Family Command Center | Ikea Expedit

Wednesday, January 1, 2014

Happy New Year!!
I LOVE January 1st!  It's like a new chapter, a clean slate, a fresh start! It's a chance to do it all again, but better.  While I'm not a huge fan of resolutions (I typically only last a couple of weeks) I appreciate the chance to forgive and forget all the things you should have done, or could have done, or wanted to do in the previous year.  It's the perfect time to reflect and re-balance your life.  Re-establish the priorities and give it another good try!  Life's about the juggling of many things, including your home.  What's suppose to be your space, your sanctuary, can quickly become another stress.  So this month we'll be focusing on organization.  Re-working some old spaces, designing some new and sharing some tips and tricks for a more productive and more organized space.  If there is only one space you focus on this month, I hands down without a doubt urge you to create (or re-organize) your family command center ~ or what we call Mission Control.  Small home, large home, kids or no kids ~ it doesn't matter!  Every space needs a designated area for the clutter of everyday life.  For us this space is our Ikea Expedit:
What originally was supposed to be a temporary fix for our organizational needs has now served our home for a whopping 3 years!  It works as our family's command center ~ organizing keys, mail, files + crafts.  We were (and still are) humbled to think that a simple addition of a chalkboard would spark so many re-pins on Pinterest .  
Read on to see how a measurement mishap turned into one of our best projects to date! 
Inspired by Amy Meier's Home Office and after taking measurements of the empty space behind our front door, we opted to purchase 3 individual Expedit Shelving Units.  
To our dismay, we realized our measurements were off by 5" and didn't love that it practically stuck out past our door frame.  After about an hour of debating whether or not to return the whole thing, we had the idea to turn the end unit 90 degrees.
This allowed the entire unit to fit perfectly due to the fact that the cubes are more rectangular than square.  Then to conceal the blank side we added a chalkboard.  
We taped off our edges using 3M ScotchBlue Painter's Tape and taped down old cds to round the corners ~ gave it a couple coats of chalkboard spray paint from Home Depot and voila!  Our very own custom Ikea Expedit.

After completing this project, we received a lot of requests for a buying guide. Again, thanks for taking the time to check out our blog and best wishes for creating your own organizational area!

We purchased 3 individual Expedits,
added a chalkboard and styled with the following:
{5}DIY Chalkboard
{10}Large Clip Was A Gift


1 comment :

  1. I have seen the expedit shelves used in so many ways but this has to be the best! Love it and love your blog!!!
    Summer
    www.simplestylings.com

    ReplyDelete

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