I’ve had many projects around the house this summer, from finally organizing my office closet, to our child’s nursery. There’s also some smaller stuff, like redoing this area in my house that for lack of a better option gets the label of “entryway.” Our house is strangely laid out. The garage exits into the kitchen/kitchen nook area. I suppose you could call it a “mudroom”, but that would suggest it is its own entity, when really it’s just this big wide open space that we’ve never been totally sure how to use. I know – boo hoo, too much space in the house.
For most of the time living here, it’s sort of been our trash/recycling area. Alan had this old cedar chest which we put four small trash cans inside, and that became our recycling system. Once we went to single sort though (which was like, 4 years ago I wanna say) it made a little less sense, but by gum we stuck with it. Putting the Stendig calendar on the wall above it at least filled out the space with something interesting-looking.
And we had a nice enough looking trash can and this plastic basket bag from Ikea to hold cardboard… All in all, it’s a lot of room to be taken up by garbage. I floated some ideas to Alan to convert this area into more of an “entryway” where we would move this bench under the window, dubbed the “shoe zoo”, to under the calendar. Because, it makes sense to have the place you put your shoes on be right by the door where you’re about to leave the house, right?
The bench originally acted as auxiliary seating for our tulip table, but mostly was just a place to dump stuff like the Sunday paper and shopping bags. Also, too many shoes (wherein Alan is the main culprit 99% of the time).
My other thought was that we would move our Eames hang-it-all from all the way across the room to next to the bench, where the big painting of dots resides currently. Because where you put your coat and where you put your shoes should be in the same place, and that place is next to the door, right??? That idea is on hold for now. But then I stumbled upon this random photo on my pinterest feed which called out to me because of the white walls and tulip table. We don’t have ANY house plants. We’ve had some aloe plants here and there but they died pretty quick. And I’ve always loved the look of Fiddle Leaf Figs in many a blogger’s home. Our house doesn’t have good light, and fortunately, they don’t need much. Just water and some brightness. The kitchen gets a lot of sunlight later in the day, which seemed perfect. So, I shopped for some sexy planters and found this one at West Elm that I thought fit in with the rest of the house nicely. 
I then went with Alan to our local garden store and I found this nice little plant for about $100. It’s an investment for sure for two people who have never successfully kept a plant alive. I’ve managed to keep it alive for almost a month so far though! I even bought a little watering can to go with the planter. 
As for trash solutions now, we consolidated everything into one can and put it by the fridge (which makes sense, to have the trash be nearer the area where we cook, and not have to walk all the way over there. The old cedar chest got a cleaning and became storage for games and Magic cards down in the basement.
Strange News from Another Star 