Laundry x 3 - An Ikea Rast Makeover

I gave you an iPhone in-progress photo of the laundry basket dresser that is seriously changing my day-to-day life. It's actually allowed me to stay up on washing, drying, folding, and dare, I say it, putting away the clean clothes. This is a first. I have wondered for several years now how people keep up with laundry (I think I could write my own rendition of Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty, and it would go..."Every time I get ahead, it's taking off another dirty shirt....").

Well, now I know the secret. You have to find an organization system that works for you and your laundry needs, and then have a little bit of diligence. This revelation came just in time, too, since we will have a third little one's clothes to add to the mix any day! Now that I have all of these neatly folded clean clothes, we needed a place to put them.

So we picked up 3 Rast dressers from Ikea, which look like this:

And I gave them a little makeover. Now they are housing THREE little ones' clothes.

I really like how accessible they are to little ones; Dmitri and Damon put away all of their own clothes when we fold laundry together. Dmitri has been dressing himself for a while now, and this little dresser makes it super easy for him to get his clothes.

They were reasonably priced and they are solid wood. However, they are pretty small, so as the children grow, we will probably have to find something a bit bigger. But for now, they are perfect.

Sources
Dressers x 3 - Ikea Rast dresser - $34.99 each
Knobs - Hobby Lobby (18 knobs cost me $30 with tax)
Stain - Minwax Dark Walnut (leftover)

I also put a beeswax polish on top. I originally planned to paint the light wood part bright yellow, but now I am second guessing myself - I really like the wood on wood tone. I will give it a little bit more time and decide. (Opinions?)

The wall above these dressers is the last uncharted territory in the playroom. More playroom photos will be coming soon; I'm ridiculously excited about how it's turning out.

And there is still time to guess whether dresser # 3 will be housing little boy or little girl clothes!

Loaded Down: Ikea Makes me Want a Bigger Car

We did another Ikea run. As usual, we overestimated the size of our small SUV ("But we have an SUV....with that kind of gas mileage, surely it will fit...") In the end, we did get everything to fit. Just not comfortably, or with the trunk closed. David ended up sitting cross-legged the entire way home.

My apologies for the iPhone quality photos. But I couldn't NOT take photos.

Tying down the back.

Dmitri doesn't seem to mind...as long as he has his trains from Ikea.

 I may or may not have also bought some shoes. (On sale!)

The view from the driver's seat.

Can you believe we bought all of this in under an hour? (Which is always our Ikea time limit). 

We made it home slowly, but safely! There will be a lot of assembling going on here this weekend. And hopefully lot's of pictures Monday! 

Have a great weekend!

Ikea Run

I love Ikea.

Who doesn't? 

I've always wondered how to fit an entire apartment into the size of our master bedroom...and I would have never known it were possible if it weren't for the Ikea showroom.

We made an Ikea run last week. It was an "how much money can we spend in under an hour at Ikea" run. Which if you've been, it's nearly impossible to even walk through Ikea in under an hour. We were running through the aisles, grabbing curtains, pillows, duvets, rods, a mattress and flower pots and throwing them in our shopping cart. We made it out alive, and with under $300 spent (success).

But we needed to make a longer trip that didn't involve sweating and heavy breathing as we pummeled through the market. Primarily to get a new sofa!! Goodbye well-loved, but too big for the space and does not match the color scheme, eggplant sofa....and hello clean, white Ektorp...

Yes, I am very excited about getting a new sofa.

Photos coming soon!