Made To Organize: Heavenly Closet Space

My husband finished my logo and the design of my website last night (we were up til midnight!). I am SOOOO excited! This is a long time coming and I'm looking forward to all of the fun and challenging projects ahead! I started on Ashley's master bedroom/closet last week and should be able to finish up this afternoon, but I decided to tackle a closet of my own last night after putting the boys to bed. We have what is known as the Game Closet. Unfortunately, it contains much more than just games. The closets in our house are very strange and are divided not in half but like 2/3 on one side and 1/3 on the other. They are very deep and not practical because once you put something all the way in and put something else in front of it, you can no longer reach the thing in the back...anyways, I digress! I emptied the side called the "game closet". There were quite a few misc. sheets that don't get used but a few times a year and really don't belong in that closet (they should really be in a space bag). I used the top shelf for misc bookbags and diaper bags that don't get used all that often and put the board games in front of those. The next shelf has my acrylic paints (nicely labeled), a container holding my candle items (tea lights, tarts, wall flower refills), and about 15 of my scrapbooks. The next shelf houses all of the kids' puzzles, a cute basket labeled "game pieces and playing cards"...as a side note, I got SO tired of finding game pieces and candy land cards all over my house, so I got rid of quite a few game boxes and put their pieces in their own little ziploc bag labeled for the correct game, and the game board itself now slides right onto a shelf and only takes up 1/4" of space as opposed to the HUGE box it originally came in. Now all of the pieces and cards are organized and in one specific basket. Also on this shelf is a nice stack of coloring books. I put the puzzles and coloring books where the kids could not reach them without my help. The reason for this being, they are not allowed to color without permission because "the baby!" and I got really tired of three puzzles being out at one time and none of them were put back together completely, thus you lose the pieces! My kids LOVE puzzles, so we want to take care of them and make sure we keep all of the pieces where they belong. The next shelf holds two nice little containers labeled, "Playdoh" and "Ribbon and Rubber Stamps" There was a LOT of "STUFF" in my rubber stamping container, so I emptied it, organized it, and put it back together nicely...there is a picture below. In case you can't read it, the bags are labeled: jewelry making, rubber stamps, ink pads, alpha numeric stamps, and ribbon. All the way in the back of this shelf are a few bottles of bubbles and some sidewalk chalk...I suppose they really need a shelf in the garage! And finally the bottom shelf. The boys have a container with astronauts and spaceships and also a cute little basketball game that fit on the shelf nicely and the pieces remain inside. I prefer to keep NOTHING on the floor below the shelves because I don't like CRITTERS OR INSECTS! YUCK! Also included are some pictures of my hall closet that houses our linens, towels and three sets of drawers labeled: first aid, pediatric first aid, nail supplies, craft supplies, party supplies, personal toilettries, school supplies, office supplies, and baby items. It was already nicely organized so I thought I'd add the picture. It's SO nice to open a closet and know exactly where to find something or where to put something back. I challenge you to pick a closet and ATTACK! You can buy shoe box size containers at the dollar store for, yep you guessed it, one dollar! And of course I absolutely LOVE my label maker. But if you don't have one, another fun way of labeling is to print out your label titles on white computer paper and mount the label itself on scrapbook paper for a really pretty finished product. Happy Organizing! Be sure and check out the Organizing Junkie and her "Monthly Organizing Round-Up"
http://orgjunkie.com/

~audrey