Girls' Closet Redo

Baby Girl #2 (or The Bean, as I'm calling her, as she doesn't have a name yet) is due to arrive in about 7 weeks, and I've been working hard to prepare for her arrival! Since her and C will be sharing a room, I knew the room needed some major reorganization. So far, I've made great progress, though there are still a few things that need to be addressed. The closet was by far the biggest issue, so I tackled that first.

Here's a "before" shot so you can see what I was working with.

 C insisted on being in the picture, haha. Here's a shot without her cuteness in the way:

 Yikes. Its hard to believe that last August I thought this closet was organized. Of course, it really was, compared to how it started out! I knew this closet needed to hold clothes for 2 kids, though, so it needed some major work. After wracking my brain for a while, I decided on a completely new closet system. I went to Lowe's last Friday and purchased a Homefree system, which had great reviews and seemed super simple to install. I anticipated being able to makeover this closet for around $100.

Well, of course, I spent well over $100 at Lowe's. I used a cool feature on their website to help me figure out which kit to buy, and how much "extra" stuff I'd need. I was pretty shocked at the register when my total was almost $180. But I had a feeling I had purchased too many "extras," and I knew they could easily be returned.

Last Saturday afternoon, me and C completely emptied out the closet. Again. Why am I always amazed at how much STUFF this little space holds?! I should have taken a picture of the room with everything in it, but that was scary.

Luckily, almost half of the clutter in there was immediately able to removed from the house completely. All those Rubbermaid containers and the space bags went out to the shop. Finally!

Once I got everything out of the way, I tackled removing that shelf. Pesky thing! Apparently, everything for mobile homes is way different than things for regular homes. (Our house is a double wide trailer.) I had a time getting that shelf out, and ultimately, my husband had to come inside and do it for me! Most of the problem was with the drill. I just had issues with it. Plus, I  kept having to climb up and down a step ladder to reach everything...not so good when you're heavily pregnant. Anyway, DH got it out in a jiffy, then went back outside to finish mowing the grass.

So I proceeded with the installation of the new closet system. I laid out all the pieces in the box...and immediately felt overwhelmed!

 The instructions were pretty clear, though, so I got right to work. Naturally, it wasn't quite as easy as I thought. Again, I had drill issues. And climbing up and down that dang ladder was killing my hip. I was getting so frustrated. At one point, C ran outside and told her daddy that he HAD to come in and help Mama cause she was struggling! lol

I eventually decided to give up. Maybe if I hadn't been 8 months pregnant this would have been easier for me. But it just wasn't happening.

DH was exhausted that evening from a very busy day, but I was insistent that this closet get installed before C's bedtime. I mean, her clothes were everywhere, and now I had nowhere to put them! He seemed to understand my urgency and frustration, though, and got to work on it. (Its so funny to me how pregnancy makes me get things on my mind and have to get them done RIGHT NOW!!)

The closet system is not quite as simple to install as the instructions make you think. You have to do a ton of measuring and planning in advance. The online tool I had used to help me create the optimal arrangement of shelving was WAY off, even though I used the measurements of the space. I realized after DH had installed the 2 vertical bars that this arrangement that I had come up with online would not be ideal for the space, after all. But at that point, we were both so tired and frustrated that I just let it go. I knew I could make it work.

Here's what we ended up with:

 Technically, I have 3 rods for hanging clothes now. However, the space between the top rod and the middle is not really enough to hang anything, not even newborn clothes. But if we put the middle rod down any further, it would become useless for hanging clothes. As it is now, at least we can use half of the top rod. The bottom shelf and rod are as low as they can possibly go. I wouldn't want them any lower, anyway, or C's clothes will hit the floor. I may eventually go back and make the top shelf and rod a little higher. I'll lose some of the storage space on that shelf, but I think I can live with that.

 I'm sure this space will continue to evolve over time. That is one good thing about this closet system, you can easily move the shelves around to suit your needs.

So here's how it looks now, after everything was put back in:

The top shelf is for stuff that we rarely use or won't use for a while. The middle shelf holds a few bags that we use quite often, and the shopping car cover (which I used a lot with C, so I'm sure it'll get used again soon with The Bean). On that top rod are C's winter/fall clothes that she'll be able to wear again this fall and winter. Most of her cool season clothes are in storage now, but there were a few things I think she'll be able to wear again. (We also have a ton of clothes for those seasons stored in the wardrobe. That is a project to tackle another time, though!)

On the middle rod I've hung newborn stuff. You can see that even though those outfits are tiny, they still take up every bit of that hanging space. Which means it won't be long before that rod won't be useful for the baby's clothes. Which means I'll have to adjust things in here. Looking at these pictures now, I'm thinking maybe get rid of the 2nd shelf altogether, and move the top shelf down a bit. That way, I'd have 2 full rods to use for hanging clothes, and plenty of space up top for storage.

On the right side of the middle shelf I have all C's bottoms: long pants, shorts, and skirts. I originally wanted to have a slide out drawer to hold all that stuff, but we just couldn't make it work in the space. I'd like to have a basket or something, but for now this is working just fine. Its been almost a week, and I haven't had any problems accessing her bottoms every morning when picking out her clothes for the day.

Finally, the bottom rod holds all of C's current clothes. Yes, she definitely has way too many! But this is ALL of her clothes. All of her tops are hung up, except for her PJs.

So far, I'm pretty happy with the system. Its very organized and is easy to use. C loves it, too.

Oh, for right now I've got that hanging shelf hanging on the inside of the closet door:

Its really nice to have that extra storage (its holding all of C's current and next season shoes, her dance clothes, and some baby blankets), but it gets in the way when I open the door. That might be because of my huge belly, though. I will probably eventually replace it with someone more compact that doesn't stick out quite as far, or have DH install it on one of the side walls of the closet.

DH is also going to build a few small shelves for the side walls. He'll have to custom build them, since we only have 8-9" of space to work with depth-wise, but it'll be great to have more storage. I'm really trying hard to make the most of this space!!

Since I moved all C's bottoms to the closet, I freed up one and 1/2 drawers in the dresser. I intend on using one drawer for onesies and bottoms for the baby. This weekend, I plan to tackle the dresser and completely redo it, though. I need more space for diapers once I add the newborn stuff to the mix. So I'll be back soon with an update on that!

Closet Organization

I haven't done an organizing post in a while! That's because not much organizing has taken place in my house lately...whoops. I have tons of projects I want to take on, but limited funds and time makes it difficult. Plus, my husband has been talking about some major renovations to the house at some point in the near future, so I feel like I can't justify spending money on little things that are not absolute necessities. (Third world problems, much?)

Anyway, my daughter's closet has been LONG overdue for some help. Around this time last year, I bought a bunch of space bags and packed up all her baby clothes in them. (I really hope we put those bags in the shop, cause now I can't find them - oops). For about a month, we were organized. The problem with children is, though, that they just keep growing and outgrowing clothes! Every time I think I've got her clothes sorted so that only what fits is hanging up and in her drawers, she shoots up a size. So its a never ending battle.

My tactic for dealing with said clothes for the past year has been to just pile them in the bottom of C's closet. (I don't want to get rid of anything in case we ever have another girl baby.) At first, I had neat little stacks, just waiting to be stuffed into space bags or Rubbermaid containers. Over time, though, the piles got way out of control. It got to the point where I was ashamed to let anyone see her closet. Seriously. It was bad. Don't believe me? See for yourself:

anyone know why I randomly get dark spots on my pictures like this?? that's not a shadow!

 

See? I wasn't lyin! Embarrassing.

Last Friday I had finally had ENOUGH! I went to Target on my lunch break and noticed that they had some nice Rubbermaid containers for a good price. I think they were cheaper cause they were an ugly brown/beige color. But who cares about color? They will eventually be moved into our shop, so I am not concerned at all with how they look. I got 3 of them, and it turned out to be just enough (for right now).

When I got home from work, me and C completely emptied her closet. I was amazed at how much I had stuffed in there. It took over her entire room. For serious, you couldn't see the floor anymore (and C has a pretty big room). DH walked in at one point and his jaw dropped, haha. I told him to just turn around and pretend he hadn't seen anything! hehe

I found stuff I had completely forgotten about in that closet. C was thrilled to find new things to play with (as if she doesn't have a zillion toys already!). Once I got everything out of the closet and got it vacuumed, I sorted all the clothes and shoes (and oh boy, I clearly have a shoe obsession for my child...) by size. After a while, C got bored and asked if she could play in her crib. I don't know why she gets such a kick out of being in there when she's not sleeping, but whatever.

The whole ordeal took me over 2 hours, but it was well worth it! I have a pretty big pile of trash waiting to go to the dump - mostly damaged shoe boxes and bags. I found a bag of ancient cloth diapers that someone gave me a few years ago. I got them mainly to see what I thought about the whole cloth thing, but I quickly realized that these were not usable anymore. Completely worn out. Why was I holding on to them??? Hello, pack rat.

After all that work, I was left with this:

I know it doesn't really look much better to most people. There's still a ton of clothes in this closet. But now its all organized and neat! The 3 containers and those space bags will eventually put into the shop (as soon as DH makes some room out there), so the closet will have more room after that. I debated on whether I should keep that hanging organizer or not. The only thing I have stored in there now are shoes that C currently wears and baby blankets (that we no longer use, but I just don't have another place for them right now). I might see if DH can help me figure out how to hang that thing on the side of her closet. There's plenty of room, and that way I could still use it and have more space for hanging clothes.

I follow a lot of blogs, and I keep seeing posts on organized children's closets. And in those closets are like 8 outfits. With exactly an inch between each hanger. And then at the bottom of the closet is a stockpile of diapers and wipes. And that's it. What are those children wearing every day??! If C had so few clothes, I'd be washing every single day. Honestly, she has way too many clothes, but they're almost all given to me, and I don't turn down free stuff! And I like havin options for what to let her wear every day.

C has one dresser in her room, which is also used as a changing table. It has 3 drawers and 2 shelves (which are covered by a door). The shelves store cloth diapers (she's still in them at night). The top drawer holds panties and socks and hair ties; the middle drawer holds shorts and skirts; and the bottom drawer holds long pants and pajamas. And all the drawers are completely stuffed. So everything else gets hung in her closet. Maybe other mothers fold all their children's clothes??

Also in C's room is an antique cedar wardrobe and a cedar chest. The chest holds a gazillion blankets and quilts. It really needs to be gone through, but I just don't know where else to store that stuff. And the wardrobe is stuffed full of clothes for the next season. My mother and I buy stuff when its on sale, so we've been getting C some pretty cheap fall and winter clothes. Plus a family I know gave me a ton of clothes that C will be able to wear this winter.

I can't decide if I really hope we have another girl or not. If we do, we'll have plenty of clothes for her. If we have a boy next, we'll have to start all over. If C ends up being an only child, there's no need in keepin all this stuff! But how do you know?

So that's one more thing I can cross off my list. I still like opening up the door to C's closet and just smiling at how much better it looks! I'm a nerd like that. ( :


While cleaning out the closet, I found the t-ball stand that goes with a set C's had since she was a newborn. She's been playing with the super soft bat and balls (they're made for toddlers), but I had put the stand away for later, and then forgot about it. I had to explain to C what it was, but she immediately wanted to go outside and play ball. Then I found her tutu, and she said, "Mama, I want to wear my tutu and play ball!" So when the closet was finished, that's exactly what we did. I tied that tutu around her waist and we headed outside for some ball time. Man, I love my kid! ( :

Weekend Projects

Since we were stuck inside most of the weekend due to the blizzard (haha), DH and I ended up being pretty productive. Unfortunately, I didn't get any pics of our progress. But we're not actually done with anything, anyway - well, I'm not done. I think DH finished his big project.

He was working on his desk in the office. It was a mess. Not as bad as mine (which I'll get to in a minute), but considering he actually works at his desk, it was pretty bad. He had a ton of papers to file. He spent several hours yesterday getting that done, and his desk looks nice now!

DH also decided to clean up the pantry a bit. Back in August, I did a lot of organizing in the pantry and the food cabinets in the kitchen. The cabinets have actually stayed pretty similar to how they ended up in August. I'm not happy with then because we have so many canned goods and its hard to see everything, but we haven't come up with a good solution for them yet. I keep seeing blogs about organized pantries and there are like 12 cans in there. How do people only have 12 cans of food??! We have like half the grocery store in ours, haha. DH likes to have plenty of food on hand. I can't get him to see that all these extras as not necessary, that we really don't need to have 15 cans of potatoes on hand at all times. But his motto is "you never know!" So anyway, we have a ton of food we have to find space for, and we don't have much space in our kitchen. The whole thing really needs to be completely emptied and organized, but who has time for that?? Until then, I have to make do with the limited space I have for food storage in there.

Anyway, the pantry had gotten quite out of hand since I cleaned it up last summer. We had several different bags of chips, and those bags have obviously been procreating since then. I should have counted how many bags of chips we took out of the pantry yesterday. It was insane. We'll buy a bag or 2 for a party or an event, they'd only get 1/2 eaten, and then the bags would end up in our pantry where they were forgotten about, because we don't eat a lot of chips. Yesterday we tasted everything in the pantry that was open (talk about a mid-morning snack!), threw out what was stale, and combined like bags of chips. We ended up with one bag of plain chips and one bag of pretzels. So much better!!

When it was time to start putting things back on those aggravating wire shelves, I remembered the mountain of shoe boxes in our master closet. I've been saving shoe boxes for years, because I knew they'd be good for organizing one day. One day - ha. DH wasn't thrilled with the idea of using shoe boxes in the pantry, but I persuaded him to at least give it a try for a while. In my opinion, they make the pantry so much better. I only used 2 shoe boxes (for now, hehe), so I used them to corral chips, crackers, and random snacks that are in individual packs. If we decide the boxes stay, I'll take them out and "pretty them up," as I told DH yesterday - meaning, I'll wrap them in pretty wrapping paper to make them more pleasing to look at every time the pantry door is opened.

So I didn't get a picture of the pantry since its not officially done yet. Besides, it doesn't look very attractive right now, with those ugly shoe boxes sticking out like sore thumbs! We'll see how functional it proves to be this week, and then I'll post a progress. ( :

Saturday night, I stayed up way too late going through my closet again. I go through my clothes periodically, and take out anything I can't or don't wear anymore. Lately, I've been pretty tough on my selections. I can be very sentimental, and I was holding on to a lot of clothes that I hated to wear, but couldn't give them up because my mama gave them to me. Or I wore that shirt when I met my husband. Or any other reason I could come up with. Or even, I might need to wear that shirt one day....yeah right.

Last January, I donated a ginormous trash bag full of clothes and shoes and still had way too many clothes in my closet. I think I went through the clothes again 2 or 3 more times last year. And this is the 2nd time I've done it this year. (That should tell you how many clothes I have. Actually, that might tell you I have nothing left!! On the contrary, my side of the closet is still extremely cramped. Its just not quite as cramped as it was before.)

The thing is, I rarely buy myself clothes. And I don't think DH has ever bought me an article of clothing. My mama is the culprit. She loves to buy clothes for me for some reason. She's really good at it, too. I go to a store and never see a single thing I like. Mama will go to the same store and later bring me several things that I end up loving. I've been stressing to her lately to STOP, though. I seriously don't need any more clothes. I digress. ( :

Saturday night I got rid of a bunch of clothes (which I just realized I left at home...crap. I'll have to donate them another day...), even some that I still wear (but shouldn't). Then I organized the remaining shirts into sections: casual t-shirts (that I wear at home after work and on weekends - no dressing up for stayin home!), work shirts (I have a ton of these, but my boss bought them all), nicer t-shirts (like fitted tees or short-sleeved shirts with designs, which deem them going-out-worthy), 3/4-length sleeved shirts, sweaters, cardigans (again I have a ton of these, but I wear one to work almost every day - I am cardi-obsessed), casual long-sleeved shirts, nicer long-sleeved shirts, and then finally my dresses and "church" shirts. (All my skirts and dress pants have to go on DH's side of the closet since he has 2 rods - I only have 1 rod. And all my jeans and khakis are folded. I wish I could hang pants!) I thought about further organizing my shirts by color within each category, but I thought that would be overkill and I'd probably never keep it up. Plus I'd probably look at my clothes and think "hmm...I don't have a green long-sleeved shirt?!" and go buy one. :/

So now my hanging clothes in the closet look much better. I still have way too many, but unless I get down to the absolute bare minimum, I think this is as good as it's gonna get. And I don't like to have to do laundry just so I'll have a clean shirt. So I think I'm good now. As far as the rest of the closet....yikes. I had it extremely organized last winter, but its gotten way out of hand since then. I'm trying to convince DH to build me a small shelf for my shoes so I won't have to buy one. Once I have that, I plan to work on the rest of the closet. I probably need to get rid of some shoes again, too....*sigh*

My last weekend project was to tackle my desk in the office. I've been planning to do this for a while. In fact, I took some "before" pictures on January 1:

Yikes. I know. You probably can't tell, but the first picture is my nice keyboard that I never play. Probably partly because I have to move too much junk to reach the keys, and partly because I hate to go in this room because of the state I let it get in. :( The second picture is my desk. I promise its down there somewhere.

What's sad is that since these pictures were taken over a month ago, it had gotten so much worse than that. :(

But yesterday I cleaned everything off the piano, so now I can play it (if I ever find the time...maybe that's the real reason I never do!). In fact, C serenaded DH and I with tunes on the piano while we were working in the office yesterday. ( :

I also completely cleaned off my desk. I didn't take any "after" pictures, but trust me when I say it is MUCH better. Though not "good" yet. Basically all I did yesterday was throw away a ton of papers that didn't need to be saved, and organize the rest into piles to deal with later. I can only do so much with a bored, sick toddler hanging around! I plan of using more of my old shoe boxes to help with organization around my desk. But I'm also toying with the idea of getting rid of the desk altogether. I don't use it anymore, but I do need the storage space. We'll see what happens.


I hate that I didn't get any "in progress" pictures this weekend! But I am proud of us for getting some things done around the house. I'm beginning to think that our house will forever be a work in progress, though! But that's okay. I can never be bored at home, with all the projects I have in mind!! ( :