I'm a closet organizer

Literally.  Not only do I have a {not-so-secret} addiction to organization, but I actually organized my front hall closet.  This has space has gotten fairly neglected, since it contains mostly fall and winter coats.  During the warm months it's a classic case of, "if the door is closed, you won't see that it's a mess."

But with fall {and eek! winter!} on the way, I decided enough was enough.  Currently the closet is not laid out in an efficient way, the shelves and the bars don't utilize the space particularly well.  Everything is jumbled together, my coats mixing with Hubby's jackets.  Scandalous.

Riley's leash and harnesses hung on the door next to Hubby's scarf, relatively easy to reach.

But the remainder of our hats and gloves were kept at the bottom of the closet in plastic bins, way out of reach.

This really deterred us from grabbing a pair of gloves when we probably should have.  And it meant that we defaulted to whatever {hat, glove, etc.} happened to be sitting on top.  I am sure all my other adorable hats felt very neglected last winter!

So to start this closet organization, I would tackle my hat/glove problem first.  I needed an easy way to organize all of these items so everything would be easy to grab, as well as highly visible.  That way Hubby could never say "I just forgot to grab my gloves."

So I went to Bed Bath and Beyond {it was a nice little Saturday}, and picked up this:

A canvas shoe organizer.  The canvas variety does not allow the pocket contents to be as visible as clear, plastic versions - but it does "hide messiness" better.  And it makes everything look a bit more uniform.  Plus, I think the canvas ones hold up a bit better, and can easily be spot cleaned.

So I took down the hooks that were in place when we moved in, and hung the organizer.  Better already!

Then I just began filling the pockets.  I put all of Hubby's stuff on the right, and me on the left, but saved the bottom row for Riley's accouterments.

I put mittens together, separated hats, and still had empty pockets.  Everything fit perfectly.

Now Hubby can easily see all his gloves - no more shoveling snow in his good leather ones when "it was all he could find."

And the pockets help me contain Riley's leashes - with the added benefit that her tags will stop swinging around, and marking up the door each time we open or close the closet.

The plastic bins at the bottom of the closet are still in use, however.  They now contain only our snow and ski stuff.  It's not every day that you need to break out snow pants or ski goggles - so I didn't mind that those were kept slightly out of the way.

Even though the organization project isn't done, and we haven't had to utilize those hats or mittens just yet, knowing that everything is ready to go for winter is enough!