New Year - Time to Organize

I am not a clean freak. I love a clean house but I hate to clean one. I am, however, a neat freak. If these people I live with would just put their crap back where it came from I'd be a much happier person!

I already hate cleaning. Is having to tidy up before I can clean up going to make me any more likely to do it? Um, no. But it's hard, especially after Christmas, to find a place for everything and if it doesn't have a place to go, chances are, it'll stay where it's at. And I can't have that. I can't.

Here are some ways I plan to organize in the new year to help us put things back where they belong.

contemporary kitchen design by detroit kitchen and bath Al Williams

I would give a million dollars to be able to put my Kitchen Aid in a cabinet and save my already minuscule counter space.

traditional kitchen design by san francisco interior designer Alisa Hofmann

Yes. Yes. Yes. Why didn't I think of that!

Family Handyman.com

This year, somebody really must do something about the Hell-Hole (aka - The Garage)

VIA

Another one of those, Why didn't I think of that?, moments. A tension rod to hold your stuff. Genius.

The Container Store

FEET - n. Objects used for finding Legos in the dark

Can you identify? Here's the solution. Of course, you have to get those little Lego loving fiends to pick them up for it to work. Good luck with that.

Do your linen closets look like this? Yep. Mine neither.


Let the organizing begin!

Our Under $100 Closet System - IKEA Hack

Just before the baby was born last September I was in a panic to get a closet system in his room. (You can read all about that, here.) After that, the baby's closet was the nicest closet in the whole house and sometimes I would go in there, stand in the one room in the house that was organized, and bask in it's glory.

We bought our home as a foreclosure. That meant we had no appliances, no bathroom mirrors and absolutely, completely, empty closets. No rods for hanging, no shelves in the pantry, NADA! (I totally just said "Nada" in James Spader's voice from Pretty in Pink in my head)

That might not seem too overwhelming at first but there are 9 closets in this house and by the time we got done putting in all the appliances we normally take for granted and hanging mirrors so we could see to brush our teeth, the closets seemed really unimportant. Which is a shame because in the end they are so essential in the War on Clutter, especially in our oldest son's room. But we were tired so the only treatment our closets got was two of those triangle brackets that oh-so-handily hold a rod and a shelf at the same time. They are also efficient at taking up so much space that you can't put as many clothes on the rod as you should be to and you can only fit so many of them in a closet at a time. Then, you wind up with this...

Wow. That's actually really embarrassing. Now you know two things: 1) Someone besides the baby needs a closet system and 2) I need to wash clothes.

Here's the thing, the baby's closet system set us back $700. At the time my desperation, and possibly my hormones, clouded my judgement. But this time there was no way I was spending that much - especially since he has two closets.

I'd read some where on the web about someone using EasyClosets.com to design their closet and then using the plan/measurements to do it themselves. Bingo! (Actually, EasyClosets.com is a very affordable option and had we bought the baby's closet system from them we'd have probably saved some money!) But did we really have time for a DIY; to cut every piece of wood, pre-drill every hole and basically start from scratch? The answer is no for alot of reasons. Namely that I have way too many projects I want to do to spend an eternity on two closets and also because we'd probably never finish it. That's when I met Billy...

IKEA

Tall, white and Swedish. The man of my dreams...in terms of a semi-diy closet system. And he's cheap, too. We got four of these, two for each closet. Add some closet rods, some white shelving board and brackets, a small tweak to make Billy a little taller (see below) and you have a closet system for under 100 bucks per closet!

First we added a small mdf panel to the bottoms of each bookshelf to make the notch, already in the back of the bookshelf, fit over our molding.

Phew! Much better! Man, I love Billy!

Stay tuned for the Big Boy Room Makeover these closets go with. Coming Soon!