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Sunday, November 13, 2011

One Thing Leads to Another

Call it nesting, call it early spring cleaning, call it whatever you want, but this weekend, I whipped three closets into shape.  As it turns out, each closet makeover is somewhat related to the one before it, and it has a little Pinterest Inspiration mixed in.  But I will get to that.

Closet #1: The Linen Closet. We looked at this closet last week when Andy installed this shelf in the bathroom.  By moving all the towels to the bathroom, we were left with this lovely expanse.


It had been stirring around in my mind that I really wanted to move the laundry hamper out of our closet for a number of reasons, but I had one top reason.  Each week, we would start out in good shape, as the basket was empty.  By the end of the week, the pile got very high and started to co-habitate with Andy's suits.  Not what I call a good time.


So I did some measuring, and luckily, it fit in the linen closet!  I may have done a happy dance in the hallway.  It was tight, but the door shuts, and I call that success!  



Closet #2: The Coat Closet.  This closet is right off our kitchen, at the top of our semi-flight of stairs from the living room.  Here's what it looked like before:


This closet holds some of our coats, our broom, and dog food, and in the storage cabinet on the floor holds all our scarves, hats, and gloves.  Things tended to fall out when I opened the door, and while I love being whacked over the head by the broom, I knew there was a better use of space here, and hopefully a way to fit the vacuum.  Here's where Pinterest comes in.  I saw this pin and though, wow, that could work!


A shoe holder for gloves, hats and scarves!  The only problem I could see was that we have a very narrow door.  That's just part of being in a house that was built in the 50's...the standard sizes of yesterday are not the standards of day.  So anyway, this door is 20 inches wide.  Almost every single one I saw was at least 22 inches wide.  No go.  But I'm nothing if not stubborn and determined (just ask Andy), so I kept the search up for a smaller one.  

Saturday morning, I was in Meijer, and I found it...19 inches wide and $7.99.  When I got to the register I realized I had a Catalina for 15% of General Merchandise.  Double score!  When I got home,  I may have not gotten halfway done putting groceries away before I dug in pulling everything out of the closet.  Along the way, I found one glove without a mate, a bag of left over trim pieces, and lots more dust bunnies than I care to share.  We were also able to add two coats to the donate pile.  Long story short, here's what we ended up with:


Top shelf: handheld vacuum and a basket with all the guys' baseball caps (with room to spare).


On the rack: coats, with four hangers to spare.

On the wall: the broom and swiffer.  The individual holders were from The Container Store, and we've had them a while.  I installed these myself.  You can call me Mrs. Handy Andy.


On the floor: steam mop (in the back), vacuum, and dog food.


On the door: gloves, winter hats, scarves, umbrellas, hand-vac parts, iPod arm band, etc...


Closet #3: The Master Bedroom Closet.  When we moved the hamper to the linen closet, we were left with a nice expanse for more organization.  My target to whip into shape?  Our shoes.  They formerly lived under the bottom rack of clothes.


While I had already moved them out before taking this picture, this is pretty much what it looked like before, aside from a random toe or heel peeking out.  That was super fun in the mornings when I needed to find a specific pair of shoes.  Digging around, under the clothes, on my hands and knees, not to mention more dust bunnies.  Good times.  

Well, we just so happened to have a plastic shelving unit left over from the coat closet.  I love using what we have on hand for creative solutions, so I packed that baby full of shoes and put it in the place of the hamper.


The only ones that didn't fit were Andy's dress shoes, so those go on top for easy access.   That small change made all the difference in the closet.  It actually feels bigger in there, and we can see our shoes!

The verdict on all three overhauls?  Andy said to each one of them, oh yeah, that's a good idea.  That, my friends, is success in my book.  

So did anyone else do some organizing this weekend?  Oh, you wanted to know about the nursery dresser?  Well, lets just say while I still love her, but I don't like her very much right now.  I'll explain in a future post...

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