Today's project kind of came out of necessity, but then again, what organizing project doesn't?! Actually, this space was SO bad that it was blocking access to another space we use. Our house has a few "hall closets," and they're all in a sad state of being right now, but this one is (was) one of the worst. Mostly because, as I said earlier, the pile o' crap on the floor of said closet made it impossible to open the door to one of the (usable) attic spaces. I'm scared, but here are a couple of before pictures...
I KNOW, right?! Completely ridiculous. Okay, an explanation: The closet you're looking at is at the end of our upstairs hallway. I put a small bookcase in there to house boxes and git bags because I don't throw things away that can be re-used. ESPECIALLY if I might have to spend money on a similar item in the forseeable future. (I'd
much rather spend money on fun things like shoes or organizing supplies!!) Anyways, back to the explanation... The shelf is there on the left and in the picture on the right, you can see another door. That is the door (full-size, I might add) that leads to the attic space that we use for (more) storage. Notice the piles and piles of junk that are littering the floor in front of the door. There are several gift and shopping bags on the floor that have 865 smaller gift bags stuffed inside of them. There are also quite a few dozen flattened boxes (shirt boxes, etc) loosely grouped together and strewn about as well. Just trying to give you an idea of how truely horrific the situation was. Also, some errant Christmas ornament boxes and random decorations are stuffed in here as well. (Confession: It was actually worse than this: I moved some stuff out of the way before I remembered to take a picture.) But you get the idea! It was a very, very, disorganized, messy space, BEGGING for an overhaul. Well, my friends, an overhaul it received.
I am blessed to have help (a FABULOUS nanny we'll call "C") on Mondays and Wednesdays, so I could be a little more "by the seat of my pants" with the planning and execution of this project. AND it means I had a helper when my son permitted.
First things first, we pulled everything out of the closet and categorized it. Gift bags, boxes, Christmas decorations, old bows, tissue paper, etc. I took the gift bags and sorted them by occasion (Christmas, baby shower, wedding shower, non-descript), then by size. So, I had about 8 piles of gift bags on my floor. As the bags lay there in their neat little piles on the floor of our guest room, I realized that I was staring at the solution. I decided the best way for me to store them was in a way that I would see them, so I would use them. AND, that I could easily take down should my gift bag supply ever become depleted (not likely).
Here's what I used for this project:
- 10 large Command hooks
- 1 book end
- bookcase (which I already had)
I think what I should do now is go ahead and show you the final result.
Glorious, isn't it?! I have a Gift Bag store in my home!!! The picture on the left is what you see when you open the door. Each hook holds like gift bags. I actually put all of the Christmas gift bags in one because they don't really need their own hooks. I mean, they are only called upon once a year... But! The rest of the bags... Large baby shower bags and large non-descript bags up top, then medium baby shower, wedding, and small non-descript bags in the middle, then landscape baby shower bags and small baby shower bags and religious bags on the bottom! Basically, I had to separate my bags because they wouldn't all fit on their designated command hooks, so I had to create sub-sets of bags. I'm fine with it, really... ;) This is the view from the attic space:
See? So nice and neat... You can see that we turned the shelf so that it is now on the left wall (from the hallway view) instead of the back wall of the closet, which leaves more room for moving things in and out of the attic space. The boxes take up the majority of the space on the bookshelf, but I had enough room to (neatly) store cellophane goodie bags together in one box, and (neatly) folded tissue paper in another. I still have my quickie-tissue downstairs in the wrapping paper/butler's pantry, but my reserves are here! The ribbon from the broken down bows is all rolled up and stored in the basket on the top shelf, and the Christmas wrapping paper is sitting pretty next to the bookcase. You can also see the EXTRA-large bags that got a hook above the bookcase, just because everything needed a home!
So, that's what I did today while my son was sleeping!
