my daydreams and plans for our rented home

Autumn is just around the corner and after spending four months packing, moving, unpacking, packing, and moving again (all with a newborn I might add), I’ve needed to let myself settle into our new home for the last six months. 

You might be wondering why we moved twice in two months. It’s a long story full of glimpses of God’s hand moving over our life but the short version is: we found an excellent landlord who had a vacancy in a larger property. She thought of us (her words) since we were a family of five living in a two-bedroom bungalow and offered to slide us over to the larger home.

Now we’re in an old craftsman four bedroom (!!), two bathroom (!!) house. It’s the first time in almost 10 years that we’ve lived in a home that actually has extra space. All this space PLUS a dishwasher feels like living in luxury, especially since we brought our firstborn home to a studio apartment.

After moving four times in five years, we are beyond ready to settle into a space for a good long while.

At the top of the year, I read a post from Medina of Grillo Designs about all the plans she has for her home this year. She’s also a renter but doesn’t let that hold her back from truly making her space her own.

To celebrate being in our new place for six months and the start of a new season, I’m writing out all the things I want to do with/for our home. These goals are bound to change as we learn how we use our space, but here’s a peek at what swirls around in my head while I walk around my house!

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front porch:

• Find a gliding bench or bistro set

• Add potted plants (or start a container garden!)

• Ask our landlord if we can prune the overgrown, sad-looking geranium bushes so we can plant prettier plumbago or egg yolk poppies

• Ask about replacing the mailbox, which is very tiny (and ugly)

Living room:

• Touch up paint 

• Paint the ceiling white (this probably won’t happen but I think the room needs it)

• Replace the wooden side table

• Make another Instax corkboard collage

• Hang a couple of hooks as a coat rack

• Add a floor lamp

• Buy art for above the couch (I have my eye on something already)

• Take down the big mirror and hang a smaller one near the door

• Build a gallery wall next to the built-in

Our room + our bathroom:

• Find a runner for to hide the brown carpet in front of the dressers.

• Properly hang the roll-up curtain

• Add more art

• Organize the tiny closet

• Paint the ceiling and add another coat of paint to the walls (again, this probably won’t happen because of logistics but it’s on my dream list)

• Replace shower curtain

• Figure out a bathmat situation–the door opens into the bathroom towards the tub which has made this tough

• Organize under sink

• Add greenery

• Add art

Playroom:

This was one of the spaces I knew I wanted to get set up quickly, so I’ve done the most work in here. I decided on a Waldorf-inspired sunset color scheme so there’s a pink shag rug and a bookshelf I painted a sunny yellow/orange already, as well as our old coffee table and a Kallax shelf for Zoey’s toys and an extra play surface. It’s functional right now but still needs some work to make it the magical backdrop for play I want it to be!

• Hang pink curtains

• Add a Nugget play couch

• Add a Gathre mat to cover the ugly brown carpet (it’s seriously so bad)

• Playsilk display

• Replace Kallax shelf with something more Waldorfy

• Take down lonely shelf on the wall

• Hang house shelf near tonie box

• Add art

• Switch flush mount lightbulbs out for warmer, dimmer ones

• Swap out flush mount (I’ve literally never done it but Apartment Therapy makes me believe I can do it)

Kitchen:

The kitchen is the heart of our home—not only because we’re a family of five but because it’s quite literally at the center of the house. It’s a large eat-in style kitchen with lots of cabinets and counter space…and yet it’s somehow managed to become a huge clutter magnet in just six months. Part of my struggle with the kitchen was that we had to unpack it before we knew how we used the space, so I made all the decisions about where to put things without really knowing where we actually needed things to go. An overhaul and declutter is much needed to make better use of all the space we have. 

• Magnetic knife strip (also get new knives)

• Spice jar risers/lazy susan

• Buy another set of utensils (we’ve lost over half of our forks somehow)

• Dye old flour sack towels to give them new life, but also buy more flour sack towels

• Add a runner or two

• Replace the microwave with something smaller (and prettier)

• Declutter + reorganize cupboards

• Hang bistro curtain in the window

• Curtain for back door window (take blinds off?)

• Back door mat

Laundry:

The laundry “room” is more like a hallway and we’ve already hung peg rails up along the wall to store the laundry and cleaning supplies. 

• Add jute runner

• Hide the water heater with a room divider

• Upgrade the trash bin

• Add shaker shelves above the peg rail

THE CHILDREN’S room:

I’ve spent so much time dreaming up a beautiful shared room for Isaac and Luna and by the time I perfect it and the playroom, it’ll be time to turn the playroom into the girls’ shared room and redo Izzy’s. C’est la vie.

• Dye the duvet covers olive green

• Replace the hinges on the pine trunk

• Add lamp

• Add art

• Add greenery

• Buy (or make?) patchwork curtains

Guest bathroom:

• Fun shower curtain

• Bath toy declutter

• Shelf organization 

• Under sink organizing 

• Sink faucet extension to make it more kid-friendly 

• Bathmat that actually fits

• Sand door down so it doesn’t get stuck 😅

Office:

There’s always one room in the house that turns into a dumping ground for things that you think you want to keep but just aren’t sure what to do with. The office is that room for us.

• Reorganize closet

• Organize and style the bookcases

• Create a writing/art workspace for me

• Replace chair 

• Hang curtains

• Hang guitars

• Create music gear space

Backyard:

We have a proper backyard for the first time in our ten years of marriage and we’re slowly but surely dreaming up the space for outdoor living. Our friends gifted us some amazing market lights that we hung up, my mom bought the kids a trampoline, and we found some free redwood stumps on OfferUp that we used to create the start of a natural playscape.

• Large table and at least six chairs for outdoor dining

• Grass/clover seed in bare patches

• Prune the morning glory

• Fire pit + conversation area

• Hammock

• Tree swing

• Flower garden

• Bird feeder near childrens’ bedroom window

• AC cover (partly for aesthetics, partly to keep my rambunctious children from investigating it)

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Those are my daydreams for our new home and seeing it all laid out makes me realize just how much daydreaming I’m capable of doing! 😆 No doubt I’ll have to adjust my dreams to make room for realistic plans, but for me, the fun starts with envisioning what could be. My hope is that we’ll be in this home for several years so it’ll be nice to document how it shifts with us as our family grows up. What do you have in the works for your home? I’d love to know!

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