Organizing for baby | Guest room to Nursery

We just recently announced we are expecting in July and we cannot wait! Our home has the perfect room for a nursery but it is currently functioning as a guest bedroom with extra storage, basically a finished attic space, which is so nice but has collected a lot of junk in the short 2 years since we have moved! As soon as we found out we were pregnant, I couldn’t wait to get up there to organize, donate anything we aren’t using and of course, decorate! It’s a huge room that I can not wait to fill up, but first I need to organize my own closet (bye bye pre-pregnancy clothes) and declutter the future nursery so I can start the fun part! I like to decorate my house myself but I have decided I am going to work with a designer virtually to make the space come together exactly how I want. But first, I needed to start with a clean slate!

So how am I organizing a room that is mainly storage with a lot of extra furniture we won’t be using for the nursery? Small steps that will, hopefully, get the nursery ready by July!

Declutter

Decluttering is the best first step in any moving or renovation/redecorating process! We started by going through the guest room and storage closet and making with three sections: donate, save, and trash. It’s pretty obvious, but it makes things move a lot faster and keeps you organized. Plus, I love to donate anything I am not using! Anything we saved went into a storage tub that I labeled or was moved to another room where we would actually use it. We were able to make so much room in the storage space for more (baby) stuff as well as get rid of anything in the guest room we were not using! It feels so much better to be able step into the storage closet and see everything organized as opposed to the giant mess it was before. I love how empty the guest room looks now so I can envision how it will look as a nursery.

Organize 

I am also prioritizing organizing our clothes closet! Since I am 17 weeks pregnant, a lot of my pre-pregnancy clothes (aka jeans) do not fit. So I started taking these down from my closet and folding them to put away in storage bins until next fall. I will most likely do this again in a couple of months when it warms up to put away all my warm sweaters, or anything else that doesn’t fit, to make more room in my closet for summer. (Which I can store upstairs in the storage space, thank goodness!) I also have some baby clothes my best friend gave me and I have those safely stored away until it’s closer to my due date but have them easily accessible upstairs since I love to look at them.

Move

This is where gameday movers comes in! There are, of course, tons of small things we moved around in the nursery by ourselves but we do have a few antique rugs, small tables, as well as a sofa in the guest room that we are not keeping. It feels so good to move out furniture we no longer will use since it won’t work for the space. Big furniture is a little bit trickier to get out of our upstairs and I definitely cannot help this time. Not sure I helped the first time much, either! Navigating stairs when moving big items is definitely something we want to be careful with since our home is historic. Hiring movers to tackle the bigger items will definitely take the pressure off and help me stress less! Gameday Moving Services offers a large amount of services, including residential moving, packaging and labor, antique and art moving and long distance moving in Athens GA!

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Make a running to do list

I have a growing to do list with items to check off on my guest room to nursery project! Paint, re-tile fireplace, purchase furniture and furnishings, book movers, plus I want the clothes closet in the nursery redone as well! So much to do, but I still feel like I have a lot of time. Keeping a running list on my phone helps me feel organized, less stressed and makes this pregnancy brain feel less crazy! It also feels nice to check things off, but still have them on the list to see what all you have accomplished.

I can’t wait to keep working on this little project & hope you will stay tuned!

xo,

Morgan

The Samsung Frame TV

When we moved I loved (and still do) the layout of our house. But it’s old (build in 1912) and features a lot of fireplaces and a lot of woodwork and beautiful doors that make it hard to place things and style my living room. I have never liked a TV over a fireplace, especially in an old house. But I broke my own rule. I could not style my living room how I wanted in my head and then I saw the frame TV on Instagram and knew I had to have it to complete my living room. Our only other TV is in a space to the right of our living room that we call the ‘study’ so when people are over and you want to watch a football game or a movie, you have to go in there and it’s kind of small. I liked the idea of the frame TV being art when we are not using it as a TV, but being able to switch it to a movie or a game if we have people over. The main problem I had to figure out was installing a new state-of-the-art TV in my house that was built before TVs existed and how to make it flow and blend. I didn’t want to drill any holes into the walls and it turns out there is brick where I wanted the TV anyway, so that wasn’t even an option. Here is what I did instead -

The Frame TV comes with a ‘box’ that connects it to power/internet via a small clear & really long wire, so if you live in a house with drywall you can just install that behind the TV in the wall and run it to power. So since that wasn’t an option, I had a guy come and mount the TV (it includes mounting hardware) and I ran the clear wire down and to the left (hid it with something I got on amazon because even though it’s clear, it’s shiny and stands out against brick and wood.) And put the ‘box’ in a decorative box on the floor right below the power outlet. I would really like to hide this box but for now, this works. Here is what I ordered from amazon (pictured on the right!)

I think it turned out great! The subscription for the art is $4.99 a month and includes SO MANY options. You can also upload your own prints or pictures as well for free. Let me know if you purchased the samsung fame TV!

Links: Frame TV (mine is 50 inches & I ordered the beige bezel with it!)

Amazon Woven Box

Amazon cable concealer

xo,

Morgan

arrows to show “hidden” wires!

We moved!

We bought a house! And we moved, from Atlanta, back to our hometown. I don’t really know where to start and I know I don’t have to explain anything to anyone, but I wanted to blog a little bit about our home buying process and why we decided to move.

We started talking about potentially moving back (to our hometown) last year in 2019, after 10 years of living in Athens + Atlanta. We didn’t have a real timeline, we are more go with the flow with most things. We love Decatur and all the things to do in Atlanta. But….we didn’t love the housing prices (or afford them) and traffic. We both have family here and just missed a sense community to be honest. None of our neighbors in Decatur ever really tried to get to know us, maybe because we were just renting and/or didn’t have kids and but I think that’s what it’s like in bigger cities and I understand. We looked at a lot of homes in Atlanta a couple of years ago and weren’t very impressed anyways. Most homes in desirable neighborhoods were too close together or were quick flips that just lacked character, or were WAY out of our budget. So we started looking online for houses in our hometown probably around October, but not very seriously. After living in 4 different houses/apartments within 3.5 years in Athens, Decatur, City of Atlanta and back to Decatur, we knew what kind of house we wanted. The older and more character the better, fireplaces and a yard were a must, bonus points for historic and in a good location where we could walk to town. We didn’t really love anything we saw online, until one day in February when Cody emailed me a link to a house he had not even looked at yet. I immediately loved it and said it was perfect. So we texted our realtor and waited. The next day we learned the house went under contract with another couple in less than 24 hours.

Since we were in Atlanta and it was a Monday, we couldn’t get there to look at it anyways but I really had a feeling that this house was ours. We were sad since now we wouldn’t even get a chance, but we both kept looking at it online and thinking about it, hoping that we could somehow still have a chance. On Friday, our realtor called and said we could come down and look at it if we wanted to and put in a backup offer incase the other offer fell through. So that’s what we did! We had to patiently wait and not tell any friends because this was just a backup offer and it might not even happen. Over Valentine’s Day weekend though, the other offer fell through and we went under contract!

celebrating our first night with our friend Bob, Veuve and Red Lobster

We say we didn’t have a timeline because when we started looking at houses more seriously online, we already knew Cody was going to work for his dad when we moved. So that’s why we didn’t have to move by a certain time frame even though the sooner he could start working with his dad, the better. I was hoping to keep my job with ClassPass since it was a remote role, but the role was outside sales based in Atlanta. I told them as soon as we closed on the house and they decided they needed someone based in Atlanta. I totally understood, but was sad because I had a great team and really enjoyed my time at ClassPass, the startup culture, working for a great company and learning so much about the fitness industry - another post for another time though. We decided to move in mid March which happened to be right before the Covid19 got really got crazy. I think we moved the second weekend of quarantine and I was scared our movers were going to cancel on us but they didn’t and they were great! I worked the rest of the month through all the pandemic changes and 2 days after my last day at ClassPass, my team was let go or furloughed. So March was crazy to say the least but in April I kept busy painting, taking down wallpaper, putting up wallpaper and trying to get our house unpacked and furnished. So, I am still looking for a job or new career and posting on instagram/my blog to pass the time and potentially turn it into a side hustle in the social media world.

We love our house and it was probably a huge blessing in disguise that we moved when we did and how things all workout. Everything happens for a reason.

xo,

morgan