Turning a book on your bookshelf or a CD on your CD rack is fine if you’re planning to put it back within a day or so, but if you’re a slow reader or reading a giant book or the sort of person who wants to listen to the same song or album until it makes you (and everyone around you sick) then you need a solution with a little more style.

For example, these book and CD separators designed by Japanese artist Hiroshi Sasagawa. His Animal Index can be used to mark your place or to divvy up your shelves into distinct sections. It strikes me that the Animal Index is one of those little things that one could DIY without too much trouble, though I know mine wouldn’t look as polished as these.

The wonderful and lovely Tiffany wrote with this query:

Um, Miss NTB? Do you take requests? If so, may I request a home entry on incorporating kids toy storage into your living room? I mean like, serious storage. Not just one or two cute baskets for decor. We have the world’s smallest living room, which is now also the world’s worst decorated (thanks, kid-proofing). I have been TRYING to come up with something somewhat stylish and utilitarian, but I end up with dumpy and cluttered. I WOULD LOVE YOU FOR A BAZILLION YEARS.

A bazillion years? I like the sound of that. Of course, before I could effectively answer Tiffany’s question I needed to know just how small the world’s smallest living room actually is. The answer? About 14′x12′, which I think is about the size of my own, so I can definitely sympathize with the very real fact that a tiny space plus childproofing plus toys can equal a major bummer of a room. The good news is that you don’t need to be all LOOKIT MAH TOYBOX!

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Ever notice how people congregate in the kitchen during parties, even if all the food is in the dining room and you’ve set up a darling little bar on a side table right by the front door? Science has yet to discover why guests will stand for hours in the kitchen while all the chairs (moved into other rooms for just this reason) sit lonely in the living area, but there must be something magnetic about kitchens because it’s not just people who cluster there.

Things mysteriously find themselves in the kitchen, even when the front door is nowhere nearby. I myself am writing this at a kitchen table that has an embarrassing amount of stuff on it – a diaper bag, class notes, a decorative plate my MIL gave us as an engagement gift, craft paper scraps, an non-working cell phone, and a copy of will making software The Beard and I have yet to open.

Can you feel the waves of shame emanating from this post? All I can say for myself is that I’m usually quite the neat freak!

The kitchen dump, you might call it. Rare is the house that does not have an area where mail gets left and keys are tossed, and for whatever reason, this spot is frequently in the kitchen. (Note: If your dump is not in the kitchen, the following advice still stands.) What’s nice about the kitchen dump is that all of those envelopes and your purse and whatever end up in the same place, so if you can’t find the water bill or your wallet is missing there is a good chance it’s there in the dump.

What’s not so nice about the kitchen dump is that it usually looks messy. If you have an unexpected visitor, the contents of the kitchen dump gets crammed into a drawer, leading to further disorganization. And finally, the kitchen dump can become so psychologically overwhelming that cleaning it up it seems impossible.

I’m not suggesting you do away with the kitchen dump, since it serves a purpose, i.e., having a kitchen dump means you don’t have to focus on cleaning and organizing the second you get home. I am suggesting you prettify your kitchen dump. Get some pretty baskets and spray paint them some dynamic color. Put up a few hooks for your keys and even your bags if you have the room. Easy, particularly if you have the space to hide it away in a cabinet.

Hidden or not, make sure you have space for your mail and your briefcase and all the other stuff you typically have in your hands when you walk through the door on a normal evening. If you have the space, you can even set up what one blogger calls a kitchen command center, which is basically a workspace right there in your kitchen.

Have I mentioned I am now working in my kitchen until some renovations get underway? No one needs a kitchen command center more than I do right now.

I’m a sucker for keeping things neat and clean, to the point where I’d rather sacrifice sleep to straighten up and wipe down the counters before bed then wake up to dishes in the sink. So you can imagine that I spend an inordinate amount of time reading articles like “The 10 Habits of Highly Organized People” (which appeared in O Magazine). I can’t get enough. In fact, it’s probably a little unhealthy, but I don’t care. So what if they parrot the same tips over and over? It’s good to have a reminder, and even better, I have my own tips to share, right here, right now! What follows are five of my very own tips for clean livin’.

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Whimsy and utility meet in this adorable bookcase created by Singapore designer Jaren Goh. I might also have written that the modern lines meet a classic silhouette or that vintage and new come together. But however you say it, I adore it!

… or because, you know, you’d rather not have your workspace right on top of your slackspace in your tiny apartment. Whatever your reasons for wanting to get your home office (or craft room, I suppose) out of sight, the ideal situation would be to devote an entire room to it. When that’s not possible, however, perhaps you have a closet? A large enough closet can accommodate a desk (or better, two filing cabinets with a melamine top to maximize storage space), a chair, and perhaps some hanging paper sorters, along with whatever you need to keep on your desk for professional purposes. Like the idea? Pepper Design Blog has a rough guide to converting one of your closets into a home office.

And naturally, we have some added inspiration!

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For whatever reason, visible electrical cords drive me nuts. Which isn’t to say that my house isn’t full of electrical cords running to outlets – there’s even one snaking down the wall in a tube for the CO detector – but my not having lived up to my own ideals isn’t a reason to toss them out the window, right? Sometimes something needs to be plugged in and there’s just no short-term, inexpensive way to mask one’s electrical cords. Or isn’t there?

You might, for example, purchase and install one of PA-Design‘s cavaliers de printemps, which turn your electrical cords or computer cables and such into a branch upon rests a richly-colored bird. Or you could do what Maisie Maud Broadhead did (in an art installation, sadly, not in real life) and turn your long and winding cables into art using U-clips.

Unless you’re not at all bothered by snaking electrical cords… which I can only imagine some people aren’t.

It is truly an unfortunate thing that there is no room in my home that could currently accommodate a proper window seat. Where the windows are large enough, they are far too high up. Sure, I could find a tall bench and place it under a window, complete with plenty of soft, punched pillows, but it’s not really the same thing. A real window seat has storage underneath, and is a quiet, sturdy place to relax and read or watch the world.

Someday The Beard and I are going to do all sorts of interesting things to our little Cape, but for now I have to be content posting pics here of all the things that float my boat. Perhaps you like window seats as much as I do? If so, you’re going to love the following pics.

Love the lamp, love the view. I have no clue where this is, but I want to believe it’s in one of those cities that feels more like a town. Maybe somewhere by the water? I’m ready to move in.

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After a weekend spent trying to fit all of our stuff into the nooks and crannies of a rather small Cape, I am loving *LOVING* this clever board game storage idea dreamed up by the lovely lady behind Infarrantly Creative. She needed a little color for her game room and a way to get said games out of the way. Inspiration hit, and a few short hours with a table saw later and WHAM. Art, or something close enough to it for most folks.

Clever, yeah? And easy to DIY if you’re a fan of board games who doesn’t even have a game room. Even better if you happen to have vintage versions of classic games! But, you say, how are you supposed to get the boards out of the frames when you and the fam want to sit down to a round of Monopoly or Chutes & Ladders? The short answer is you don’t!

The pieces and rulebooks are all stored in the back of the frame, so they’re right there when you take the whole works off of the wall. Love it, love it, love it!

Long story short, I’m sewing a new deeper diaper bag for myself. The old one is awesome, but much more suited to the needs of a newborn than a little chick who’s less than a week away from being a year old! I’m avoiding thinking about where the time goes by contemplating the task of digging out my craft room, which was once my home office. I moved my laptop into the living room so as better to watch the baby, leaving what ought to have been space to sew but became a temporary storage room straight out of that show about hoarders. Not cool, not cool.

Today’s post is meant to inspire me to make my now craft room a little bit more suited to its purpose, but perhaps it will also inspire some of my dear readers, who I know for a fact can get pretty craft when they want to! Here are five cool craft rooms in which there’s a place for everything, and everything appears to be in its place.

(via Making Memories)

(via Crafty Intentions)

(via Heather Bailey)

(via Bliss Tree)

(via Making Memories)