China Cabinet Updates

I spent a little time a couple weeks ago updating the china cabinet in the dining room. It's open to the living room and a general storage piece of furniture. Here is the before:

The books bothered me. I don't have another place to put them until I hang some Ikea Lack shelves in the 2nd bedroom. And I haven't hung the shelves because I'm not really sure how to hang things in plaster walls. Anyway here is the after:

I removed the books, changed out the brown/blue storage boxes for nice orange ones from Ikea and rearranged things. I think they look pretty good. The only problem is I'm not really thrilled with the color orange in my house. It looks good with the turquoise and lime green colors going on. I'm just not a big fan. It looks too ... something. Too contrasting maybe? I don't know. We'll see how long the orange lasts. I'm already looking for and pricing out turquoise boxes to switch things up. Oh and I use those boxes for storage of things like office supplies, small tools for use around the house and things like that. I think I actually have 1 empty. In a perfect world I wouldn't even have the boxes in the china cabinet. But I need the storage.

I'd also like to hang some pretty paper behind each shelf to lighten things up. I've been looking at paper on Chicshelfpaper.com. They have an option for having the paper custom cut for you. I've had trouble finding something 28" wide and this would take care of that. It's a little spendy at around $10 a piece of paper and I need 6 so this isn't going to be something that I do right away.

See all the gold dishes? Those are my vintage 1965 Franciscan Discovery Topaz dishes. I have more in the kitchen that I use everyday. I have them for sale on Craig's List. I've actually purchased white Crate and Barrel dishes to replace them. I've gotten tired of the gold color. It's hard to decorate around them. I also found it difficult to use napkins/placemats etc. Kind of a silly reason to replace dishes, but there it is. They are going to stay in the china cabinet protected until I sell them. Then I will rearrange again. With them gone the cabinet will look pretty sparse.

I wish, wish, wish, I didn't get rid of my vintage pottery collection a year or so ago when I was on my minimal kick. I knew in the back of my mind that it wouldn't last. I should have just boxed them up and stored them in the basement instead of donating them. Yes donating them. I didn't even sell them and get money for them. I wanted them out of my house so quickly that I just took them to Goodwill. Ugh!

What do you think of the difference? Do you like the orange or is it kind of meh for you?

Oh and just to keep things real, here is how my dining room table looks most of the time:

It is a dumping ground for all things entering the house. Or as Flylady likes to call it, a Hotspot. I pick it up a couple times a week (ok, really once a week if I'm lucky). I need to work on keeping it neater. With it like this the whole house just feels messy even though this is really the only spot that is bad. Everything is on that table.