Style your Locker 3 ways - with The Calm and The Chaos
We'd like to introduce you to Alina...
We discovered Alina through her instagram account @thecalmandthechaos and instantly felt joyful and overwhelmed with admiration in equal measure! Not only does her home encapsulate the phrase "pop of colour", it also shines with love and playfulness while remaining a practical space for her 7 children to grow up in. We challenged this busy mama to style her Shorty in Mustard in three ways and love what she's done with it!
Tell us a little about you…
Hola! I’m Alina and I’m a large family mum to seven children. We live in sunny rural Queensland and enjoy every moment here. I grew up by the beach in north Queensland in a house that my Mum loved to decorate in colour. Now I use colour whenever I can and especially around the house to give us all an extra boost.
You have seven kids, that’s a lot of stuff to keep tidy, how do you stay on top of it all?
As you can imagine, our house is chaos most of the time. I have kids, clothes and lunchboxes here, there and everywhere. It’s really too hard to stay on top of all of it, so I don’t. We lie somewhere in the middle of it all, some things are done marvellously, while others need a lot of work. I have systems in place to make it easier, like our command centre shown in look 2 and lots of storage. It’s functional, fun and organised enough to make it through the weeks.
Obviously a house full of children is hard work but what’s the best bit about being a Mumma?
The hugs, the laughs, watching them grow into beautiful human beings who are changing the world. I love getting creative with them. That’s one of my favourite parts, watching their imagination have no limits. My heart is filled with love.
Your house is such a burst of colour, it’s hard not to smile when you look at your rainbow Instagram feed! What do you love about having such a colourful home?
Thank you! That’s definitely one of my intentions, to make people smile. I love our colourful home because it has little bits of love scattered all through it. It shows our originality, creativity and personality, totally an expression of who we are. It helps create calm spaces for us to chill, inspirational spaces for us to dream and happy spaces to be a family in. Some would probably say chaotic, bold, in your face, which I totally agree with because you know, that’s pretty much us.
Look 1
My original idea was to incorporate The Shorty locker into my bedroom with my new hand painted tropical leaf mural. Colour is my bomb man! I’m a passionate, slightly crazy, chaotic, bold and loving chick and I needed a bedroom that I felt at home in, comfort in my own way. I love the look of a locker as a bedside table and it has the added bonus of lockable storage. Funky and functional. It really helps create the chilled eclectic aesthetic I had in mind when planning the room.
The locker is the perfect accessory in this space because of its cool vibe, functionality and colour. It gels with the mood I was intending and perfect for holding my cuppa and magazine piles for lazy Sundays. Any piece that adds extra storage to a room is a must for me.
Look 2
The command centre is the central organisation space in our home. It holds everything we need to help run our lives smoothly. Uniforms, school bags, shoes, accessories, lunch boxes, notes, calendars, sporting gear, to do lists, menu plans… you name it.
The locker is awesome in this space because it helps contain and separate all our gear required for the day. It can hold, our clothes, our shoes, lunch boxes, and drink bottles for the day. Our kids swim at least 3 times a week, even in Winter, and it’s perfect for storing their gear ready to grab when we need it. The locker has 2 interchangeable shelves which means we can change the storage capacity to any way we like. I’m not going to lie, it also looks super cool!
Look 3
This is one of my favourite spaces of our home (okay, so I have a lot of favourites). It’s at our creation station… aka the kids’ desk. This is a special place to me because the kids have so much fun here, creating, crafting, colouring, chatting. It holds all the special things they’ve made or intend to make.
The locker fits perfectly beneath the desk in this space and is awesome at storing all our art and craft products. Its depth means it is able to hold a lot of stuff which is great because we love to hoard everything crafty.
Follow Alina at @thecalmandthechaos
