IKEA...a love / hate relationship...

I have long had a LOVE / HATE relationship with IKEA.  You see, I love to browse the catalogues, looking at all their great ideas with prices seemingly too good to be true - I say to hubby "I want to go to IKEA to look at such and such".....but, you see, when I get there and see the product in the flesh, I hate it!  the quality never matches up to the pretty pictures in the catalogue and I end up leaving empty handed and disappointed.  Hubby has even threatened to never come to IKEA with me again, because of this very scenario occuring more times than I would like to admit.

However, it would seem that there is a change on the wind, for I have found something at IKEA that I LOVE....it's those Trofast storage bucket/bin thingamy's......they are genius.  I've been a busy little bee implementing them all over the place.

First, I'll show you how I've used them to organise the kids craft cupboard.  A while back I decided to repurpose our old T.V. cabinet as a craft cupboard for the kids bits and pieces, endless pieces of drawing paper, painting stuff, playdough bits and bobs....you get the idea.

I had this idea of using clear plastic tubs to put everything in (so I could easily see it all) and would take out the various tubs as needed and neatly return them to the cupboard......let's just say THIS DID NOT WORK.  The tubs became heavy and hard to get in and out, so what ended up happening was the cupboard became a mess of half opened crates with stuff hanging out, bits of paper, colouring books and art canvas' jammed in wherever they fit - basically an unusable mess!  It was so bad that I am not even going to show you a before picture - just imagine the biggest amount of mess you can and that's about how it looked!

So, seen as it is a new year and all.....and I have officially "cracked it" over the kids clutter that is creeping its way into seemingly every inch of my home, I've decided.....


Laying in bed last week I had a brainwave.....I thought, I'll get some of those storage bucket thingy's from IKEA and use them inside the cabinet to neatly hide all the bits and pieces.  So I measured up the space, jumped online to find the right Trofast combination and hot footed it to IKEA.  I returned home, got hubby to put them together....I don't do flat packs.....scratch that.....I don't do ANY kind of furniture assembly!

Then I spent the afternoon creating this.....










Look, there's a draw for paint stuff, pencils and textas, beads, miscellaneous craft stuff (feathers, pom poms etc), glue and glitter glue, blank paper and exercise books, stickers, pens highlighters sharpeners etc, colouring and activity books and playdough and there is room on top to store rolls of wrapping paper!