Shoplog: home & decor (+ Project room change update)

In October I wrote that I would embark on a major overhaul of my living space. I dubbed said undertaking Project Room Change and I am proud to say I am roughly halfway through. Read here about my plans, in case you want to refresh your memory. I will talk about what I did so far a little later in this post, but since the first step was PURGE, I ended up throwing away a ton of stuff. Some of which definitely gave the space some of its character and so I needed to find some things to make the room work again. So off I went to find some new home decor and along the way I picked up some other homey utensils and other bits and bops.

By now I have completed 2 out of 4 steps: Purge and Reorganize. The purging stage took the longest. I literally went through every nook and cranny and got rid of 30 trash bags of stuff, 200 books and some furniture. I went to IKEA over Christmas break and got myself a 220 cm Ivar, 3 sets of white Helmers and 2 HOL tables with storage space. What I used to store in 2 bookcases, one small Ivar (176 cm), an additional small case and numerous cardboard boxes is now all stored in the Ivar and Helmers. So I’m feeling quite proud. I have tons of space again. The next step will be to buy a new dining room table and chairs, which I hope to do some time next month or the month after.

This is what it looked like after I was done:

Excuse the mess, but this was taken right after or the day after I had just put everything together. After I was done throwing things away and reorganizing I found that my space looks a bit drab.There was a lot of empty wall space, so it needed a bit of spicing up. So here’s what I bought to spice up the place again. I put the clock you see on this picture on a different wall, where it used to be, but I kept it up there for the time being as there is a gigantic hole in the wall right behind it.

I knew what I wanted to do with the decorations: keep it grey, white and red and keep it minimal. I took down most of my posters and wall decoration and decided to replace it with frames filled with my favorite vacation pictures. My mantelpiece features the three pictures above (London, San Fransisco and New York) and on another wall I hung the exact same frames, but with colored pictures of Toronto, the Grand Canyon and again London. The frames are the 30×40 high shine grey Ribba picture frames and are from IKEA. I had the pictures developed at Hema.

On the way I also bought some Kitchen utensils. Boring, but sometimes your kitchen also needs an update. So I got myself a new silicone coated whisk (my old one was falling apart), a small knife and a kiwi on the go container. Because that’s what that pink egg at the bottom is: comes with a serrated knife and a spoon for easy kiwi eating on the go. All are from Xenos.

When I had pretty much everything sorted, I decided I also wanted a new solution for storing my make up brushes. I found these small class mason jars at Xenos for 79 cents each. I bought three of them. I have bigger mason jars from Dille & Kamille, which are more expensive but definitely better quality. The lids of these small ones don’t close very well, but they do just fine for this purpose.

And again two boring items, but sometimes people just need new siffs. They are difficult to clean without a dishwasher (which I don’t have) and scissors sometimes break. So yes, sometimes, you just need these objects. The scissors were super cheap too: they cost only 1 euro at Hema.

To make sure I added a bit more liveliness to the space, I bought these faux red berries from Blokker. And it’s these things that made me break my scissors. I didn’t know these had wire in them and you could just bend them. So I tried cutting them first and broke my scissors in half. Oh well… I already had the glass vases.

And I got myself a new alarm clock. Again, a must have, because the one I had sometimes failed to set properly and go off in the morning. I bought this one from Hema and it has a built in radio (such luxury) so I have now taken to listening to the radio before falling to sleep.

I love candles, but never burn them anymore. My asthma simple doesn’t agree with burning candles. They are however decorative and I like the look of these. I go perfect with a pair of glass candle sticks that I have had since forever. The disk is a plate for candle holders. You will see in a bit what I did with it.

Because when you buy a plate for candle holders than of course you need candle holders to put on top of it right? So yay for candle holders. All four are from Blokker and I put them with some of the other candle holders that I bought in the run up to Christmas. The doctor from work suggested I make sure I had some lights to put around my house during the dark days so I had already bought a few before and decided these would go with it very nicely. Here’s what they all look like together on the plate.

Ta-dah! I use fake lights to light these (asthma remember). They are battery operated and last quite some time before they give out and you have to replace the battery. The small ones at the front are from Flying Tiger, the two in the middle are from Sissy Boy and then there is one in the back (the rounded one) and the dark one on the right which are from Xenos.

Hema is not just a place where you can find useful things for the home and your kitchen, but it also does great office supplies. I now have a notebook which I want to start using for writing up lists so they don’t take up so much brain capacity, I just liked the stickers and the note pad with the pan has a magnet so it’s great for making my weekly grocery shopping list.

My final stop was budget store Action where I found these small jars with a stopper. They were only 49 cents each and initially I wasn’t sure what to use these for. Then I got home and knew: for cotton buds and cotton pads. So there we go!

Last but not least, I picked up 3 sets of 4 coasters with this print from Action as well. I believe these were 85 cents a pack and when I get that new dining room table I naturally don’t want it to get stained from tea cups and lemonade glasses within 2 weeks. So hence: coasters.

And that’s it! If you’re curious how everything is coming together, then you’re going to have to hang in there for a bit. I plan on doing a full room tour when Project Room Change has been completed. I’m hoping to have everything in place around summer time. So June, July, maybe August? Who knows? It will take a while anyways.