Bless you, Ingvar Kamprad*

Today my daughters and I took our first journey 25 minutes south to the (extremely large and intimidating) IKEA store. Why, you might ask? Well, aside from being promised excellent Swedish food (and it was excellent. So excellent, in fact, that we had not just one meal there, but both breakfast and lunch), my daughters have a slight problem going on in their bedroom. And by slight I mean extremely, extremely large. Most problems could be solved with a garbage bag. Papers and crayons all over? Throw them away. Broken toys all over? Throw them away. But this? This cannot be thrown away. My first love (and I mean way back, before my parents allowed me to drink caffeinated, sugar-free, diet soda drinks) was books. I love love love books. Or, more correct, I love reading. Anything. Books, magazines, the back of a cereal box, anything. And somehow, my daughters love these things too. They are genius I tell you. Ages 5 and 2 and reading!! Not really, but they do LOVE books. Their love of books, however, has outgrown their bookshelf and the space that they have in their bedroom in the townhouse that we are currently renting for the next 10 months or so. Take a look:
I can't believe I'm even admitting to anything in my house looking like that, but it does. And even when I put all the books nice and neatly on the shelves, there is not nearly enough room. It still leaves piles on the floor, and the girls are unable (or unwilling) to put the books back into the higher up shelves correctly.

So anyway, my trip to IKEA to find a solution. It failed. I found lots of shelves that were too tall, or shelves that weren't tall enough, or shelves that wouldn't hold enough, or shelves that cost more than I budgeted for my impromptu trip today. So, the solution to my book battle will have to wait. At least another week or so until the rent check from the folks renting our house out in Spokane comes in :)

To satisfy my urge to organize that was rearing its ugly head this morning, I decided a few little improvements would have to suffice. IKEA has a lot of great little things, so I managed to pick up a lazy Susan to dress up our dining room table (flowers or some sort of new centerpiece to come soon and then I'll post a pic), and among other things this cute little wine rack to straighten up the bottles:
I can feel another IKEA trip coming on soon, though, since I can't bare to walk into the girls' room and look at the book mess.


*the founder of IKEA