Home Organization Tips for Beautiful Living | Create a Kitchen Table You'll Love Every Day

Hi, my beautiful friends. I hope you all are doing great. It's me, Nikki, here, and we're in my kitchen table area because this is the space that I want to take you along on a journey to, per se, reorganize or restructure for beautiful living. One thing I like to challenge folks with in their spaces is to not always look at it from a perspective of the furniture, the decor, and how do I want to design or decorate the space, but to look at it from the perspective of and ask the question first, what do I want to experience in this space? That really can guide all of the other things, like the organization and the decor. That's really the first question that I like to ask. Recently, I felt like I needed to ask myself that in my kitchen table area because the kitchen table is just such a valuable resource for creating that beautiful lived experience in your home. Even from years and years ago, everybody loved being around the kitchen table. It's just such a great little hub in our homes that sometimes we take for granted. We could really just take it to that next level to really give us a great quality of life in our home. I want to take you on a journey today in my kitchen table area to share with you just some upgrades and some little tweaks that I made to really, really give a better experience in the space. I hope that you can find it helpful and just an opportunity to just kind of really look at our kitchen table areas and do just those little tweaks to just add to our home. Let's jump right in. Okay, friends. My first tip and goal is about making the seating around the kitchen table comfortable. Let me share with you my recent deal of a lifetime. I found this absolutely gorgeous sofa. It is a Ethan Allen Harpwell sofa that's discontinued by Ethan Allen. Someone was selling it for actually $30. I thought when I saw it, okay, it must have an odor or something's wrong with it. It looked like it just came off the showroom floor. You can buy it used for $1,200 and I paid $30. They must have had this thing sitting in the room and couldn't use it anymore, but it really was just a gem for my kitchen table area. Of course, I still came home and cleaned it because, you know, it's just what you should do when you bring furniture in. And then at the bottom, there was a rip. So I went ahead and I went on Amazon and I got a replacement liner for the bottom, which no cost. And so I just thought it was helpful to go ahead and do that while we were moving it in. And it's a simple thing to do. It's all, I think the liner costs all of $6 on Amazon and it was really big. I even had leftover to do a bench that I'm working on. And as long as you have a staple gun, you can fill it up and then just staple it around and cut off the excess. And you have a new liner on the bottom of your sofa. Before I move on, I want to remind you guys that my free guide for July has come out for organizing your appliance cabinet is what we're going to be talking about this month and the goal. If you're not familiar with this, I do a free, very detailed guide on a small area in your home so that you can kind of collect these and get these tips all in a one pager. And it really is something that can be helpful to you. And so I'll put the link below if you want to grab your free copy. And so Mike and I, once we had that done, we felt like we had our new sofa. And so it really is great having it here. It's very comfortable. I love cuddling up on here with a book. It just gives a nice, warm, just a plush feeling to the area and it's absolutely beautiful. The pillows that originally come with the sofa were not with it, so I just added in my own pillows, which I really would have done anyway because I wanted to bring in the colors that were in the space and in my home, which is that blue and those greens. And so it really is just a great addition to the kitchen table. And friends, that's another thing to think about, you know, around your kitchen table does not have to be a set. It doesn't have to be all of the same chairs or just chairs. You can use stools or benches or sofas or different chairs, you know. So just think about what you desire in your space. The other thing is about making it cozy with those blankets just to bring that around. Now let's talk about this window because I tell you, I wrote about this recently. Many of you who follow me on my sub stack, I'll link that below if you don't, but I told you about how I have been living with this window for a good three years now and it started becoming the norm and how things in our house that needs to be addressed become norms when we ignore them. So I was so happy to finally address the window thanks to a company called Two Pages. They are a window treatment company where you can get your custom curtains and blinds and shades. And I love that I could customize because although my windows, all three of them look the same, they're not the same size. And also you can customize everything. Like you can customize the lining, you can customize the fabric, the trim, and you really get the desired look that you're wanting. And it's just absolutely beautiful. When they came, I was so excited friends, you know, because I had been just dreaming about these shades. Originally, I was going to go with plantation shutters. I may have shared that before and I'm so glad I didn't because it's so important for me to let the light into my house and these allow that. I chose to go with not putting the liner on the inside because I wanted the light to filter in. And then I went with this beautiful blue trim just to add that little touch to the space and bring a little bit of the color that I have within the kitchen area into the window treatments. And they are motorized also, so it's really great because they are white and I didn't want, you know, finger, you know, when I, cause I wear, you know, makeup and I don't want to have to always touch them. And so this was great because now that they're up and thanks to Mike, now that they're up, we don't have to touch them. So it just really is just function and beauty all in one. And it is so transformative in this area. I absolutely love them. They are such a showstopper and I will link two pages below. Definitely check them out. They just have just a beautiful line of window treatments and you really, truly get what you want. And that's the thing about it. When you look at your window treatments, you can go and just get something to throw up, which I had done and it just didn't do it for me. Now next let's talk about the actual table because this is that tool that helps us have those experiences also. And so I wanted to put a little green life into the table because that's the one thing that I think is so important is having something such as a plant or flowers or something natural up in the space and then also lighting. And so I love a table lamp. You guys know how much I love a table lamp. But this could be also a candle. But I think a table lamp just really brings a soft ambiance. It really invites you to come in and stay in the space. And this one is one that I love. I found this one, I think I want to say at HomeGoods. I think it was, I get confused between HomeSense and HomeGoods now cause those are my two favorites. And one way I feel like you can also turn on a light on your table is putting the piece to silver. I got this from a vintage shop and I use it for my coasters. So again, it has that beauty and that function and that little bit of silver on a table, like I said, it just lights it up. And this right here is my two tiered kind of shaker set here. And it's not a set. I made it a set. I bought the two tiered tray. I got it from a vintage for a dollar, vintage store for a dollar. And the top is for the savory like salt and pepper and the bottom is for more of like for my coffees, the cinnamons and the nutmeg and things like that. So it really is just such a nice addition. And again, turning on that light to the table. You notice I use my Lazy Susan here. Using a Lazy Susan can be great for corralling all of those things to make them look like a little vignette. And then it's also functional because it spins. Everyone sitting at the table has access to everything. And then it helps me keep the table orderly because everything has a home right on that the table. Some of my OGs might remember this pencil bag. I've had it for probably over 10, 12 years now. And I love it and it still just serves me so much. But now it's my little kitchen table activity bag. I have my little mini puzzle in here, colored pencils in here. I love keeping my little coloring cards in here. I also keep my devotional sitting. This is actually the book that's in my Summer Soul Food at Church, our women's group book club. This is the one that I am, the group I'm in and it's so good. So if you have not checked out the book, I would definitely recommend it. And so I love sitting there at the table as a reminder. Also I like a stack of bowls and I've got these in these green, that just brings in that touch of green in my space, but they're great when we're sitting around the table to invite. I put some popcorn on the table and everybody can grab a bowl and enjoy. So they're great little snack bowls. So that's something else you can put on your kitchen table that's always ready for snacks. And so all you have to do is get the snacks and everybody can grab a bowl and it invites them to just sit around and enjoy around the table. But again, the important thing for me was to have different elements that would invite myself and others to just stay around the table. And so this can be from games. This can be from books. You can even put a cookbook on the table because it's the, you know, the kitchen area. So you know, whatever you feel like once you sit down and think through the experience that you want to have in the space, that's where you then start putting those elements together. And you want to put them together in a way that it's easy to maintain, that it really is special to you and your family. And it really just makes around the kitchen table that special area, but you still have room to sit and eat and gather and all of the things. And so that was really important also. And so I really, really love this space in my house. It is that space that I come to in the mornings. It's the space that Mike, when we eat dinner at night, we come here and eat dinner. And I did want to share this one thing. If you like coloring or you want an activity, these postcards are great too to have on the kitchen table because it's kind of compact and you have your color pencils there and it just reminds you to live beautifully. When you're sitting at the table and seeing it visually, it's reminding you to kind of just do something fun. And if you don't want it on your kitchen table, you can put these different activities in a little tote and sit it right beside a chair at the kitchen table. You know, it's just it's so many ways that we can create those experiences in our home. And so I hope from me sharing how I put my little kitchen area together, that this could be an inspiration for you to challenge yourself for the month of July and say, OK, you know, let me just take a look at my kitchen table area and see what tweaks I can, you know, do to just make it so we can live a little more beautifully. I also want to remind you that my free organizing guide, and it's about organizing your kitchen appliance cabinet. And if you don't have one, it's a great way to a great tool to use to show you how to put one together. And so I hope you will take advantage of that and definitely take advantage of Two Pages. Beautiful company, so great to work with. And they gave me the results that I wanted with my window treatments. And I'll also link them below. I hope you all have a beautiful day. I will see you at the next video. And this is Nikki saying goodbye.