Monday, March 30, 2009
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Inspirational Design!
Www.ApartmentTherapy.com is one of my all-time favorite blogs. I was introduced to it when I started working at my company, because the site has featured our products several times (like here and here if you are interested). Basically, it's a blog that features inspirational design, DIYs, good use of color, etc. They also focus a lot on space-saving solutions, which is obviously a concern for most apartment dwellers. Anyway, so I am making a BIG move in the next few weeks. I am going from a condo, where I fully furnished and filled my bedroom, living room and kitchen with stuff. I am moving into a one-room studio, and if it’s 250 square feet I will be surprised. The studio is very nice, newly remodeled and in a good area, and I am just relishing the idea of living alone. But, besides being small, there is hardly any storage room! I have no access to a garage, or even a deep closet (like I have now) so I am trying to be extremely strict with myself in downsizing my possessions. The idea of surrounding myself with ONLY the things that I cherish and truly love is so appealing to me, but proving to be difficult! So, today I turned to apartmenttherapy.com for some inspiration.
This studio in Santa Monica is bigger than my place is going to be (if you can even imagine that!) but the woman that lives there did a truly WONDERFUL job with not only space planning, but with her use of color and minimizing her stuff. Nothing there looks cluttered or overwhelmed. I can only hope that I will be able to minimize like that! Not surprisingly- it's the top rated house tour on the whole website (and they feature one a day!)
This house in Austin, though not similar to my situation in terms of space, is my DREAM color scheme. I LOVE the white/green/orange/yellow that she used. Love love love. I also love how she took the pattered material from the table by the window and then has 2 picture frames framing the same material across the room. It is a great use of repetition- but I don’t think I could ever do it. I have so many pictures that I would rather hang- and I don’t want to cover every single inch of the wall!
So, I hope I will be able to get to this level someday. Until then, I am ruthlessly categorizing my stuff into 5 categories: KEEP, SELL, DONATE, STORE IN PARENT’S ATTIC and GIVE TO FRIENDS.