Tag Archives: closet

How Many Never Used Items Are In Your Home?

How Many Never Used Items Are In Your Home?

I recently read a statistic that blew my mind – the average person has $7000 worth of never used items in their home! $7000! My first thought was, surely, that can’t be right. I’m sure I don’t have that much. But then I started thinking (and looking around). In just 10 minutes I realized that I had 3 shirts in my closet with the tags still on them, one pair of sandals I bought this summer but didn’t get around to wearing, a set of dessert plates that are still in the box, and I don’t even want to look through all of my craft stuff! I probably don’t have $7000 worth of never used items in my home, but if I looked hard enough, I might come close to finding $1000.

How many of us could use that kind of cash right now? I know I could, especially with Christmas sneaking up on us like it is. This has motivated me to dig a little deeper and let go of things that I’ve never used. Of course the first task at hand is to LOOK through boxes and drawers and find those things. I could wear those sandals next year…or I could sell those ugly things (what was I thinking??) on ebay for some extra cash in my pocket right now.

What’s in your closet that you’ve never used?

Organizing His and Hers Master Bedroom Closets – Part Two “His”

Organizing His and Hers Master Bedroom Closets – Part Two “His”

The Finished Dresser

I decided a little over a week ago to clean and organize our master bedroom closets. In our current house, my husband and I have our very own closets (first time ever!), and they were in need of some sprucing up. My closet was a mess. To see the transformation check out the part one of this article here at Organizing His and Hers Master Bedroom Closets – Part One “Hers”.

My husband’s closest was much more organized than mine was (less stuff) but it was very boring and still needed a little organizing love to make it better. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a “before” picture. Just picture it all white with things piled up on the dresser and you’ll have an accurate mental picture.

The first thing I did was remove EVERYTHING from the closet. I painted the walls a beautiful color called Gulf Winds. It’s from Behr. I then cleaned the floors, shelves, and all of the molding. Now it was time to get organized.

*My husband loves hats almost as much as I love purses. I hung Ook Hooks above the door to hold his four favorite hats. The others I stacked on a shelf.
Hats Haning on Ook Hooks

*I organized his clothes by putting all of his business clothes (which he wears to work 5 days a week) on the top bar, and all of this regular, every day clothes on the bottom. This makes it easy to see exactly what he has (or needs) to wear to work each week.

*The dresser was pretty beat up. I used Mod Podge and put beautiful old looking maps on the top of the dresser to cover it up. To see exactly what I did, go to my post on how to decoupage a desk or dresser

*I painted the side of his shelves with chalkboard paint. Now he’ll be able to write himself notes and erase them when he doesn’t need them anymore (no more little strips of paper that end up getting lost).

Black Chalkboard Paint On Side of Shelves

And, just for fun, I painted a toucan on the left wall. Now his closet is clean, organized, and interesting!

Toucan

Organizing a Hall Closet

Organizing a Hall Closet

I have this large closet in my hall way that I use to store all kinds of things – extra pots and pans, cleaning products, craft items, home school stuff (see the skull, it’s not real I promise)….pretty much anything I can’t find a home for. Yesterday when I opened it up to take something out I thought about how boring and bland it was. It’s so depressing to look in there! Plus things were starting to get out of hand in there – time to make a change!

Before

By nature I’m not an organized person, I have to really work at it. I’m a willy nilly, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants kind of gal. I don’t like structure or schedules and I would rather be making messes than cleaning them up. I have learned over the last few years that the best way for me to stay organized is to also make things beautiful. If my closet is pretty, I will keep it clean and organized. This closet needed to be a little prettier…and cleaner.

All it really needed to spruce it up was a little paint. I had some left over paint from a bathroom I painted a few weeks ago. The great thing about painting a closet is it forces you to take everything out first. Once everything was out and the closet was painted I was able to look at the space I had and all the things that were originally in there. I discovered that a lot of it I really didn’t need any more. I filled three garbage bags full of stuff to take to Good Will.

Before I started painting the closet, I had five shelves in there. After getting rid of things I didn’t need any more I decided to only put three back up. This gave me space at the bottom to bring in two cabinets I had sitting in my garage. These cabinets not only made the closet look a little nicer but it gave me some drawer space to put my large kitchen utensils that I don’t use very often.

After

I like the way my closet looks now and it’s much more organized. I can very easily see exactly what’s in there.

Below are a few great tips to organize your closets:
*Use baskets to hold both large and small items
*Use two tension curtain rods and attach to shelf vertically, one in front of the other, up against the wall. Use this space to store muffin pans and other slender items upright (see picture).
*Paint the walls a fun color, just make sure the paint is completely dry before putting shelves and other items back in.
*Put seldom used items at the top of your closet and items you use more often towards the middle or bottom so they are easier to get to.
*Don’t put boxes or other paper items too close to the light on the top shelf. This could cause a fire.

Happy organizing!