I feel like everyone has some space in their house that could earn the title of the “great accumulator”. Whether it be a drawer, an entire room, a purse, a car, (I could go on for days, not like I know from experience at all) or in our case, a closet. And if you don’t and you’re the most organized person in the world then you rock, and please tell me where you found that tree that extra hours in the day grows on.
Without having a basement for storage we have to get crafty with the office closet and garage. When we moved in they were all neat and organized, but as we have accumulated more and more things, they’ve gotten wildly out of control. Exhibit A.
No shame today apparently. So much so, that here’s a close up.
Things just got real.
This closet has the following: Extra blankets, extra comforters, fabric, indoor pillows, outdoor pillows, vases & lamps, unused picture frames, Christmas decor including a Christmas tree, clothes to donate and full sized luggage. Quite impressive if I do say so myself, but not impressive enough to keep rocking it. Those doors were the bandaid to our mess, and it was time to rip it off. I’m here all night folks.
After emptying everything out and sorting it into piles I noticed that the most unruly of the bunch were pillows and fabric. Both hard to store. In an ideal world I would have gone out and installed shelving or some sort of drawered system, but since we’re renters, we have to work with what we’ve got. In order to decide what stayed and went we played a series of einy meany miney mo, yelled random basket ball players names while dunking them in the trash, closed our eyes and pointed, and played spin the empty wine bottle to find a winner games. All of which are highly recommended.
For the pillows, I took the big blue bags from IKEA and one smaller one from Pink and packed in my pillows and seat cushions & blankets. I didn’t have any S hooks on hand, so regular old hangers did the trick!
I wanted to keep light things like the pillows and fabric elevated because they a) take up a lot of room and b) are light enough to do so.
For my fabric I found a set of felted (awesome so the material doesn’t slip off) pant-hanging hangers at Marshalls for less than $10.
It took all of 10 seconds to hang all of the fabric on them and now all of my things are easily seen and easily accessed. The small scraps stay in a drawer in my Ikea hacked unit and the large ones now have their new home here. Clearly a big change from before!
Oh and ps… that wooden rod (typical of older rentals) was MAJORLY sagging and I was a bit worried it would break from the weight. Enter the amazing Matt, who simply flipped it 180 degrees so it flexed the other way. After the added weight, I actually have a straight hanging rod now! Genius. I should date him.
As for the Christmas decor/picture frames/vases/lamps/unused decor, those got majorly sorted through using both logic and the games above, and the winners got put back up neatly on the top shelf.
Now they can actually be seen and used should the time come! The Christmas tree that had been living up in this spot got booted to the garage, but won’t be there for too long of course!
The bottom of the closet now neatly shows my luggage, the Ikea craft drawers and my wrapping papers & bags. How is it already the end of November? Christmas is a-creepin up.
I’m so happy to have my wrapping things all out and ready instead of having to search through that mess to find a bag that’s most likely crinkled and/or ripped.
Since the wrapping paper wasn’t being cooperative, a simple ribbon was tied around all of them to keep them from rolling everywhere and unwrapping.
Funny how one small space can get so out of control. I’m so happy we’re all organized and hope those tricks can be used for other renters with storage problems : )
One last look…
Drops mic…
Prost!
-J&P
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