Household Organization ahoy!

What is this monstrosity you ask? Well, this was my walk in closet in the extra bedroom/reading room in my house. It was clean at one point but then the hub had to take over the office closet with business stuff and all of the brand new storage stuff I SPECIFICALLY bought for that closet had to get crammed into the extra closet. Everything was shoved in and you can see the result, but I took care of that and more! Picture heavy post after the jump!


Let us take a look at this closet closer up (the floor is lined with bags of clothing for the next Geek Girl Clothing Swap!

This is the right hand side of the closet. We have an exercise ball, bin of child hood memories, office storage, electronic storage, empty bins and empty boxes. Plus a bag of pillows and box of photos.

On the left hand side of the closet are my dresses, my bedroom closet is double rodded on both sides so there is no place to hang dresses which is why they have been relegated to this closet. I have a 4ft Nutcracker, wrapping paper, biking and running stuff, the Mom bin, paper towels, and bin of kid clothing. Plus our small freezer chest (we buy veggies and meat in bulk and freeze things till we need them).

So first thing I did was drag out everything from the closet and the shelves, which pretty much filled up the room (ugh!).  I tried on all of my dresses and started my piles.

 We have the Geek Girl Clothing Swap Pile...Geek Girls should be excited I am getting rid of some amazing things.

 Take to school pile, random art supplies and books that I can make use of in my classroom.

 The Garage Sale and Bookman's Entertainment Exchange Pile.

Trash Pile, broken things and empty packages.

As you can see this was a lot of sorting. Then I had to sort and rearrange everything I was keeping. The biggest plus out of getting rid of STUFF was that I had emptied out all of the canvas square bins I had bought from Target and they fit wonderfully on the shelves, so I moved stuff from the plastic bins to the canvas bins.

Empty Bins!

I used those bins to house the clothes and sale stuff in my shed outside. So they are still pretty useful.

So after a few hours of nitty gritty work I was left with almost perfection (perfection would be if Evan let me get a closet from The Container Store.

Oh my gosh, nothing is falling over!

 The right side of my closet, I moved the dresses toward the front so I could get to them easier and actually wear them (and they are in color order) and you can see all the wonderful canvas bins. The plastic one has my baby clothing in it, I'm going to get all of that made into a quilt.

 And the left side! I have empty shelf space! My goal is to keep it empty. I have my running stuff up there and the office supply storage was completely redone and  can actually find pens and stamps now.

It's beautiful and I love that closet now. But organizing that closet got me on a closet bender...

 Here is my entryway closet. Coats are everywhere, purses are falling down and my vacuum is crammed in there. There s also a back massage thing that goes in a chair and a couple games up there.

So I took the games and back massager and moved them into the newly cleaned walk-in closet (since I had room) and hung my coats up with the dresses. I had to throw away one of Evan's hoodies cause the zipper was busted (BUSTED) and wasn't worth repairing, then I straightened up my purses and umbrellas.

Here is my after! Only Evan's Coats and sweaters are hanging in this closet. The vacuum actually fits, I can find my umbrellas, The purse I'm currently using can be hung up and the rest of my bags are lined up neatly if I want to switch. This works so much better now.

I've also done several other organizing things around the house. I reorganized the dog area (food, treats, and stuff) so it all fits in the designated cupboard. I cleaned out the shoe thing by the entry way so I can start putting the shoes I wear most often to work in it. I cleaned out my dresser and nightstand. I bought some containers and organized all of my hair stuff (brushes, rubberbands, clips, and headbands), lotions, and make-up so it's not falling out of the cupboard when I open it and I can actually find everything. Then I organized my half of the bedroom closet (In ROY G BIV order!) and my scarves. Then I organized the drawers in my office so I could fit school planning stuff in there. I even cleaned out my bookshelf again and got rid of some books too because I had some that just wouldn't fit how I have my shelves. Then I went through all of my magazines and put a bunch in the take to school pile for collages.

I have been a busy bee and I'm not close to being done. School is about to start and if I want to actually have time to work on the comic, exercise, cook healthy meals, and teach my new curriculum, and keep a school blog (seriously! We are supposed to have one on our website this year!)  then I need my spaces to be cleaned and organized or everything will just go to pot. It's always worse at the beginning of the school year too, I just get so tired after work. It'll be good to have things organized in a way that will help me.

So I hope I haven't bored you all to tears. I love having clean and organized things and I like talking about it.