Craft closet

Did I ever tell you we have a spare bedroom? Well, we do. It's not on my house tour yet, because I never feel like it's quite "done". Granted, in our house, projects and rooms are never really finished anyways, so I feel like I should just show it to you. But, for now, take my word. We have a guest room, so if you are in the Boston area, you have a place to sleep when we hang out.

Anyways, the guest room has been a catch-all room for quite some time. Caroline's room used to be the guest room, and the current guest room was the "extra" guest room. But when Caroline came around, we had to consolidate two rooms into one. That meant a lot of stuff went into a not-so-large-space. So for the last year, or so, the guest room was sort of the bane of my existence.

But I'm getting there. (And by that I mean, organizing, not getting over my neurosis.) So over the long weekend, I took the opportunity to finally get to work on organizing the closet. The closet held a mish-mash of odds and ends, Hubby's suits, out of season bath robes, and stuff that belonged in the attic, but never actually made it there, thanks to my lazy arse.

But I wanted to turn the closet into half-clothes storage, half-craft closet, now that Caroline is starting to color and play games. I was inspired to revamp the closet by this photo on Pinterest (which I actually saw in my Real Simple subscription before I pinned it. And if you want to follow me on Pinterest, you can here.)

I love how the closet uses a mix of shelves, boxes and bins, in order to create the most efficient use of space. Now my guest room closet is not quite this expansive, but I thought I could adapt some of the ideas for my room.

My closet is quite narrow, and has a sloped ceiling, since this is tucked under one of our eaves. Creating yet more work, is the back of the closet has an access panel to our plumbing stack. (One day, Hubby and I would love to turn much of the second floor into a Master Suite. If we did, the bathroom would be right here. Now we just need like 100k to make it happen.)

But that's neither here or there. Right now I need an organized guest room.

Since we still need some clothes storage, I kept the hanging bar that was already there. And, like my inspiration photo, I picked up the same hanging shelves and wall brackets from Ikea. The system was a great choice for our space. The wall brackets are all connected, with slots for the individual shelves. That meant we only had to put two holes in the wall for each bracket, not for each shelf. Because of the access panel, the space behind this closet is (basically) hollow, with the exception of supporting braces at the top and bottom of the closet. Therefore, this system worked perfectly. The shelves can also be cut to size (the length, not depth), so Hubby was easily able to make the shelves fit to my every demand the space.

I planned to organize the shelves and my crap by using a series of plastic shoe containers. I bought nine bins at Target and divided up all the stuff: Caroline educational tools and games, sidewalk chalk, markers and crayons, sewing supplies, in progress sewing projects, card making supplies, stickers, ribbons and bows, and craft supplies.

And because I'm anal highly organized, I labeled everything.

I like to think labeling things makes the world a better place, but it actually does make it much easier to find what you are looking for, and pull out the correct bin. In a tight space, the last thing I need to be fussing with keeping things tidy.

Since this is a halfzies craft closet, I needed a place to keep fun papers. (Please disregard the fact that my label maker ran out of tape.) I found this paper sorter at the Container Store and it works perfectly for separating patterned paper, from colored construction paper, with the top drawer dedicated to coloring books.

The bottom floating shelf has a couple more of my bins, plus a few magazine files, also from Ikea. They hold my favorite copies of Real Simple, This Old House, and other good issues of design and home decor magazines.

Even with the floating shelves in place, there was still plenty of space to keep Hubby's suits and sport coats, and our bathrobes in this closet. Eventually, I plan to redo Hubby's primary closet, we just haven't gotten there yet. Then we will actually have room for guests to hang their clothes here. (Imagine that!)

On the top closet shelf, that was there when I started this redo, I am keeping our family photo boxes (that hold pictures that didn't make it into actual photo albums). It probably goes without saying, but you should always keep photos in temperature controlled rooms - never an attic or an unfinished basement (of which we have both, so they ended up here).

I also have a few of these document boxes (I heart the Container Store), where I keep miscellaneous papers (receipts for large purchases, electronics warranties), as well as one dedicated to instruction manuals. This has actually been one of the handiest catch-alls ever. Before I started keeping all my manuals in one place, I would never know where to look. "Did I throw it away?!" (most likely.) "Did I put it in my file box?!" (highly doubtful.) How do I get the friggen clock to stop blinking!?? (Fat chance, sucka.) But now, it is sooo much easier to hunt these down. "Sell this on Craigslist - why yes! And I have the manual - charge more!"

On the bottom of the closet I keep a file storage box (old taxes, bills, etc), which tucks under the shelves perfectly, and out of the way.

Now the space serves multiple purposes - clothes storage, craft closet, sanity saver - and it looks good too. (Bonus!) It's also organized in such a way that it will be easy to keep clean, and easy to get access at all the contents. No moving something out of the way to get at something else. So what do you think? Do you have any organizing projects coming up?

FYI - I wasn't perked in anyway to write this post. I just love Ikea and Container Store (both, equally). I am pretty sure that neither of them will ever see this little blog post or know that it exists.