Y’all, I have been having organizational meltdowns here lately.  I’m not sure what it is.  Maybe because Michael is getting ready for his annual May yard sale (he LOVES having yard sales and has one every year in May around his birthday).  Maybe it is Spring fever?  It could be all of the disorder that came from having all of W’s stuff spread all over the center hall for nearly a week while we redid his floors.

What I am realizing is that I have got to get it together with our master bedroom closet storage.  I think I’ve mentioned before that at some point, someone added a large closet between our bedroom and Beau’s room.  It has plenty of storage- wire shelving (boo!) but it is usable.  It is an odd set up, because it is a walk through between our room and Beau’s, and also it is literally built around the fireplace in our room- so you have to walk around it.  So I’ve always just kind of stuck stuff on the shelves there and moved on- I’ve never loved that closet so I’ve never used it to its fullest potential.  But I’m understanding now that that’s just not a smart plan.

Here’s the floor plan of the closet:

How bout those kindergarten graphics?  I’m a Canva master! 😉

All of the outside walls (not the walls around the fireplace) are lined with wire shelves.  Which would be great to have all of that storage, in theory.  But for whatever reason, it just wasn’t working for us- a lot of those shelves were empty, and we were still having issues with storage.  The closet as a whole just wasn’t working.  I had to sit down and figure out WHY.  Here is what I came up with:

Our Issues

1. Those shelves were not in good functional locations for us.  The highest shelves were so high they were almost useless.
2. We needed better shoe storage.  Our shoes, between the three of us, were all over the closet floor.
3. All of us were running back and forth between our clothing storage- dressers in the bedroom and clothing in the closet.  That meant that there was always a trail of clothing all over the bedroom to the closet.  It would be better if we could have everything in one space, and the closet is large enough to handle that.
4. We need a “drop spot” for clothes- like clothing that I need to Dryel, but I’m waiting for a load big enough to run it. These are now just ending up draped somewhere in our room.
5. Although we had massively purged clothing and other items when we moved in, we had a year and a half of accumulation since then.  We needed to purge again.
6. We needed to find a way to work in storage for other items- decorative items, linens, my Cricut, etc, since this is essentially the only storage in the house.
7. I have tons of accessories which need better organization.
8. This closet is ugly. The flooring is ugly, the lighting is ugly, the shelving is ugly, and the walls are ugly.  I know myself, and myself will be much more inspired to keep it neat and organized if it has a little bit of beauty.  That should not be hard to do.

This will be a process.  I’m going to work with what I have- the wire shelving will stay, but I’m going to make it, if not beautiful, then definitely less eye-twitchy to look at.  The flooring will stay, but I’ll give it a bit of an upgrade.  I’ll do a fun trick to the lighting that will make it a little more boutique, a little less blah.  And oh yeah, some organization as well, with the help of some way more talented blogger friends!  The end result will be a beautiful, organized closet.