Merrimans Lifesong: Organizing

I have been reading a book called The House That Cleans Itself and I love it! It has helped me really start going through our house purging, organizing, and cleaning. Boxes of stuff have been taken to Goodwill and things have been kept to sell on Ebay. So far in a week Lauren and Evan's rooms and the hall coat closet have been completed. It is an awesome feeling. I can't wait to go through the entire house. Check out these pictures....

Lauren has the bigger room and bigger closet between the kids' room. Unfortunately I did not take a before picture, but trust me when I say her shelves and dress up box on the bottom shelf were overflowing with toys. The only thing we did with this closet was go through all of her stuff and get rid of a lot of it. Doesn't it look clean and neat?

This is Evan's closet--smaller than Lauren's. What was done to this was more purging and I bought some blue fabric cubbie boxes (can't think of the technical name right now). Again, I didn't take a before picture. As I look at these pics I can see how someone might look at these and think that is still a messy closet but it's not. Everything is now stacked neatly and the boxes hold lots of toys that couldn't be stacked (nerf guns, light sabers) and helps it look not so messy. The top shelf was full of stuff and now it's pretty empty.

I am really excited about this project. This is the coat close by the front door. Look at how crowded it is with all of the coats, and all of the things piled on top of each other on the shelf, and all of the mess on the floor. Yuck!

Now look at the after pictures! There were a few changes to this little project. One was buying a shoe organizer and hanging it on the inside of the door and I put hats, scarves, gloves, ponchos, and umbrellas in it. There's even empty pockets still. Yes, you can see the organizer in the before pictures, but that's because I added it and then thought to take before pictures. It hangs over the top of the door but Roger felt it was warping the wood so he actually screwed it onto the door so we could take down the hanging hardware. This tip was one I read from the book and I loved it and knew it would work for us. I put two of my jackets that I only wear occasionally into my bedroom closet and Roger took a lot of his hunting gear downstairs into the storage area under the stairs.

I can't believe this is the closet floor. It has bowling bags on it and now I have a place to put the vacuum cleaner.

See the shelf with the boots on it? It didn't exist before. I talked Roger into making it for me and he took care of it within an hour. Yeah, it's not painted or stained, but that can happen at a later date. For now it's a huge help in getting the closet organized and it worked perfectly for our boots. For the other shelf I bought a clear plastic tub to put extras into, and made sure it was clear so that I could easily look at it and know exactly what was in it. If it was solid colored it would take more time having to open it up to remember what the contents were. Next to the tub are our camera bag and portable dvd players bag. This closet is now spectacular (in my eyes). What a huge transformation for such a small space.