The power of a furniture swap
Have you ever done a furniture swap in your house and found that it brought a whole new feeling to a room? Or gave you added benefits like extra storage, more floor space or could just be put to better use in a new room? We did a furniture swap a few months ago with 2 chest of drawers and it really brought new life to both rooms!
In my video on our organised kids' wardrobes, I mentioned that we were going to swap our chest of drawers with our daughter's, in preparation for her room makeover. We did just that a few weeks later, which I revealed in our bedroom makeover, but I'm going into full detail on the power of a furniture swap today!
Pictured below is one of the dressers in my daughter's room. I sanded, stained and painted this piece when I was 7 months pregnant with my first child, and it sure was a labour of love! Baby girl's room is not huge, and when we moved her into her big girl bed and brought in some new toy storage, the room felt a bit squishy with such a big piece of furniture.
Meanwhile our chest of drawers was just not cutting it for substantial storage of our everyday essentials, like t-shirts, undergarments and gym clothes. I showed you how we folded our clothes to take up less space within the drawers, but we really did need extra room.
Enter the perfect solution - a furniture swap! The easiest way to move heavy furniture is to remove any parts you can (such as drawers), then move the 'shell', rather than trying to transport the entire piece at once.
I had lined the drawers of the kids' chest with this cute paper - another wrapping paper project. Isn't it cute?
I couldn't bear to throw it out, so I repurposed it by lining the toy chest that my husband made 3 years ago, which now holds all the kids' dress-ups.
So glad to find a new home for it. I can't let go of all my baby's nursery items completely!
I haven't had a chance to re-line our new drawers yet, as I was too eager to get everything in and organised. The new configuration was top 2 drawers for hubby's socks and underwear....
Second drawer for my undergarments. These drawer dividers were a great buy. They are perfect for separating categories, like I've done with socks, underwear and stockings. I also used a set of them to organise the bathroom vanity.
The drawers are quite deep so I created smaller stacks of my t-shirts...
And used the 'filing' method for my husband's t-shirts as he has a bigger collection that sat well within the deep drawer. Dividers would probably work well in these drawers too.
The bottom drawer is enormous and I found we didn't really have the items to fill it, seeing as we have a fairly big wardrobe as well. For now it's holding my husband's workout gear, but it's good to know we have the extra space to fill. Ugh, looking at these photos is really make me want to line those drawers! #addittothelist
The furniture swap has been a great solution, and we are appreciating the new set-up. This smaller dresser look so much better in the smaller room - although I can't wait to show you the full makeover soon, the room is already looking completely different to this photo!
And this dresser is a much better storage solution for our clothes, with great space on the top to hold items like my jewellery stand and perfume tray.
Have a look around your house and see if there are any furniture swaps you could do that would change the feel of your rooms and give you added bonuses like extra storage. It's worth a try!
Have you done any furniture swaps lately that have worked out well? What benefits did you gain from the swap?