If you are anything like me, you hate cords. Like, REALLY hate them. They clutter the look of a space and turn what could be a quiet, pretty vignette into a tangled mess. But sometimes the placement of outlets makes visible cordage an unavoidable necessity. You’ve seen me tackle one problem area here (back in the early days of DG-DIY and bad photography skills), by taping the cord string along the back of a table’s leg to mask it. That one worked like a charm, but we had one other area that couldn’t be helped without some rewiring and drywall patching.
Until we feel brave enough to do some permanent rearranging with the outlet placements, our current television/cable outlet situation in the living room was giving me a massive headache.
I had managed to hide the mess of cables behind the record shelf, but those outlet plates were still screaming for attention.
My temporary solution for the issue was to stack books in front of them – About 100 pounds of books, to be exact. I took a leisurely stroll through the house one afternoon, rounding up all of the biggest and heaviest art books that I owned. I had a bunch and they stacked up nicely (literally and figuratively), but there was still something about it that didn’t look quite right.
I still don’t know how West Elm makes their stacks of art books look so unintentional and home-y…
Not only was the look a bit off, but you could still catch a glimpse of the outlets behind the spines, making the purpose of the arrangement painfully obvious. So I redistributed the stack back into the bookshelves throughout the house and started back at square one. My dream was to find some kind of vintage laundry basket, something tall but relatively thin, to put in front of the outlets. Something like that would serve double duty, covering the nasty imperfection and also acting as throw blanket storage.
As a back up, I also kept my eye out for things like large vessels or a vintage speaker with a woven front ala the ’60s or ’70s – I figured both could work in the event that my laundry basket idea (a) took too long to come to fruition, or (2) failed completely.
Fast forward about a month and a half and a miracle occurred. A family friend (who also happens to have been our fabulous wedding planner) hosted a yard sale at her house – As an event planner, and this being only a few weeks before our wedding, I decided we’d go check out what she was offering in case any of it could be useful at our event. Not only did we find tons of fun stuff for the reception, but we also stumbled upon the perfect solution for my “ugly outlet situation.”
Is that hamper not exactly what I had described in my vision??? In fact, I think it’s even better than perfect – I couldn’t have hoped for a vintage style laundry basket with more style and character. Check out that neat cross weave in the wicker and the buckled belt closure! And just as I’d longed for, it has a great big opening for blankets galore!!
I try to limit my use of exclamation points on this blog, but this find definitely deserves a few…It’s one of those times when patience and waiting for just the right piece really does pay off.
Cbeck out the new yard-saled hamper below taking care of our ugly outlet situation in style. You may also notice a furniture shift…I decided to switch things up in the living room, turning the sofa at an angle and pulling our new yellow chair out into the open edge of the space. I think it opens the room to more flow and certainly better conversation. Seems far more welcoming to me.
Here’s the photo of it again before rearranging, so that you don’t need to scroll back up to the top for reference/comparison.
…And now again with the new arrangement:
So what do you think? Do you guys have any other creative solutions for hiding ugly cords and outlets? I could still use all the help I can get…
Have a great weekend!
