my little stroke of genius!

In this new house we don't have a finished basement (which is kind of awesome because we can finish it the way we want as oppose to live with someone else's ideas). This means we don't have the same great storage room that we enjoyed so much in our old house. It was bigger than our old kitchen and dining rooms combined - it was one of the only things I really loved about that house. Anyhoo, we don't have it anymore and I have moved on...

We do have a comparable space in this new house for a storage room. It isn't a nice big, square room, with cute grey and white checkerboard tiles. It is the L-shaped space under the porch. It is plenty big for our needs and will stay nice and cool all year. But it is totally unfinished and if I were a kid I would be scared to go in it (I like the kids to fetch me things from there, so I really don't want them to be scared). In the interest keeping as much space as we can we have decided to not finish it with sheet rock. Instead we bought cement paint and porch paint and we cleaned it up a bit with paint. The walls are now white cement and the floor is the awesome celery green color. I really like it. But this post isn't really about my storage room, but rather the great ideas I had for something in the storage room...so I will get back on topic and post more about the storage room later...

Scott and I have in earnest been trying to build our food storage for years now. I am convinced that despite what everyone says, this is not an easy or cheap endeavor! I feel strongly that it needs to be filled with things that we use everyday. In a way this is like my little store in the basement. While we were buying this house we lived off of our food storage in an effort to keep any money we had in bank so that we could get financing (you may not be aware, but we stilled owned our previous house and needed to qualify for a mortgage for this home as well - two mortgages - YIKES. Luckily the other sold before we ever had to pay two mortgages). Anyway, the shelves that cans can roll down have always appealed to me. It seems like an easy way to rotate my constantly moving storage. Building them was never going to happen. Scott is a busy guy and likes to spend his time mountain biking or with us in his free-time. So that wasn't an option. The store-bought ones are very expensive and the ones I looked at never seemed like great quality. So that wasn't an option either. Having someone else build some for us...Well, I am sure you can guess that really wasn't an option. 

Well, while we setting everything up a lightbulb lit up in my head. We have the metal shelves that you can buy at a hardware store. Two years ago on Black Friday I bought a bunch of them at Home Depot for a great price (like $40 a unit or something like that). As we were setting them up I realized that we could install the front part of the shelf upside down and then the shelf would sit at an angle. This would be simple and perfect for letting cans just roll down. It has been awesome. 

The other thing I love is labels. I like things to be organized, belong somewhere, and look pretty. I was trying to figure out a good labeling system. I used to use masking tape, but that leaves a residue and I don't like residue. I have a label maker, but lets face it the font is ugly and the labels aren't cute at all; plus it also leaves a residue. Then I thought I could cut out vinyl. I knew it wouldn't leave a sticky residue. I made most of them and just wasn't excited about mounting them. What if I changed my mind about where I wanted something to go? I do change my mind a lot...So in the end I didn't love that idea. Then it hit me! Magnets! So I made cute labels, laminated them, and put magnet tape on the back. They are perfect. 

Take a look at my work in progress. I hope these two ideas help simplify and organize something in your life a little. I know I as sure excited about them (but that doesn't take much)!

The food aisle in the storage room - see what I mean about living off the food storage? We are now trying to rebuild it.

Tilted shelves. So simple and so much cheaper and better quality than what is available.

Magnetic label. Now I can move things around anytime I want!

The shelf with the green beans is how they normally sit. We flipped the two sides and front to make the shelf tilt.