Organizing the Closet

Posted by: Paulette

I don't have any designer magazine worthy pictures to show you for this project. Just a well organized closet. There are a few things I learned along the way while doing this project. The first one is to wear shoes while moving furniture! 
 Here's my before shots:

All of my sewing and crafting stuff are kept in this closet. Those shelves are pretty well organized. But if you look to the top shelf, you can see stuff just crammed up there, and sometimes ready to topple.

 Unfortunately, this is where we keep stuff that we don't want the kids to get into. It gets thrown up there, and sometimes forgotten. That pile of backpacks on the right are supposed to be the start of emergency 72 hour kits. There was cans of tuna in there from 2006. Eeeew. They need to go somewhere else. And they need to be filled with stuff that will be needed in an emergency, and the food rotated regularly.

 Waaaay too many clothes! I live in Arizona. We basically have two seasons here; hot and cool. It something like Spring, Summer, Spring, Summer. So my off season clothes don't go into storage. And I've lost 50 lbs and regained 20. So I have sizes 12, 14, and 16. I probably won't be fitting into the 12's anytime soon, so those clothes have to go, as do anything that I'm really not that crazy about.

 I' tired of crawling all over the floor to find my shoes. They were supposed to go here:

 This is way in the back of the closet. It's dark and difficult to get to. 
After:

Lesser used things that were in my desk, are now in these baskets. One holds cords for all of our electronics, and the other DVRs and disks.

 One basket holds sweaters. The other holds belts and scarves. The used to be tucked around my room. Now they have their own space in the closet where they belong.

 Gross, right? This is what I meant by wear shoes while moving furniture. I got this great idea to use a bookshelf I had sitting in the garage to put our shoes in. Everything was fine until I tipped it forward just a bit and the shelves came out and broke my toe.

 It was a great idea, though. I'm not going for pretty here. Just functional. Maybe later, I can redecorate the closet. (yeah right!)

 I got rid of 1 1/2 garbage bags full of clothes. Things that hardly ever get pulled out of the closet were put into the small cubby holes I showed earlier, and the back of the closet. There's a filing cabinet in there too, which didn't show up in pictures. I had 9 years worth of stuff to go through and throw out, and I found some stuff tucked behind that, that I'd forgotten about that is going to Goodwill. 
There's also a new box of books that I was able to fit in there. I've cleared off a shelf on the bookshelf in my bedroom for a possible DVD player. I was given a flat screen TV last month. 

The backpacks are in one of our pantries. Yes I have two pantries. During the summer I like to can fruit, so I made the linen closet into a pantry.