Alright, back by popular demand (kind of): Friday Design days! As you all know, Mike and I recently moved to Peoria, Illinois and we moved from a tiny space to a much larger one. Seriously though. We moved from half an attic and sharing a bathroom with another couple to a two bedroom apartment with a deck and a community pool. It’s awesome! Another awesome but expensive thing was that we had absolutely no furniture, aside from a bed, when we moved in.

I decided that I wanted to decorate this right by taking the time to paint the walls pretty colors and search for cheap, cool furniture. Until I found out that we weren’t allowed to paint the walls and no furniture is cheap. Haha. But alas, our apartment is pretty much done and we both love it. It’s comfy and cozy and has some really cool touches here and there.

One of our favorite rooms: The Bike/Exercise Room.

Our goals:

1. Keep our THREE race bikes, workout, outdoors gear plus everything else (like travel stuff) in this room.

2. Make sure it could double as a guest room.

3. Clear enough space so that I could do my daily workouts in there.

4. Make sure we could do all kinds of dirty stuff, like clean our bikes ;), in the room.

The Solutions:

1. Install our wall-mount bike racks and all the other nifty but ugly storage gadgets in this room only.

2. Find a cheap futon on Craigslist.

3. Keep everything off the floor and on the walls.

4. Cover the whole floor with puzzle-like foam mats. They’re cheap, comfy for workouts, and keep the carpet clean.

 

^This is before any kind of organization. It was a daunting task. Thinking back, I’m so glad it’s over.

 

^The same corner with our kits all hung up and a lot of our other gear in the closet (I really wish I could find my real camera for this). Everything on the walls are things that we loved but deemed not classy enough to be in our other living spaces.

 

^ Our beautiful bikes with our “bike care” center on the right and our new futon in the left corner. I was so stoked last week when we found the futon on Craigslist for $40! Also check out the floor mats. Bought those at a Menard (similar to Target) for $30 total. Everything else in the room we already had or “acquired” for free!

Anyway, I work out (and dance) in here every day and absolutely love it. I still can’t believe we have all this space 🙂

Ashley Life Update: Did the bad habit again last night and got a solid night’s sleep. Yesterday was a rough day for me, I was lacking motivation which is not allowed for my job. The sleep helped me wake up this morning feeling refreshed and ready to get people healthy. Pre-sleep experimentation will continue next week. Until then, I am going to look forward to sleeping in on Sunday.

I hope you’re all having great days and making progress in whatever area of your life that you’re struggling with.

xoxo 🙂