So, I started by pulling everything out of there, from the rod down. Yes, the rod too but that was only because it fell down and it wasn't intended, but it also came out too, so therefore - I took everything out from the rod down.
We have tons and tons and tons of shoes. And after going through the shoes that were on the floor of the closet, I have come to a conclusion. One, most of them are mine and two, I have no idea where to store them. But we'll get to that yet.
What was in there before I took everything out:
- tote full of shoes
- box full of other shoes
- huge round clock
- picture
- wooden boards left over from our old entertainment center (formerly were shelves on there)
- plastic drawers - set of six
- Natty's walking stick from Cub Scouts
Yikes! I just took some finished pics of the closet and didn't realize that the littlest one took this pic while I was working on the closet. You can see how much stuff was crammed in there! That grey tote full of shoes, the short box next to the dog - shoes. The big box behind the dog had shoes too. Hmm, thought there was only one box and one tote of shoes... guess I did more than I thought I did. Oh - and pretty much everything you see here was IN the closet. And excuse me in the middle of the pic. Not the most flattering pic of me ever, but the Boo child was just tryin' to keep it real, I suppose.
I brought up a set of two plastic drawers from our bedroom because I wasn't sure if they were the same size as the drawers that were in our closet. Turns out, they were! So, I put them all together and had them all stacked up on the front right side of the closet to free up more of the rod space. Before taking everything out, the six drawers were stacked on the back left side of the closet, which took up about a foot or so of our hanging space.
But after looking at it, I decided that I didn't like the drawers in that spot, so I took them all out again and started over. I put two stacks of three drawers side by side on the floor of the closet once I realized that doing so wouldn't hinder the hanging stuff at all. That left a small square-ish area in the back left corner. I took a chance and tried the stack of two drawers that came from our bedroom to see if they would fit and they did.
Once I saw that configuration, I loved it! Oh, it looks so neat and orderly! I decided that the two drawers in the back left would hold a few things that the stack had been holding before anyhow. The top drawer has some plastic bags that our new curtains came in that I plan to reuse for something else and our extra vacuum bags. The bottom drawer has extra light bulbs, a heavy duty extension cord that needs to go out to the garage yet and the casters that were on the bottom of the stack of drawers.
The next stack over has three drawers, from top to bottom, they belong to Hubby, Natty, and Punky. The stack on the right side of the closet from top to bottom belong to me, JoNo and Boo. It is really easy to remember whose drawer is whose because of two things. First, if you look at the two stacks, moving from left to right, top to bottom, it is in order of our ages, (Hubby, me, Natty, JoNo, Punky, Boo) and second, Natty and Punky's real names both start with the letter A, JoNo and Boo's real names start with the letter J. We have long joked that the "A" kids belong to Hubby (because their personalities are so much like Hubby's) and that the "J" kids are mine for the same reason.
I put Natty's walking stick back into the closet. It's on the left side, propped up against the front corner and is very much out of sight, unless you are specifically looking for it. On the right side, there is a tiny nook area and I put one of our air mattresses over there. It's all folded up and neat, as it has never been used before. (We have three of them.) I plan to put it out in the garage once we get the room for it made out there. But that's another process altogether.
I decided that with our current weather consisting of both warm and cold temperatures, the jackets and coats and backpacks and shoes in our launch pad were driving me a little bit insane. I don't mind the backpacks and either a coat or jacket on the hook. I don't even mind a pair of shoes for each person on the rug below. But multiple coats ans jackets, multiple pairs of shoes? Uh uh. It was too much and it was driving me bananas. So, I took all of the jackets and coats and hung them on hangers in the closet. I put all of the backpacks on their hooks and I removed all of the shoes.
Speaking of shoes, I went through the box and the tote of shoes and decided on a number of them to get rid of. I probably got rid of, oh, I'd say 15-20 pairs of shoes. Yeah. See why it was driving me insane? I still have quite a few pairs left to deal with as well, but it's much better than it was. I don't have room for them on the floor in the closet, I don't want them by the front door - it gets too cluttered too quickly there and just doesn't look appealing when you walk in. So, now I have to figure out what to do with them all. I have the idea of maybe having the kids store their shoes on the floor of their closets or just under their beds in their rooms, but I don't know. I think that they are more likely to get lost by doing that, so I will be looking for alternative ideas yet.
We have two other doors leading in from outside, one in our kitchen (no room there to store extra shoes) and one in the den. I actually could use that area for the extra shoes very easily. The other idea is actually to store them in an underbed bin in our bedroom. We have the room there and the shoes would stay neat and orderly and I wouldn't have to worry about them. It's worth giving it some thought. Oh - and we have underbed bins that we aren't using at the moment, so it's not like I would need to be spend anything on it. I think I like that idea quite a bit. So, that's where those shoes will be going later today. (Thanks for your help, y'all!)
Let's see, what else came out of that closet? Oh - the former shelves. Those will go down to our laundry room. We have a cupboard full of old wooden shelf pieces. They were actually here when we moved here and since they were already here, we can't get rid of them because they don't belong to us. But we are welcome to use them anywhere in the house. I figure that I can put these boards in there with those ones (they are similar in style, wood tone and everything).
The huge clock we hung up in our den. I'm not sure I like it where it is though. We'll leave it for now and I'll see if it grows on me within the next week. It might be okay there if we just move it up another foot on the wall, because it is seriously a large diameter clock. Probably a good 2 feet in diameter. We're talking big.
And the last thing was the picture. I took it out and I have plans to put it up in the little kids' bedroom. I also took some pictures down in our den that will go in kids' bedrooms too. So, there you have it. My tackle for this week.
I still need to clean off the top shelves, but believe me, I got a lot accomplished on just the lower half of the closet!
(edited to add in the pictures)
ALSO - please consider making a donation and sponsoring my boys by clicking on the links under my banner above. They would really appreciate it!
