The Ottomans Came!

I think that’s about as to-the-point as I can be. 🙂 If you’re feeling lost, let me catch you up. Last week, Mitch and I followed our hearts (how very Disney of us) and ordered two gray storage ottomans for the family room. You can read the full post on that here. Well, on Friday of last week, THEY CAME!!!

Needless to say, we had those puppies out of their shipping boxes and into the family room quicker than you can say “ottoman”. From first glance, they looked nice and seemed to be a good size, even in relation to the rest of the furniture. However, we didn’t really have time to sit around and admire or critique them because just about a half an hour later, we headed off for the weekend to a Winter Retreat for our Youth Group. Alas, the admiration of our new toy was short lived.

BUT, since we’ve returned (Sunday), we’ve spent a fair amount of time going through the “do we like it?” process. And the verdict is in, folks. We like them! It’s still early in the game and we’ll be hanging onto the receipts and letting things play out just to make sure we’re sure, but for now, here’s the initial review of the product and how we think it’ll fit into our space.

First of all, we like the COLOR- the gray is a great compliment to those blue/gray walls and even brings out the hints of gray in our furniture. PS. If you’re shopping, the color in the online picture is very true to the color in person (they’re not on sale anymore, but Target seems to have discounts and sales often, so just be patient!). It’s nice to add another something to the room that’s not tan/yellow, as per our endeavors to stray away from the monochromatic situation we found ourselves in not too long ago (more about how we remedied that here).

Second, we like the SHAPE. After we bought them and set them up in our family room, we realized that nearly everything else in that space is a square or rectangle. Having the two large, square-ish ottomans that went with our original furniture set made the space feel very boxy and crammed. The circles definitely add another layer to this room and give all of the furniture some breathing room. Score.

And last, but definitely not least- we love the EXTRA STORAGE! I have to admit, I was a little unconvinced that we’d be getting a whole lot of storage space out of such small-scale pieces. When I tried to picture the dimensions of space described online, it just didn’t seem all that big. But even a little bit of extra storage was more than we had, which is why we just went ahead and bought them. In person, though, the inside of each ottoman is actually quite large! So much bigger than I originally expected!

I know it’s kind of hard to judge, so I fake-stowed a few things in there, to see if I could give you a better idea of the size we’re working with here. We’ve got a pair of sneakers (you could easily fit a whole slew of ’em in there), a few DVDs (you could pack in TONS of these), a jumbo-sized box of Goldfish (they easily fit inside and cleared the top), and our large colander (I was trying to demonstrate how wide they are).

We don’t know yet what will really end up in there, but it’s nice to have a couple more spots for concealed storage and I’ll update you as soon as we get our act together and fill them with something… of course. 🙂 For now, we’re just enjoying the view.

One of the best (and totally unexpected) things about our newbies is that they actually make the room feel larger. Not having the huge square ottomans sticking halfway out into the room has really made a big difference. Being a different shape and not as large, you can actually see around these guys so they don’t visually block off an entire portion of the space. Bam, larger room. Win, win, win. And win.

Is your family room (or any other room for that matter) sporting any storage ottomans? Here’s the real question: What do you store in them? We need some ideas!

Check back later this week for the follow up post to our Shelf Building from last week… styling those babies is next!