Linnen Closet Before and After

It may look nice and pretty now, but this is what the closet at the top of my stairs looked like just a few days ago!

 

Does anyone else see what is completely wrong with this picture? (Not including how messy it is!) Who puts their towels on the top shelf where no one can reach them, and hair color on a shelf that a two year old can, and has gotten into. Me, that's who! 

 

Saturday I went on a major cleaning rampage, mostly in our backyard and garage, but this closet was the one place inside our house that I knew I had to get to. For some reason we can't seem to keep the door shut so every time I walked up the stairs there was a huge mess staring at me. I didn't even start this until 9:00 after my kids were in bed, but it was worth losing some sleep over. The first thing I did was to rip out the ugly contact paper!

 

Then I got to work organizing and throwing things away. I don't know how I even fit all of this in there before!

 

I kept all the medicine on the top shelf where none of the kids can reach it, but now I actually know what we have. I threw away at least 4 bottles of nasal spray! 

 

I love this little desk organizer to keep all the little stuff in and separated. Now I don't have to go searching for the little syringe things every time one of the kids needs allergy medicine!

 

The hair products are now one shelf higher to hopefully deter Laila from trying to color her own hair again...yes it happened. I knew I needed a larger bin for everything, but still needed to be able to see what was in it. This wire one fit the criteria for both.

 

 

These bins are by far my favorite! I realized as I was going through everything that I had way to many rags and hand towels that never got used. Now when I ask one of the kids to get a clean hand towel for the bathroom I shouldn't hear any "but I can't find one."

 

Such a huge difference!

And, most of the sheets that I got rid of were still fine, just old and we didn't use them. So, instead of throwing them away, I simply cut out the elastic and put them in my stash of fabric to use when I'm doing a trial run on something.

Yay, for clean closets!

Making Room

I have exactly four months to make room for one more person in our 1500 square foot house. You may think that 1500 square feet is plenty big for six people, but there is one little problem. Our house has a family room and a living room, which I love, but in order to get that the designer of this home took major cuts in the bedrooms. My son's bedrooms isn't much bigger than a large walk in closet, and the room that my two girls share was really only meant for one person and now we need to squeeze in one more.
I've actually got quite a few plans on how to make this transition work, but it's going to take a lot of time and a lot of hair cuts to cover the cost. It's doable though so let me show you a little bit of what I have in mind. Just please don't judge me too harshly on what their room looks like right now. I haven't done a thing to it since we moved in.

This is the main shot from the door. The biggest change we are going to make in this room is to trade in the big bed for a set of bunk beds.

The wall opposite from the bed. The main thing on this wall is to patch up the rows of holes left by the previous tenants.

What you should notice from this picture is that someone thought it would be a good idea to paint the walls, trim, base boards, and molding the same bluish grey color. This is actually project number one on my list and is already under way. Unfortunately, I had to take all three kids with me to the store to get white paint for the trim and I was in such a hurry to get in and out that I didn't pay close enough attention to what I was buying. After painting half of the base boards and getting really frustrated that the paint was not covering at all, I realized that what I thought was white paint was actually a clear base. I'll be headed back tomorrow to see if they can tint it for me.

Now that you've seen how small it is, here is how I plan to arrange two dressers, a set of twin bunk beds, and a crib. It's going to be a really tight squeeze, but fortunately the only thing our kids do in their rooms is sleep and get dressed. All of our toys are in our living room downstairs, which is a whole other post on making room.

Jenn actually showed me this cool room planning tool at Pottery Barn kids the other day. (click on the tools tab and then room planner) It's a much easier way to rearrange your furniture without having to break your back. Of course you will have to physically move the furniture at some point, but you won't have to drag your husband upstairs to move the bed and dressers around only to say "Never mind, I don't like it. Just put it back the way it was." My husband loves that!

Of course moving around some furniture isn't the only thing I have planned for this room. It's crying out for some decorating help. I think I'll keep that as a surprise though.

Sally