Chest of drawers, to paint or not to paint?

I expect most people reading this will have read Zoe's fascinating and impassioned post on consuming.

I was reminded of her post while putting this post together. When I realised I needed a new chest of drawers to store my baby clothes (second hand of course) I didn't even bother to think about buying new. For one thing it is out of our budget at the moment, and secondly I haven't bought any new RTW clothes or shoes for myself for 18 months now, and this attitutude has definitely filtered over into other aspects of buying. I talked about where I found the chest of drawers here.

I think for my money (£10) I got a sturdier, better made chest of drawers than if I had bought something flat pack.

Looking inside the chest of drawers has the label Lebus furniture. A quick google showed that Lebus was a British furniture brand whose arts and crafts furniture at the beginning of the twentieth century is apparently considered their best works. Mine is obviously later than that, but as the firm closed 1969 I am guessing mine is a 60s piece. I am not overtly patriotic but it feels nice to have something manufactured in Britain.

I have already filled it with baby clothes. Absolutely filled it. And still have some baby clothes planted on top of the chest of drawers. But I am considering painting it white, putting on coloured glass handles and giving it to Little I for her clothes. She has a white metal bed already so I think a white chest of drawers would go well with her bed. It is also easy to open these drawers so she can access her clothes more easily. The baby stuff can then go in the chest of drawers I currently share with Little I. Thoughts on this? Is it sacrilege to paint a piece of furniture like this or am I just extending its life. I am not really a great shabby chic fan but I do have a weakness for painted furniture. I always have. I was thinking about painting the chest of drawers before I even got it home, then I saw Tors' dresser and was swayed further towards the white. I have a great desire to paint furniture and walls white, to have lots of peaceful spaces. This is kind of risible given the way our family life goes. Peaceful? Ha! It may well be a side effect of looking at too many Scandinavian blogs.

There is also the matter of whether I can summon the energy to sand and paint. I have the intense feeling that I have to do this before the baby comes or I will never get it done. Then I look at the nice shiny wood and think it may be foolhardy to paint it white. It looks quite sweet as it is....decisions, decisions.

Oh, and I also have a yearning to paint the chest of drawers a bright glossy red, I have a great love of shiny and red together, but I know that will go down badly with everyone else in the house.

PS: One interesting aside to buying second hand furniture on a budget, is how you get it home. This chest of drawers cost only £10, the delivery charge would have been another ten pounds. So to save money I got a friend to come and collect it with me. Of course, it wouldn't fit in her car with Little I as well so eventually after much trying it this way and that, my lovely friend drove the chest of drawers home to my house while Little I waited with me by the road side. I had to wrap Little I up in my coat as it was cold, while I shivered for half an hour. The thought, "This wouldn't happen if we were buying flat pack from a well known chain store" did cross my mind. But it wasn't as bad as the time I bought two sets of fully assembled second hand shelves which I had to carry home while pushing a child in a pushchair at the same time.

Me Made March Catch Up and a digression or two

I need to do a Me Made March catch up here. Some crappy photos. Some bad hair. Sorry about that. Thursday 24th - Me Made top from a duvet cover and using Simplicity 3835, charity shop Gap jeans, Boden sale cardigan

Friday 25th March - Me Made nautical t shirt and refashioned cardigan, charity shop Gap jeans

Saturday 27th March - Me Made top from Simplicity 2245, stash fabric, another pair of charity shop jeans, Boden sale cardigan

No photo for Sunday but I did wear my me-made table cloth top.

Monday 28th March - Me made Amy Butler Anna tunic, very old Zara cardigan, those charity shop Gap jeans again

Okay here's the digressions:

The eagle eyed amongst you may notice in the last photo that the map has moved.

Little I is very interested in her alphabet so last week I finally cleared out the craft cupboard and then on sunday I put up the alphabet poster I had been searching for in the craft cupboard. I love this poster. It is by

Jan Pienkowski one of my favourite children's illustrators (I've loved his silhouette illustrations since I was a child - I cannot think how else to describe them). If you have small kids I recommend his website (in the previous link) if you go to "fun and games" he has some fab printable colouring pages. And if you read the "About" page you get a brief glimpse of a fascinating career.

Sometimes tidying up has its bonuses, I now have an idea of what is in the cupboard. I had forgotten we own sun print photo paper, a box of old fashioned wooden pegs for dolly making and many coloured lolly sticks.

Digression two - the Boden cardigan was bought when I went to a Boden end of line sale a couple of years ago when I still bought RTW clothing. If you get the chance to go to one it is funny and a good people watching experience. It was in an exhibition hall and clothes were on tables, in boxes and a few on rails. It was kind of like an upmarket jumble sale for middle class, middle aged women. We got there an hour after it opened and almost all the kid's clothes had gone. If you are especially small or big you can get some great bargains. There was a make shift communual changing room where you tried on clothes and tossed the unwanted into cardboard boxes where staff would put them make out the front. While I was there someone had put her own clothes down only to find they had been shoved into a box and taken out front for selling! I tried on lots of things but bought my mustard cardigan and have worn it so much since it was a definite good buy. I saw quite a few women I know vaguely from toddler groups or school run and do you know the weird thing? Boden's relentlessly jolly marketing kind of irritates me - they are a bit of a cliche and their prices are way out of my range - but all the women trying on dresses, tops etc looked really good. The Boden clothes seemed to fit and flatter middle aged women so I guess they must know what they are doing.

We heart shelves

See the chaos - no room to eat at the table.

Pens, pencils, art straws, playdough, magnetic letters, talking globe...see they all fit!

When trying to practice mindful spending and not buying new things I have found that patience can be rewarded. I have been wishing to have some shelves for a long long time. I wanted to stick to my guns and buy second hand but I was getting fed up. Shelves offered on my local freecycle network get snapped up very very quickly.

I had even started to look at Ikea's website, and asking other people where their shelving came from. In short I was becoming an obsessive, shelving wannabee-bore. Mr Minnado doesn't like shelves. Really, really does not like shelves. When I suggest shelves in our new house that we are planning, he adds quickly "But wouldn't you like a door over them?" i.e. a cupboard. (But I would like a shelf in the kitchen to put some of my pottery pieces on.)

Due to his shelf hatred (yes, that is shelf not self) and my lack of funds we have had more things on the floor and the dining table than I would like. When he trips over a box of pens and swears, I suggest this would not happen if we had some shelves. But at last....having restrained myself from buying some new shelves from a shop... I got lucky... the local junky charity shop was closing selling off their ikea shelf units. I asked if I could buy two units for £6.00 each. Mr Minnado was slightly petrubed when we had a phone call at 9pm one evening from a gruff voiced man, "It's Dave from the charity shop". He had rung to tell me I could have the shelves. (When the local charity shop rings you at home, is that a warning that maybe you are doing too much second hand shopping?) So, I had to collect them this morning and it all turned into an epic task. I was on my own with the children and realised I could not fit children and shelves into my small car at the same time. So we walked, I had to carry each shelf unit home in turn while T pushed Little I in the pushchair.

I have put one set in the dining room as you can see above. The other set are ina kind of utility space we have which is very dark and didn't photo well. The bonus of it is that I was able to decant loads of stuff from the top of the fridge onto the shelves. In doing so I discovered,

• we have lots of children's paints, two sets of unopened tempera paints


• three large tubs of coloured glitter


• three tubs of never used magnetic letters and words

T used the magnetic letters to label the shelves as you can see in the top picture. I hadn't realised they were magnetic. As usual my seven year old knows more than me.

The point of this lengthy ramble about shelves is partly this, Hayley has written about containers before and the idea that you should only have stuff that you can fit into containers. When you have a container full of stuff, for instance a cupboard full of dried foods or a jewellery stand full of jewellery, that is it - you have enough.

By getting these shelves, which I would consider containers of a sort, I not only tidied up but I found things that I had forgotten we even had. I had been planning on going to buy more paints and glitter. Having them organised and easy to see means we can use them more often as well as saving me from buying things I already have. We have enough!