Tray Cute

Forgive me for my non-French pun.

Do you have an area in your house that just turns into a bunch of clutter despite your best efforts?  We do.  Truthfully, nearly every empty surface in our house collects clutter.  But the clutter on our coffee table has been particularly irritating.

Our coffee table clutter on a good day.

We use our coffee table a lot.  We stick our feet on it when we watch TV.  We're constantly putting drinks on it while we're hanging out in that room.  And quite often we eat dinner or snacks in there.  I wanted a way to corral the magazines and remotes so that they'd still be easy to access, and easy to move if we needed more coffee table surface area.  I know that trays are a great way to do this, but I had a hard time finding one I loved that wasn't super expensive.  Until Joss & Main solved my problem.

Put a bird on it, continued.

This cute little guy was the perfect amount of rustic and contrast for our industrial coffee table.  Plus it had birds on it.  At $19, I couldn't resist.  And wow, does it make a big difference.



The tray holds some magazines (the rest are stored on the lower level of the coffee table, waiting for me to devise a wrangling solution for them).  A small basket from World Market ($8!) holds our Xbox controllers and TV remote.  And a gifted orchid lends some height and beauty.

Because orchids and Xbox controllers go so well together.

Everything's low enough to stay out of sight lines from the couch to the TV or to the club chairs across the room.

Netflix compatible.

Naturally, I love the little birdies on either end of the tray.

Tweet, tweet!

And I've always loved orchids but never bought one.  My outdoor green thumb turns black indoors.  But since every single inspiration picture I have ever seen of trays corralling items on coffee tables includes some kind of flower arrangement, it seemed the perfect place for this guy to live.  I had to take a picture of it now, as I'll probably manage to kill it off soon.

Bee-youtiful.

That tray has been an improvement in the beauty AND functionality department.  I can't wait to get more organization going on below the coffee table for extra magazines and DVDs!