Lateral File Tool Storage

Living in an apartment again, with no garage or basement, has reminded me how important it is to have a place for everything. I have a bad habit of small scale organizing - where I organize things sort of wherever they happen to be, rather than designing an organization plan.

We have two areas in our loft mostly dedicated to storage - the pantry and Evie's room. Right after we moved in, I painted out an old bookcase and stuck it in the pantry/laundry room and sort of filled it with whatever had been put in the room during the move.

Somehow all of our tools got put in Evie's room, which is super annoying because I usually need the tools when Evie is napping! I don't know how I lasted this long, but I'm finally get our house really, really organized. I made a game plan last week:

Evie's Room:
Sewing machine and supplies
Crafts
Linens
Bedding
Musical instruments
Suitcases

Pantry:
Tools
Paint
Laundry supplies
Stroller
Cleaning supplies
Accessory kitchen appliances

I want the pantry to sort of act like our garage. I considered getting a big tool box to organize everything, but space is pretty tight. I found a 36" wide lateral file cabinet on Craigslist that I think will work perfectly for tool storage with very easy access. And I like that I can lock the drawers to keep the girls out of the sharp stuff.

Buying a tall file cabinet reminded me of this project from Mary McDonald's office featured in Domino years ago. She photocopied a sample of her favorite wallpaper and had kinkos blow up the image to fit the drawer fronts.

A version of this project could be fun for my cabinet, but I'd maybe go a little more subtle with the pattern.

A Story from Brimfield

The day after we got home to Cambridge after our long summer in New York and Brussels, the Brimfield Antiques Fair started. I was exhausted after traveling, but the idea of moving boxes and getting settled back into our house was more exhausting than antiquing. So I left the house at 4:00 in the morning and made the hour-long trek out to Brimfield, MA.

I feel like I have days were my shopping skills are on fire and other days when I'm feeling happy to be shopping, but also a little slow-going. Unfortunately I felt the latter that day. I saw some cool things, but everything felt so expensive this time. I bought a few small items, like some antique block-printed linen and a few dinnerware items, but nothing too exciting.

The sun was starting to set. The vendors began packing up. Suddenly the idea of going all the way home from Brimfield having spent only a dew dollars and with nothing really cool to show for it bumped my energy up. I was racing from vendor to vendor, eyes darting, searching for my treasure.

At the very last vendor, who had a really prime spot at the beginning of the fair, right on the road, a group of five chairs caught my eye. Four side chairs and a Captain's chair. They were sooooo dirty and completely trashed. The vendor was sort of confused when I asked about them.


"Those? You WANT those? Are you a professional restorer? No? Well, they're going cost you a fortune to refinish so you can have them all for $30. No one wants them and they are taking up too much space."


I sort of looked at him stunned, trying to process the information. "Umm ok. I'll go get my car." And before I knew what was happening, I found myself the confused owner of 5 really old and very beat up chairs.

The next day I started pulling out all the old nails and brads from a chair. After an hour of intense work, I had crazy blisters, a few cuts (and probably tetanus!). So all five of the chairs sat in my basement for a few weeks, untouched. I wasn't quite sure what to do with them.


After dedicating nearly a week of my life (and about a quart of blood) to the refinishing of these chairs, here is the final result.


I'm happy. They are not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. But they were $6 each, so who cares? It was a fun learning experience.