Organizing

Organizing Drawers with Shoeboxes	Monogram Hair Bow Holder	Closet and Gift Wrap Organization
Personalized Hair Bow Holder	Headband Stand	Organized Office Built-Ins
Kitchen Drawers	No-Cost Closet Organization	5-Minute Earring Organizer
Jewelry Station	DIY Glass Cabinet Doors	Disguise a Cable Box

Shoebox Drawer Organization

I feel like I'm kind of letting a skeleton out of the closet today.  Or more accurately, a skeleton out of the drawer.  I fancy myself a pretty tidy and organized person.  Not to a fault - with two children under 4 in my house I'm always tripping over something - but still, all the clothes in my closet are hung according to genre and color.  I'm sort of borderline OCD without actually being in need of clinical help or requiring my toddlers to color sort their own clothes. 

But my bathing suit drawer - the drawer where I keep bathing suits and tunics and such - was a heap.  At some point everything got so jumbled up I stopped trying to keep it even the slightest bit neat and just tossed things unfolded in there after washing them.  I could never find anything and it drove me nuts, but it was one of those little things that I'd forget about as the day wore on and so it remained in this state for years.

Disaster, right?  Last week I finally pulled everything out, sorted through discards and keepers - would you believe I had frayed bathing suits in there that had been with me since college?? - and neatly folded everything I was keeping.  I found three shoeboxes I had on hand that were all about the same height and fit well in the drawer.  After filling them with my bathing suits I popped them back in the drawer and made two folded piles of tunics and skirts I wear over the suits to and from the beach or pool and stepped back to admire my handiwork. 

A neat, organized drawer (or any space, for that matter) makes me so ridiculously, irrationally happy, I have no idea why it took me so long to do this. 

And to make it even better, this little purge-and-tidy project cost me absolutely nothing because I used shoeboxes I already had.  A free, quick, high-impact, no-mess project - well, I think that's a pretty ideal group of adjectives.

Hair Bow Holder

About a month and a half ago I posted about the adorable, handpainted, personalized hair bow holders my cousin made for Ada and Ellie.  Scott's cousin, Erin, saw the post and requested a similar bow holder for her darling daughter, Erlianyss (Erli for short).  Erin said not to worry about matching to a bedroom color but to go with something "girly" and also pointed out that Erli has a lot of big hair bows.

So..."something girly."  Seemed to me like pink was in order, so that's the color I based the bow holder around.  I purchased all of my supplies at Michael's, starting with a wide wood plaque.

I went with a wider version of Ada's and Ellie's bow holders so I could space the ribbons out a bit more, given the tip from Erin that Erli has a lot of big hair bows.  Since the plaque itself was wider I bought wooden letters to spell out her whole nickname instead of just an "E."  I painted the edges of the plaque and the wooden letters strawberry pink.  Then I used a small foam roller and some leftover pale yellow paint from our kitchen walls to paint the top of the plaque.  After the yellow had dried I taped off one thin line on each side of the plaque and added a brighter yellow accent line.

After the yellow lines had dried I brushed on some gloss varnish I had left over from...I kid you not...a college art class 14 years ago.  I bought this bottle in a tiny art supply store in Gettysburg, PA and it is still perfectly good.  So if you want to buy a bottle of the stuff, well, it should last you a long, long time.  The varnish gave the whole thing a nice soft sheen.  I used wood glue to attach the letters to the plaque, centered between the yellow lines, and then added the little felt-and-wood-button flower accents, which I found in the bridal section of Michael's.

Next up were the ribbons.  I layered two together by running a strip of Aleene's No-Sew Fabric Glue down the center of a yellow floral ribbon and pressing a thinner strawberry pink ribbon down on top of the glue.  I tried putting the glue on the pink ribbon and then pressing it down but I found it was easier, less messy, and more exact to run the glue down the bottom ribbon.

After the glue on the ribbons was completely dry, I turned the plaque over and marked three equidistant spots near the bottom to attach them.  I added a bit of glue to each spot and pressed the ribbons into place.  At the top of the back I attached two metal hanging loops (found them in the picture frame section of Michael's), spacing them equal distance from the outer edges to make sure the plaque would hang straight on the wall.

Once the glue holding the ribbons to the plaque was dry I added a few final accents to the front of the ribbons.  I took three more of the felt-and-button flowers (green leaves removed because I liked the look better) and glued them to the bottoms of the ribbons.

I made three small bows out of yellow ribbon (be sure to use some kind of anti-fray product at the cut edges of the ribbon) and glued them to the tops of the layered ribbons.

I packaged the whole thing up and sent it on its way, and a few days later Erin sent me a photo of Erli's new hair bow holder hung up and in use.

And here I thought there was going to be sooo much extra space for future hair bows! 

Coat Closet and Wrapping Paper Organization

Today I'm giving you a peek inside our entryway coat closet, which up until a couple of months ago was a dis-as-ter.  Coats were crammed in, shoes were piled on the floor, it drove me nuts every time I had to yank a coat out or paw through the pile of shoes.  It's a small closet but right inside the front door so we keep our most-used coats and our shoes-that-tend-to-get-muddy (work boots, sneakers, etc.) in here.  There are also water lines running down the back of the closet that go to the "kids" bathroom we added upstairs right before Ada was born.  And all of the components to our TV (cable box, Bluray), which connect remotely to our TV in the family room.  So for a small closet, there is a lot going on.

Unfortunately, I have no before pictures since my dad helped me with this closet makeover a few months ago before I started blogging, but it is pretty easy to explain - there was a single shelf 3/4 of the way up and a straight rod across, directly underneath the shelf.  That's it.  And I normally wouldn't need help with something like this but there was some creativity and finesse involved working around all the water lines in the back.  We had to build these little bump-outs out of 2x4s and plywood "plates" to make it work.

But thanks to my handy Dad and a weekend worth of brainstorming, two runs to The Container Store, and some old-fashioned manual labor, this coat closet functions beautifully and is super easy to maintain.  My favorite mantra in action: everything has a place and everything is in its place.  Still working on the rest of my house, but one step at a time...

Some basic details - I used all Elfa components from The Container Store.  There is a top shelf as high up as I could get it, purely to hang the top rod from.  I wanted to maximize vertical space, which is why I positioned this so high.  Medium-length coats hang to the left and longer ones to the right, where there is some open space below.  There are two shelves roughly in the middle, to the left, that hold our cable box, Bluray, a basket with hats and mittens, and a (folded) pile of winter scarves.

Below the bottom shelf is another hanging rod with most of the girls' coats.  To the right at the bottom are two more shelves for shoes and boots, and I was sure to leave enough space underneath for some of the girls' boots.

And the door component...how brilliant is it to use this dead space for storage and organization?!  Of course!  And I can unabashedly call it brilliant without a shred of hubris because I hacked it verbatim from this feature on IHeartOrganizing.  My wrapping paper "organization" before consisted of a cabinet with everything shoved inside.  It was a full-on avalanche every time I opened it up and was impossible to find anything when the time came to wrap a gift.  Now everything - wrapping paper, gift bags, ribbon, tags, all of it - is organized, easy to see, and on the first floor of the house, where I keep the tape and scissors.  For exact Elfa components, click the link to IHeartOrganizing above.

My first step in organizing everything was to pull every gift wrap item out and lay it all on the floor.  I went through every item and tossed (or recycled!) anything I didn't reasonably think I'd use.  Part of what I love about this system is that it requires me to be thoughtful about what I keep.

Up top are spools of ribbon and below that folded pieces of wrapping and tissue paper and gift boxes.  I also corralled all gift tags and stickers in the little purple gift bag and placed it on top of some small gift boxes that couldn't be broken down and flattened.

The bottom two racks hold an assortment of gift bags (the little pink bag has pre-made bows inside).  At the very bottom are all the spools of wrapping paper, standing at attention where I can easily see what I have.

I certainly don't mind wielding a drill but this installation barely required tools (just a screwdriver).  It almost could not have been easier or quicker to install.  And I gained so much storage in a previously un-utilized space.  Doesn't it kind of make you want to put one on the back of every closet door??  I am fighting the urge to hang one on every closet in the house.  Imagine the possibilities!  I have a feeling our pantry will be sporting one before long...