10 Minute Makeover

The Nester recently did a 4 week series called "10 Minutes to a Room You'll Love." She gave simple and practical advice for making a room prettier and more functional. Now that the series is over, she is having a linking party so that we can all share the 10 minute makeovers we did in our homes. Below are the changes I made in our house this week.

This is our dining area before. We live in a small apartment, and have virtually no office space. My husband is a seminary student, and living in a small apartment makes studying difficult and messy! Will doesn't have an office or spare corner of the apartment for studying and doing homework, so our kitchen table doubles as his study space. We are only a family of three, and we really don't need all of the table space for meals. We did want the dining area to look nice, but we didn't have a good place to keep books, notebooks, pens, Bibles, Hebrew cards, etc. They always stayed piled up on the table. And what is that in the corner???

Yep, it's a box of food. We ran out of food storage room in our kitchen. This box stayed in the corner. It was practical for us, but unsightly! The solution: I removed the box of food, and replaced it with a small bookshelf.

This bookshelf now holds all of Will's notebooks, pens, current textbooks, Bibles, and Hebrew cards. I even had room on the top for some of our favorite pictures and a fake candle (real candles are banned in our apartment complex).




That cleared off the table very nicely. But what did I do with the box of food? Look closely!




There it is! I just pushed it under the table. We don't use that side of the table, so it won't be in anyone's way, and it won't be in plain sight.

This is the after shot. It's not a perfect dining area, but it doesn't have to be perfect to be beautiful, right?

Do you want to see what others have done? Go check out the Nester's linking party!