dining room – Jellybeans in the City

3 things to do when setting up your dining room

Among the spaces in our house, the dining room is the one that’s most often used for gatherings. Whether for intimate family meals or a social occasion with more attendees, the dining room provides the venue and backdrop for shared experiences of eating and conversing with other people.

We all want this room to be comfortable and conducive to memorable times spent eating and talking with family and friends.

Whether you’re designing your dining room from scratch, or re-designing it to fulfill your evolving needs, here are some tips to keep in mind:

Define your purpose for the dining room.

Are you using it mainly for private family meals and occasions? Or will you be hosting large parties? How often will it be used? Will it perform additional functions such as doubling as a workspace for household working from home or students doing online lessons?

These considerations will influence the type of furnishings that will go into a room such as getting more ornate and high maintenance pieces for more formal setups and more functional, easy to clean and hardy pieces for rooms that will se everyday use, especially by children.

Light up the space.

As an area for socializing, you want this room to appear bright and ambient. It is often advisable to layer various light sources such as using a chandelier or pendant lights above the dining table supplemented by lamps, sconces and the occasional candles to illumine the space at eye level.

If you are also using the dining room as work/study space, make sure that adequate task lighting is also available.

Get your flooring right.

The dining room gets a lot of foot traffic and is also the site of many spills and splashes. The floor should not only look good, but it should also be easy to clean and able to stand up to wear-and-tear.

Hard flooring may be best for dining rooms that see a lot of use, particularly for entertaining. Softening touches may be applied to amp up the comfort and coziness through area rugs that add texture and color.

If you’re shopping for your dining room furniture, fixtures and accessories, check out and get inspired by the awesome selections at Crate & Barrel.

This US-based retail chain specializing in upmarket and artisanal housewares, indoor and outdoor furniture and home accessories has presence in forty-two countries across the globe.

In the Philippines, its stores are located at:

Level 3, SM Aura Premier, 26th Street corner McKinley Parkway, Bonifacio Global City, Taguig. Landline: +63 2 88934255| Mobile: +63 917 8895667
Ground Level, Annex Building, SM Makati, Courtyard Drive, San Lorenzo Village, Makati City. Landline: +63 2 88342780 | Mobile: +63 917 5833573
4th Level, SM Megamall Fashion Hall Building D, Wack-Wack Greenhills, Mandaluyong City. Landline: +63 2 89420761 | Mobile: +63 917 8704796

Shop online for Crate & Barrel products through its website and stay updated on its products and offers by following it on Facebook and Instagram.

Photos taken during a store visit at Crate & Barrel’s SM Megamall branch.

Tips for organizing your home for the New Normal

It has now been several months into the quarantine, and many of us, albeit reluctantly, have found ourselves making adjustments to cope with our New Normal.

A huge part of our new reality is that we are spending more and more of our time at home. Being the space that is wholly under our control, the home has become our safe zone, a refuge from the many risks and dangers from the outside world.

If you haven’t re-organized your home since the start of the quarantine, you might want to think of doing that now. We may be stuck in our current predicament for a long while yet; the sooner our personal environments are set up to be useful in the New Normal, the better off we will be.

Basic principles

The good news is that the basic principles of home organization still applies, albeit with a few tweaks.

Eliminate the non-essentials.

Non-essentials are items that currently have no clear use or purpose in our current situation. These basically clutter up our spaces and leave little room for us to move around to do our work or accommodate what’s actually important.

Look through your belongings and see what things you may have no use for in the coming months such as cosmetics, office attire, formal and travel wear and more.

Items that belong in this category can either be thrown out, or donated to someone who might be able to use them.

Find the proper home for each essential item.

Items that have a clear use and purpose should be housed or stored in areas that maximize their utility.

Also remember: out of sight, out of mind. An item that’s deemed useful but cannot be found when it’s needed is not really useful at all. It would be advisable to store essential items in such a way that they can be easily seen and obtained when needed.

Organize according to how you live.

Don’t rearrange your stuff in a vacuum. Consider how you and everybody else in your household move around and use your spaces.

Items that are placed well out of reach of those who need them, or areas seemingly made inhospitable to some family members because of how they are arranged, will become wellsprings of resentment later on.

Consider as well how some things just logically go together. Group together items that have similar functions and house them near the areas where they are used most frequently.

Establish and maintain the organization system.

Once you’ve tidied up and created well-organized spaces, you need to maintain them. Agree with your household members on which item goes where, how to keep everything neat, and how often to do major and minor cleanups.

From time to time, you will need to check if your system for organizing your spaces and belongings is still working for you. It may need to be adjusted as your situations change whether as a result of the quarantine or other factors.

Each room’s purpose

To apply these principles to the various rooms in your home, you should think hard on what purpose you will assign to each room especially in the New Normal, then design and arrange the room’s layout and contents accordingly.

Bedroom

The bedroom should be a place to rest and regain one’s strength at the end of the day. It should be a haven for you where you can spend the slow and quiet hours for rest or reflection.

To have a bedroom that serves as the relaxing spot where you can slow down and recover from the day’s challenges, keep the area around the bed, especially the floors and the nightstand, free of items that do not contribute to having a restful experience. Stow away items in your dresser or under the bed to improve the flow of the room. Having a couple of indoor plants will also add some spots of color and life to the space.

Closet

Many of us have the tendency to just stash our stuff in our closet and hope that we can find them when we need them. Seldom does this work, however, and we end up wasting precious time and energy searching for a piece of clothing buried beneath piles of other clothes.

As the central repository of your clothes, your closet determines how you present yourself to the outside world. It should, therefore, equip you with what you need to wear, depending on the season and situation. This will not be possible with a disorganized closet.

As you regularly update your wardrobe throughout the year, so should you also be decluttering and arranging the contents of your closet. Group similar clothes together and consider tossing out those that are too worn to be presentable, or ones you haven’t worn for the past year. Especially now, when you may be working from home, items such as formal blazers and suits may just be using up space in your closet. Consider placing them on storage or tossing some out to free up space for clothes more suitable for our current situation.

Kitchen

Given all the lockdown restrictions on dining out, as well as our reduced food budgets, many of us are cooking and baking at home nowadays. Some have even begun to sell food online as a business. To help us in preparing food that nourishes our family or brings money to our pockets, we need to have our kitchen items in order.

Check out the food stored in your pantry and refrigerator for those past their expiration date. Toss out utensils and equipment if you already have something to replace them such as old measuring spoons or worn out egg beaters. Remember: your kitchen drawers are prime real estate when it comes to storage so they should contain items that are ready to be used everyday.

Dining Room

The lockdown, in a way, has provided households and families with more opportunities to share meals. Such times are welcome instances for everyone to catch up on each other’s activities and enjoy each other’s company.

The dining room, therefore, should be a place that encourages sharing and conversation. The dining table and chairs, for example, should be clear of items that are not needed during mealtimes. When meals are served, the items on the table top should be within easy reach of family members. When mealtimes are done, all dishes, utensils and linens should be cleared away as well.

Living Room

With more family members spending more time at home, the living rooms has been seeing a lot more action. This area is sometimes made into a makeshift classroom, or the family’s home theater for movie nights. What’s important is that this should be a space for family members to comfortably congregate and spend time together.

To achieve a family living space that’s welcoming and relaxing, make sure the space is free-flowing and clutter-free. Get rid of papers or knick-knacks that may have accumulated on the console table and other flat surfaces. Organize the cords under the TV and other devices by clipping them together. Utilize the space behind a sofa by placing a trunk to store throw pillows or a low bookcase to showcase the family’s book and movie collection. Move furniture around to free up floor space and improve the flow of movement around the room.

Home Office

Now that more people are working or learning from home, we are realizing the importance of setting aside space where we can think and concentrate on our work.

As usually directed to us in our offices or classrooms, our workstations at home should also be kept neat and uncluttered. Plus, we also need to tidy up the surrounding areas to have presentable backgrounds for our video calls just in case we haven’t set up fake ones in Zoom.

As our primary base of operations, our homes should be set up to support our goals and activities as we all adjust to living in a post–COVID19 world.

How do you plan to re-organize your home for the New Normal?

Photo credits: Header (Jason Briscoe), Kitchen (Naomi Hebert), Bedroom (Shop Slo), Closet (JamestheThomas5), Dining Room (Danill Silantev), Living Room (Patrick Perkins) and Home Office (Isabel Achison) on Unsplash

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Making your place look like a million bucks

While anyone can easily admire a chic pad that looks like it came straight out of a magazine, not everyone has the budget for a major renovation or hire a world class designer to spruce up their homes.

Taking design cues from some of the metro’s most sought-after condominiums, these are simple design inspirations anyone can pull off even on a budget.

1. Add depth to your ceiling!

Ceilings have a great influence on how we feel in certain spaces. Low ceilings prompt quick action as small rooms make us unconsciously want to leave faster, while the inviting aura of a room with high ceilings make us want to take our time and relax.

You can highlight the size of your living space using recessed lights for a more modern, understated way of lighting. Likewise, full-length mirrors further expand the space in the room.

In the one-bedroom model unit from Mi Casa, for instance, the interior design done on the ceiling adds visual depth. This works well for an area where you regularly welcome guests. The living room and dining area are good areas to apply this concept because they will greatly benefit from the impression of a bigger space.

2. Let nature illuminate your home for you.

Natural lighting is the best way to brighten up any space.

Actual photo of Marco Polo Residences model unit

Condominium units with floor to ceiling windows not only provide sweeping views but give off the impression of a bigger and more calming living space. You will only be able to take advantage of spectacular views, of course, if your unit is on the higher floors of a condominium unit and where the building itself is located strategically.

Marco Polo Residences in Cebu plays this up perfectly with not only floor-to-ceiling panoramic windows that provide unobstructed views of its mountainous surroundings, the city and the sea in the distance. On the other hand, if you have smaller windows, you can achieve this same feeling by keeping the window area clear of clutter.

3. Opt for earth tones.

Earth tones are timeless and versatile, making it suitable for any kind of home.

Actual photo of Four Season Riviera model unit

The neutral colors, just like in the showroom model unit of Four Season Riviera in Binondo, Manila drive just the right amount of attention to your home and allows you to add your own accent colors here and there. You’ll save on expensive paint jobs by strategizing which segments of your living space to highlight and which you can leave bare.

4. Experiment with open spaces.

Although your studio unit has no pre-set divisions, this does not mean you that you need to fill the void with clunky furniture. You can utilize every fixture and piece of furniture you own to achieve a clean and organized look.

A good example would be using a slim table in a bar-like set up which can help divide your kitchen from your living area through a more open concept.

You don’t need walls to define spaces. You can use partial wood and frosted glass partitions that double as shelves or different colored tiles and rugs to segment floor areas for different spaces. In this model unit at The Capital Towers in Quezon City, the bedroom area is defined by using tinted glass, while the dining and living area are fused into one to maximize floor space.

Actual photo of The Capital Towers model unit

5. Tastefully maximize storage space.

Keep knickknacks out of sight with built-in storage like the shoe cabinet, bedroom closets, and kitchen floor storage in The Seasons Residences in North Bonifacio Global City, Taguig.

Actual photo of The Season Residences model unit

Using beds with hidden compartments underneath for clothes and shoes, as well as hollow ottoman seats that double as storage boxes will help eliminate clutter around the house and keep your intimate belongings away from prying eyes as well.

By lessening the use of heavy furniture, you will be freeing-up breathing space in your stylish abode making it easier on the eyes and a delight to move around in.

Lastly, while your design options may be influenced by your current budget, never sacrifice personal tastes. Any luxurious house will feel like home when it reflects the personal style of its owner. To get your own feel of luxury, visit the nearest Federal Land property show room today or get a virtual tour at www.federalland.ph.