Does it feel like we’ve hardly been posting at all lately? Spring break and Memorial Day will do that, and as much as we love and need these chances to recoup and re-group, we do miss sharing our updates and hearing your thoughts. With that in mind, I have a feedback heavy post for you today, because I need your help with a question as I work on finishing up the dining room decoration!
But first, let me thank you for all of the wonderful feedback to my random “what’s wrong with my living room” post a little while back! That post ran just as I headed into a particularly busy and complex time both personally and professionally, so I didn’t get to respond to individual comments like we usually do on this blog. I really appreciated all of the thoughtful advice, and I will be taking lots of it to heart when it finally comes time to work on this space! Even after 2+ years of blogging, it still feels meaningful when people take time out of their day to share their thoughts with me.
… in that spirit, I am here to ask for more advice about my house! Specifically, I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I am struggling with how to incorporate birdseed storage into the plans for my dining room.
Why is this so important, you may wonder?
Brad is a big fan of birds, both seeing birds and feeding birds. He’s not one of those lets-get-up-at-6am-and-sit-in-the-swamp bird fans, but he really enjoys watching birds stop by the feeder while he drinks his coffee at the dining room table in the morning. All in all, I think this is a fine and reasonable hobby, even if it means that we’ve got three feeders decorating our front porch.
As I understand it, one is for regular seeds, one is for small seeds specifically for finches, and the other holds suet for any woodpeckers that drop by.
For a time, we stored the birdseed in this very pretty green plastic container in the corner of the living room, which was displaced when we got the new bar unit.
I was not sorry to see it go, but I am sorry that Brad now needs to walk all the way across the house to the 3-season porch to refill his birdfeeders. It’s his house, too, and if I insist on redecorating the dining room, at least I can find a way to incorporate his birdseed.
But how? I’ve been searching for “attractive birdseed storage,” and this is apparently not a common problem. Most of the options seem to be ugly translucent plastic bins. For all of the countless birdseed crafts that fill the internet, the geniuses of pinterest have devoted remarkably little time to The Storage Problem.
I’ve come up with only a few possible solutions, and I’d love your advice and help figuring out what I should do, and thinking up any that I may be missing. There must be more options out there.
Like any design decision, there are three things that play into this:
- Amount of time that it will take me to do the project
- Cost of the project
- Attractiveness of the end result
First, I could simply keep the same plastic storage bin but paint it white or some other reasonable color. (While it may currently be the pantone color of the year, I won’t let that dictate my decorating choices.) This has the double bonus of being very cheap and relatively easy, but I don’t think it will really look that great in the end.
Alternatively, I could get a simple and affordable mental bin, like this one, and we could keep it near the door. It won’t be quite the look I am going for (I’d probably want to move it for blog photos) but it would be by far the easiest option.
If I can’t reconcile with a plain metal trash bin thing sitting in the dining room, I could paint it or buy one that is enameled a nice color for a little more time or cost.
Finally, if I just can’t get behind a boring and obvious bin, I could find a piece of furniture or build furniture around a metal or plastic bin to hide the fact that it is really birdseed storage. This would probably be the most attractive option by far (unless I mess it up) but is likely far more expensive and time consuming than any of the other options. I’d still need to buy bins to store the seeds, and then I’d also buy wood and supplies, and take the time to design and build a custom storage unit to put them in. On the plus side, it would be great blog content!
So what should I do? What would YOU do? Am I missing some magical birdseed storage solution? How do you store birdseed or other pet foods safely and attractively?
