handle - it's full size, but foldable) and thought it was great until it stopped retracting the cord all of the way after a few (maybe 6) uses (I don't use it very often, so it probably took 10-12 months before it happened). It now has about 10 inches that just won't go back in. I'm hoping they improved the design since then, because it really is handy!

We had a quince bush in our backyard growing up, but we never ate any of them. I'm not sure if it's because my mother didn't know thy could be eaten, didn't like them, or if they were just bad by the time I came around like the apple tree was (the quince bush and apple tree were both original to the house; the apple tree had not been taken care of and produced tiny, green, insanely sour, worm riddled apples each fall. My mom had an arborist of some sort come look at it, but he said there wasn't a way to get the tree healthy again to produce good apples).

- I'd get a bookshelf that fits under the window and transfer the books/CDs/other little things from the shelf over the bed (and other places in the room) to under the window. Keeping just a couple things on the shelf (light, speaker, clock, current book) will help to make the room feel more open, and you should hopefully also have some room for some of the little stuff from the closet as well.
- Switch out the curtains for roman blinds (if you're crafty, there are lots of tutorials for turning ultra-cheap mini-blinds into romans). The red stripe is really clashing with the bed linens, and they also feel like they're taking up space in the room.
- It looks like the closet door won't currently fit with that small dresser in it - I'd take out the dresser and add in a bookshelf/hanging bar/shelves instead. Then you can close the closet door when not in use, which should make the room feel a little larger.
- It looks like you have more extra room next to the wardrobe that it currently underutilized. I'd try to find a larger wardrobe for cheap (if it's not part of the apartment) or a larger shelf to go next to it. THe current shelf you have it very shallow and short compared to the space.
- Definitely use bed risers so that you can add under bed boxes for longer term storage. You might have to switch out seasonal clothes a bit more often, but it should definitely help you save room.
- Get some nice looking storage boxes for on top of the wardrobe. You can do this cheaply by buying boring storage boxes and covering them with fabric, wrapping paper, etc.
- I'd suggest painting your furniture to match so that you don't have different wood tones, but I'd only do this if the furniture has poor finished, you don't like the color, and/or it's laminate (kind of hard to tell from the photos).

Living back home, we were 10 minutes from a (not very busy most of the time) Ikea. My then boyfriend/fiance (now husband) and I would stop by all the time, and we had several large fights at Ikea (one of which ended up in me almost walking home - it was one of our worst fights ever!). The odd thing is, now that we live two hours away from the nearest Ikea (and 7 hours from the Ikea we used to live by), things are always fast and efficient and never results in fighting. I think all the driving makes us not want to waste any time in there, which results in us not getting into any arguments.

Very nice layout of furniture, I agree with the others who said this seems a lot larger than 295 sq ft! Your spaces seem separate but it still seems like you have plenty of room for everything.

urbancricket - Un fortunately, not all of our parents are so accepting.

I do the same thing. We have dirty magnetic poetry that gets taken off the fridge, and I move around certain bedroom items so that they are at the back of my nightstand instead of the front.

My (all Catholic) dad's side of the family has always done this with every home they were putting on the market, but some have sold quickly and some have sat for a long time (one took about 3 years and sold waaaaaay under the original asking price). Just putting it out there as a bigger sampling.

Snoman - Totally agree! We have a leather-look storage ottoman on the wall across from the foot of the bed. It was out coffee table alternative just after we got married, then we got a little tired of the trying to set glasses on the padded top and the cat scratched it up a bit (though you don't really notice it) so it got moved by the front door, then when we moved into the house it randomly got tossed in the bedroom. Now I'd decided it's the best decision ever. I store all of my purses inside lay my cell phone (plugged in) and my clothes for the next day on it every night before bed.

When we bought our hour last summer it came with not one but TWO swing sets (both eith a couple swings, an observation platform, and a slide) in a not very large backyard. We don't have any kids yet plus we think two swingsets is a little too much, so we plan to take one of them down and put up a garden in its place this summer.