Family Room Makeover

With Neil spending a lot of this summer home on sick leave, we’ve been congregating in the family room more than usual. It’s made us want to tackle small projects to make the space more inviting.

I dug up this photo from 2011, but really, this is what the room has looked like most days. Definitely lived-in.

I have no problem with the lived-in look, but clutter drives me batty. That’s a fact you would never guess if you took a look around my house. There is plenty of clutter. (I suppose the only thing to annoy me more than clutter is the sorting through and disposing of it. A problem, to be sure.)

You can see the very beginning of a pile of junk at the bottom left corner of that photo above. Also, the entire area behind the couch is full of CDs and books. Or, well, it was.

The corner of clutter is gone (yay!) and the Wii paraphernalia is contained.

Does anyone else pause in the middle of a cleaning job to go print out bin labels? ‘Cause that’s what I did. Clutter in piles all over the floor, and I’m upstairs making “wii controllers,” “wii accessories,” and “wii misc. stuff” labels, complete with the official Wii logo.

Before Neil’s heart attack, he had begun working on the CD/book-behind-the-couch problem, and we’d already moved the furniture back against the wall. After the heart attack, we ordered a new corner table, bought a lamp, and Neil continued to deal with a bit of book clutter on the ledge. I love this corner now.

As luck would have it, our future brother-in-law was getting rid of a long skinny table that was exactly what we were looking for to go behind the other section of our couch. I love that, too. Free furniture, and a place to set my mug – what more could a person ask for?

The next phase in this little makeover is to re-cover all of the throw pillows. I’ve never really loved the pillows we have, but I hadn’t known what to do with them until now. Now I have a plan, and the fabric to pull it off.

I’m so excited to get started on these. If you’re interested in covering your own mix-and-match throw pillows, stay tuned. There’s a tutorial coming!