A blog named BETTY

Thursday, February 2, 2012

PHENOMENAL COSMIC POWERS! itty bitty living space

I have finally found a reason to come out of blogging semi-retirement. No, it's not some deep insight into life or touching story of my beautiful children. It is this: I am so proud of myself and I have to brag, errrr...share. I have fulfilled a life-time dream and have become an IKEA hacker! (Okay, technically I didn't even know about IKEA until I was in my 30's, but it seems like a lifetime ago, ergo the life-time dream. Okay.)

In case you've missed my 200 posts on Facebook about it, we have moved. And we have downsized. To the tune of about 50%. (At least until we finish soe basement.) Enter the necessity: Lots of stuff...little space. Followed by the birth of invention: Using every inch efficiently.

Let me just put this out there right now... I am THRILLED to downsize--that former house was like a 10 ton burden on me (although a very beloved burden. Much like children.)--and I am loving so much less real estate to care for. In addition, I have an odd attraction towards conquering spacial dilemmas. Especially since IKEA came on the scene with its itty-bitty European living quarters focus.

ADD to all of that......I now live 5 minutes closer to IKEA (putting my travel time at 3.5 minutes. I know! I'm living the dream!)

So, on to the actual reason for this post. My 4 children now share a bathroom that is, well, normal-size for the average American. And 3 of those kids are females in the prime of their vanity. Therefore, we are in need of big-time storage solutions. And we've previously established that I'm cheap, right? So I'm scouring IKEA on one of my weekly (daily?) expeditions, and I see this.




Which is designed for this:


On clearance. For $3.99.

And then I see a small glass shelf, on clearance for 99 cents. So I came up with this:


Times 3 (one for each female):

I know, right? But let's not leave out the tricky part, which is me realizing that the glass could slide right off the base and create havoc. So I used some clear plastic tubing, did this:

And snip snip:


And the finished product (thank you for holding your applause until the end):




4 comments:

Erica Layne | Let Why Lead said...

Very cute and so functional! Way to use that wall space!

Brittney said...

You are going to submit this to ikeahackers.net right? They would probably love it. Glad you're back on the blog train. :)

The Andrew Family said...

Well let's try this again. I left a comment that google accounts spat out. Suffice it to say I'm happy you're back. Missed you. Especially now that you've given me such a cool idea to try in the bathroom!

Alaina said...

That's so awesome! Seriously! What a great idea.