Finding joy in the everyday

The master bedroom In 2015 I started a series called "Room by Room" where I focused on ways of making our homes more comfortable and cosy, home decorating tips, ideas for storage, ways to keep it organised and other general information. These posts were quite popular, however I never finished the series (sad face!!) and now its time to do something about that! Today I want to talk about The Master bedroom . There was a time when the lord and lady's bed chamber was a multi-functional room: home office, library, living room, a place to have important meetings, an operating theatre, place to be born and to die and a bedroom for sleeping. Rarely did ordinary folk of the past sleep just the two of them — children shared the bed and others could also sleep in the same room perhaps on the floor. The bedroom was once a very communal and busy room. It wasn't until more recent centuries did people start to have their own private space and the lord and lady of the h...

The bathroom We all need a bathroom, it's the place that the entire family use during the day (and night) to keep clean and visit the toilet!!  My bathroom is made up of three rooms, a shower room, a bathroom (with bath and sink) and a toilet (which I think Americans call something else!!).  Whatever combination you have, it is a room that is used everyday and is an essential space in the house. It is also the room that needs to have everything working tiptop. Toilets flushing properly, showers not leaking, taps not dipping . . . a lot of water (money) can go down the drain if these things are not keep well maintained.  We have a relatively new bathroom in our home as we renovated the old bathroom which was falling apart. Bathrooms can be very expensive to renovate. We had asbestos in the walls that had to be removed with great care, the plumbing had to be re-done, new tiling and new fixtures. It didn't come cheap. We decided to not do it ourselves and found a...

The hallway This is probably a space you didn't think I would cover as it isn't technically a room . . . its a space that takes us from room to room and often sadly neglected. It is also often part of the entrance to your house and is the "room" that sets the tone of how your guests will feel about coming into your house. Is your entrance hallway inviting, warm and welcoming?  How does it "feel"? Have a look at your entrance hall and see how others might view it. Lets focus first on the hall nearest your entrance. What makes it inviting . . . do guests feel that this is a home, a place they want to keep entering. I think entrance hallway need to be neat and tidy (even if you have children). If it is a place to keep shoes, why not add attractive baskets for the shoes, the dollar store often has baskets that are inexpensive. If it is a place to dump the keys and bags, add a small table, bowl for the keys and interesting hooks on the wall for storag...

The living room We all talk about our living room as a place of comfort and cosiness - these are very emotional words to describe a room and not one we would use for the kitchen or bathroom. Like all things relating to homes and housing, these term is relatively new in relation to homes. It wasn't that many centuries ago a person was just pleased to have a roof over their heads that didn't leak and their structure was well built. They weren't even concerned about beautifying their homes with pretty fabrics or nicknacks and many were places of work and and living (often intertwined) and certainly nothing like the houses we have today.  Our living room is often the space we pretty up the most and make the most comfortable. It is the room that we live in during the evening and usually the place we take our visitors. Some people have a family room plus a formal sitting room (My parents did when I was growing up). I don't and I am quite content to have one roo...

The Laundry What is your laundry like? Mine is a small, tiny, shoe box size unattractive space that I don't really like but it does it's job and as someone said on my Facebook page " it could be worse " and that is so true.  Even though my laundry has many faults, I have tried to make it look as attractive as possible. The walls are bright yellow (to add cheerfulness) and I have added some art to the walls. On the door leading to the laundry I have added a sign to make it a little more "fun"!! It is a work in progress and with some time and money, it could be improved. My laundry doesn't look like any of the pictures below - these look like fabulous laundries but I am unlikely to ever have one like this. But whilst I will never have one like these, they do contain some very good ideas that I could use for my tiny space.  We all need a place to wash clothes, however not everyone has a laundry. My friend Cathy has her front loading ...

Room by Room: The pantry Poet Emily Dickinson would write poetry whilst sitting in her pantry. Her cousin Louise Norcorss wrote:   " I know (she) wrote most emphatic things in the pantry, so cool, so quiet, whilst she skimmed the milk " The pantry in my childhood home was big enough for my mother to iron in it! It was the coolest room in the house on a hot summers day. It was also the room that the carcass of the cow would be hung before my dad cut it up for freezing and it was where the milk was separated. Lots of things can happen in pantries! This is a fabulous pantry, I would love one like this!! Its not mine, my pantry is not a room, just a series of cupboard and baskets. We all have different places to store food, some small, some large and some in many different locations.  I don't own a pantry as such, my food is stored in a variety of places. Whilst a pantry or larder would be wonderful to have, my home just doesn't have the room to fi...

Room by Room: The kitchen After receiving such interest in my " Making our homes comfortable " and " Do you need help " blog posts, I thought I would expand on this by going from room to room over the next few months. I thought I would focus on making our homes comfortable, ways to become more organised, home decorating, ideas for storage and just general information that might be useful. I am no expert on home decorating, my home is designed for comfort first and foremost because it if isn't comfortable, then what is the point of all our hard work.  Secondly I am a very practical/organised girl and in each room I share you will see this coming through, I don't have time for lots of frills and personally I am not into that sort of decorating. Working full time does limit me, however what we have works for us, its easy to manage, easy to keep clean and we are very comfortable in our little home.  I thought I would start with the most important...