Closet PowWow with the Masked Mommy

If you haven't visited the Masked Mommy's website, you are missing out! I am so inspired by her as she pulls her house together room by room, closet by closet, cabinet by cabinet! And she's not afraid to show you her mess (of course, she's masked and I'm not). I've been wanting to join up with her Closet Pow Wow for a couple of weeks now but household illness prevailed -

Anyway, I did work on my hallway closet...please bear with me and know I worked on it while everyone was ill. Some really organized people will probably not realizde the After is really an After, but for me it's a huge improvement!

So, my goal was to organize the Hall closet. When we first moved into this house 6 years ago, my husband took the hanging rod out and put in shelves for me to store my Creative Memories business supplies and other miscellaneous household items - hats & gloves, cameras, etc.

BEFORE

Various Views: Miscellaneous Stuff just shoved into the closet over the past few months --- toys for my "gift" closet that I bought on clearance, Joey's new scrapbooking items and Ella's new sneakers (oops, if I had not cleaned out that closet last week I probably would have bought her another pair at the consignment sale last night - and then repeatedly kicked myself in the tush for being so disorganized!) - this all pretty much means most of my business supplies sit in their totes in the kitchen or hallway (Great when company comes over!). Or the other alternative - inventory shoved in with everything else and me over-ordering 'cuz I don't have the energy to dig through and see what I already have. It's a rather deep closet and you can see how much wasted space there is.

Okay, here are my AFTERS. I know, I know, they aren't completely organized but I have now made a home for all of my Creative Memories Inventory bins and fit them with easy access. I have grouped like items such as backpacks, electrical and of course, you have to have one "junk" bin full of stuff that you don't know what to do with but know you have to keep. I moved my "gift closet" toys and puzzles to the basement. And here is my BIGGEST SECRET REVEALED.....I MADE A HOME FOR MY VACCUUM CLEANER! Yes, for 6 years, my vaccuum has roamed from room to room, upstairs and downstairs and sometimes being hidden in the garage when company comes. I could never quite fit it anywhere permanent in my home as all the closets are relegated to other things.
How cleaning my closet will save me money:
1. I can more easily pull out my business inventory to see what I already have and what I need to order for my customers. There's nothing like ordering a $35 item that was buried in the closet already.
2. I removed my completely disorganized "gift closet" items and moved them down to the basement. I was able to inventory whose birthdays I already have gifts for (did lots of shopping at the Target Toy Clearance in January) and now I won't be spending extra money on a gift I don't need or spending too much money finding only over-priced gifts by shopping at the last minute.
3. Things are stacked and orderly, they fit better into the closet and will therefore have a longer "shelf" life (haha) as they are not being jammed in and crushed by other items.

I'm sure there are several more but that's all I can come up with at 11pm after taking some benadryl to try to deflate my incredibly stuffy head!

-Heather (the still sick chic but getting my mojo back!)