Two weeks down, two to go!
For those of you who missed last week’s post, Corey and I have issued a challenge. Each week during the month of February, we’ll be tackling one area of our home that is in desperate need of organization, and we’ll come back here to share what we accomplished – and we’re hoping you’ll do the same. I’ve seen a few posts popping up here and there from readers who are taking us up on the challenge, and it’s been a blast to see what you’ve done in your homes! I’ll be doing a big roundup post at the end of the month that shows off what everyone did, so if you’re playing along be sure to email me your photos (or blog links) at [email protected] so I can include you. And don’t worry if you don’t stick it out for the whole month – even one week of organizing is better than nothing!
And now that we’re all caught up, let’s get to this week’s project.
After taking on such a huge amount of organizing last week, Corey and I decided we wanted to do something a little less intimidating this week. Thankfully, we had three small closets that were crying out for some help – and that were driving me absolutely insane every time I needed something from them.
Our office closet, which technically we cheated on and cleaned last week while we were already in there.
Our guest room closet. And, yes, that is an unpacked box you see sitting in the bottom of the closet. We’ve only lived here for six months now – it’s totally normal to still have unpacked boxes, right?
Let’s start with the office closet – we went ahead and organized it last week while we were doing the rest of the office, but I figured I’d save the photos for today.
Basically, we just tossed our small bookcase in here and put all of the books we didn’t want sitting in the room on it. It keeps the visual clutter in the room to a minimum, which I love, and keeps all of our books easy to access.
We also moved some stuff around to other areas of the house – like moving our luggage down to the garage and some of the craft stuff and fabric into the guest room closet. Since we don’t have kids, these closets are all about storage, so we figured our best plan was to have a designated “job” for each closet – this is the game and book closet (as well as the “random cords and computer gadgets that we can’t throw away but don’t have a place for” closet).
The last one we tackled, which was our big job for this week, was the guest room closet. We started off by emptying out the whole thing, so we could start with a blank slate.
Or course, once we had the closet emptied out, the room looked like this:
Lovely. We quickly decided that this closet was going to be dubbed the “craft closet,” so we needed to find another place for all of the extra linens and pillows. Luckily, we were able to get rid of a giant portion of the stuff that was in here (does anyone really need 10 extra pillows for guests? Because we had at least that many) and what we decided to keep fit easily in the linen closet in our guest bathroom.
Up until this weekend, I had absolutely zero organization system for my craft supplies. I had a bag. Full of crap. So, I promptly dumped it out on the floor in order to force myself to actually do something about it.
After grabbing some plastic drawers that were hanging out in the garage, we finally managed to get my craft stuff organized and easy to access.
And just like that, our closet looked a lot less crazy.
I can’t even tell you how much of an improvement it is to have these closets organized. I’m a lot more likely to actually DO some crafting now that I can access my supplies easily, and I won’t have to drive myself slowly insane every time I need something from one of these closets.
An added bonus is that now I can actually close our guest room closet door. That’s always nice.
Oh, and just to keep you updated on how things are looking in the guest room, we added our old yellow chair to the desk so we can actually use it, and I’m a pretty big fan of how it fits into the room. We aren’t going to be keeping yellow accents in there long-term, but it’s a fun pop of color until we figure out what else we want to use.
And with that, we’re one step closer to having an organized home!
What did you organize this week?
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Danish says
Good for you! It is always soloooo nice to go through a big closer like that, you forget half the stuff you shoved in there & just going through it is a tackle 🙂
Maria says
Looks so great! The shelves in the closet is genius. I tackled craft supplies this week, too :).
Maddie says
Aren’t closets just the worst? They seem to collect so much stuff in so little time!
I think we have the exact same black shelf in our guest room closet. A little bit of storage makes such a big difference!
Morgan says
You guys are doing great with getting organized! It’s awesome how just tackling the small things, like closets, can make you feel so tidy and organized!
Natalie says
I love that you have A Series of Unfortunate Events. Those are some of my favorite books.
I have the organizing itch, and I’m hoping to implement it when I get back to Austin. Wish me luck!
Brooke says
I’ve just dipped my toes into changing my hall closet into a craft space. So far I’ve just emptied and painted it, but maybe I’ll get to a little construction today!
Amanda says
Awesome – can’t wait to see it! 🙂
Allie says
Ugh, I really need to organize our guest bedroom closet too. The room serves as (obviously) a guest room, my home office, and storage for all our office and crafting supplies, as well as gift wrapping stuff and other miscellaneous stuff we didn’t have a place for. The room itself doesn’t look so bad, but that doesn’t mean it’s organized! Plus even though we’ve been married almost nine months, we still have two separate organization apparatuses for our individual office supplies. I don’t know why I haven’t fixed that yet.
Lyndsey says
Good work!! I am sad I totally forgot about this challenge! I was going to do some organizing this weekend but it just slipped my mind. I am totally going to get on the wagon here though… any day now… really….. haha.
Also, don’t feel badly about the boxes! We moved into our house in January 2010 and it was New Years Eve 2010 when we finally unpacked the last of the boxes. A full 11 months later. haha. Also, I may or may not have boxes of wedding stuff from now almost a year ago sitting in our office. Oy.
Amanda says
It’s not too late to join in! 🙂 And um, yeah some of the stuff that was in the guest room closet was wedding stuff, and ours was over a year ago!
Mandy says
I’m loving your craft closet!! I hope it inspires you to do some super cool stuff!
Corinne says
WOW those closets look amazing! I think giving each one a “job” was a really great idea and will definitely help you guys stay organized! I like the idea of putting a bookshelf in a closet too and think I just may have to steal that for my office to create some more space in that skinny little room. Thankfully my closet in there is huge and I can probably fit both in there! This post I think has inspired me to finally start organizing like I said I would last week (oops).
PS – it’s COMPLETELY normal to not be 100% unpacked yet. My parents moved into their house over six years ago and are still not unpacked. I moved into my house a year and a half ago and have a TON of boxes yet to be unpacked…hence the office organizing. Photographic evidence is on my blog!
Amanda says
I love having the bookcase in there! It keeps me organized without having to have all of the clutter in the room! And I’m relieved to hear we aren’t the only unpacking slackers! I think we’re down to just one box now!
Lauren says
Great job on keeping up with the organizing! The guestroom closet in our old apartment became a great place to keep all of the wedding items we were working on back in the day but was so disorganized that I picked up some plastic tubs to try and keep things in order.
Sandi says
I love the Sunbonnet Sue quilt on the guest night stand! Of course.