Settling In; or: We Love Ikea

It's been a year since Jia Nin and I moved into this house. Things have sort of settled into places where they should go, where we use them the most. Ironically, among the first spaces that we got "visitor ready" is one of the rooms that we use the least: the living room. (The first was the guest room, obviously, but that's another post.) The low shelf/bench running along the walls is a "hack" of an Ikea Norrebo shelf. The room looks larger without it looming up the whole wall and that height is perfect as either seating or TV shelf. A Magiker display case in the corner used to be on a wall in Jia Nin's condo, but now throws light from that corner for some interesting lighting at night. We watch TV on our PCs and laptops these days, so there is no need for an entertainment system yet. But I am on the lookout for good deals during this down economy. The windows face north in this side of the house giving us a lot of summer sunlight without getting too hot. The room is much dimmer during winter, so we kept the color scheme "light". U.S. home architecture tends not to put much recessed lighting in the ceiling, for some reason. We may have to add more lighting around the room if we use it more often. That "couch" is an Ikea Hemnes day bed, which pulls out to make a king-sized bed. It used to be in a guest bedroom in Minnesota, but the size of it fits much better in the living room here. Wilson, if both our upstairs guest rooms are occupied, this one is yours, hah! One of the non-dining things we do at the dining table (to the right of this picture is dining/kitchen) is to sort mail. For most of the last year, it an unholy mess, papers and "stuff" all over and around the table. To get organized, the Ikea Cyril suited our needs perfectly, along with an Alve storage bench and Trofast storage bins. The Trofast is our recycling-sorting station, with a shredder on the bottom. Very necessary to shred those irritating credit card offers that they keep sending us in the mail. OK, OK, I know that's a lot of Ikea stuff, makes the place look like an Ikea showroom. If you conveniently live just 5 minutes from the only Ikea in Michigan, you'll wind up like this as well. Seriously, we didn't just go out and buy all of this just for the living room. Most of these accumulated over the past 7-8 years at our old apartments and condo. We just like the simple, clean European design style and the way Ikea designed their furniture to be disassembled, which suited our previous need to move around every few years.