A Simple Living Room Makeover

After a year of living together, we've come up with a lot of ideas of how we could make our space work better for us. Our big project this summer has been trying to better organize and arrange our apartment and, more importantly, get rid of anything we don't need in order to make our lives easier the next time we move. We aren't spending a lot of money or making enough changes to have dramatic before and after photos, but it's still been rewarding to see the improvements.

Before: Our bookshelves were a mess, and our floor was cluttered with hardware and tools that Nathan was using to build a test computer (for Server 2008 and Linux, for those who care).

After: With the bookshelves side by side and the TV moved out of the corner, suddenly we had tons of space! We used one of our end tables as a makeshift desk for the test computer. The TV is now directly in front of our couch.

Before

 

After: We finally hung up our wedding photo with our signed matte!

Before: I had my books on a couple small shelves on the far back wall behind the couch.

After: The larger shelf moved into the second bedroom to hold some of our less attractive books and binders, and the chair we had in the living room replaced it.

The other bookshelf replaced the end table we're now using as a computer desk.

To make more room on our bookshelves, we filled a box with books we want to sell or give away. We also boxed up some of our books that we want to keep but don't need on our shelves, most of which are kids' books.

And there you have it - a few small changes that have made our living room a much more pleasant place to live.