Coat Closet Reveal!

Hey guys!

So I know I had said I hoped to post the coat closet reveal yesterday, but we got 8 inches of snow and I was too busy acting like a little kid enjoying it to blog. But the closet was finished on Saturday evening! I am in love with the way it turned out! Here are the final steps and the reveal!

So Saturday morning I repainted all of the trim and shelves in the closet so that it would look fresh and clean.

 Here is our little home made shelf painted white. I love the way that the trim on the front looks!

 Next came the process or arranging things so that the closet is still functional and holds things that need to be in there. Fortunately I had that cute lime green tin bucket to help hold/hide a few items. This was really important to me. Storage space is at a premium on our main floor and I did not want to make this useless space.

 Next came the coats and the cat. But she did not stay in there. :)

 Now you will notice the white support board for the top shelves goes to the front on both sides.

 I wanted to make this space functional as well. Usually when we come in my purse gets tossed in the floor or on a kitchen chair. So I got two Oil Rubbed Bronze coat/purse/hat hooks and mounted one on each side of the closet.

Next, our closet tends to be very dark, especially if you are trying to get something out of it at night. There is no light in there nor is there a good way to run electrical to it. The next most logical thing....tap lights! I got two of these in a pack from walmart.

 I mounted them to the wall using two-sided adhesive strips. These are the off-brand walmart ones. Update: I will rectify my mistake and go purchase command strips shortly. These suckers don't hold at all! The lights have fallen off of the wall multiple times.

 I simply stuck the lights about waist high on the inside of the closet.

 You may not be able to tel here, but they cast a lot more light into the closet.

 Look how happy and warm :)

Now came the time for the shoes. I put all of my little flats and flip flops in that banana leaf basket on the shelf. I also placed my boots here. My husbands larger shoes go under the shelf and are neatly lined up here :)

I placed a purse on each hook. The plan once it becomes hat weather is to free up one of these hooks for my husband's hats.

I love the contrast of the ORB hooks with the lime green wall. And they are perfect for my purse! Just sturdy enough. No more purse in the floor!

I had this cute wall quote sitting around waiting for the perfect place. I figured ideally we should look in here every day so it would be a fun little reminder. I will share this step in more detail at DIY Thursday!

It is so cute!

This shot gives you an idea of how much light the tap lights give off at night in the dark. They were the perfect solution!

So there you have it, our amazing re-done coat closet. I think I am in love. Fallen over boot and all.

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Thrifty Organizing!

So while browsing Pinterest one day, I saw something that I thought was BRILLIANT so I decided to try it and share with you guys!

I am working on organizing (I use the term "working" loosely!) the closets in our home. I recently did the one in my husbands office. We have a variety of spare cords that were all heaped into a shoebox and I transferred them to this clear plexiglass bin and put a label on it. Much better than the shoebox, but the cords were still a tangled mess.

 So I russled up some old wrapping paper tubes.

 And Toilet paper rolls. These are the preferable size, but I did not have enough to I cut my tubes down to size. I will gradually replace the jagged tube pieces with the TP rolls.

 Next I just took my cords and folded them neatly. Like this: (Please excuse that my camera did something weird and made my hand look like a 90 year old)

 And then I carefully inserted them into the rolls and lined them up in the bin.

 I filled the gaps with empty tubes for now so everything would stay neatly.

 I am really happy with the way it turned out! It is a great system for organizing using something that you already have!

Does anyone else have any great ideas for organizing without spending money? Next up I plan to tackle the Laundry Room "closet" (It is really more of a large storage shelf niche with a curtain over it) and the coat closet. They are bad people! I need ideas!

No More Closed Doors!

I know it is a little late for "resolutions" and I will not call this that because most resolutions are not kept. Not that I am 100% positive I will keep this one, but it can't hurt to start out strong right? Good.

So we have this nasty little habit of allowing rooms to get messy. I am sure we are not alone in this. The tendency is to shut the door, which is fine if you have last minute company coming over or something like that. But what I find myself doing is shutting the door to hide the mess from myself. To trick myself into believing that our house is clean and tidy all of the time. The problem is that I keep shutting the door, and never really get at the problem. I mean I do okay with our main living areas, but some rooms just go untouched. The biggest one is the office upstairs. If you walk down our hall on any given day, this is what you will see:

Right there to the right. Here:

Cutting out natural light. I know this picture below doesn't really show it but the hallway is brighter with that door open.

I want to stop shutting doors. I want to stop wasting space in our home. That should be a functional usable room and I need to stop ignoring the clutter. Eventually I would like to get our closets to a point too where if the doors one day just disappeared, I would still be happy with them. That may take a little longer, especially the coat closet! Starting with decluttering the office will be first. And then my office downstairs. And then the workshop. Oh my word that one will be huge. I think I just need to take it one room at a time!

Do any of you find yourself closing doors to hide messes? Do you catch yourself thinking that you do an imperfect but okay job with your house only to come face to face with a mess when you go in to get the checkbook to pay bills or to grab a pen? I HATE it! It is something I need to change :)

Organization Increases Life Expectancy

Okay, I don't have any facts to back up my title. But I am sure that if I researched it, I would be right! Our house has a habit of things getting out of hand very quickly. Especially in rooms that we don't use as often. It starts out as "Oh, we have people coming over. I will just put this stack of papers in the office or girl room and I'll sort through them later." Well I have a tendency to do that too much, and then never get around to them "later." Here is just a small snippet of what my beautiful, girly craft room had become. Just keepin it real, my friends.

 Piles of crap everywhere. Half finished projects and supplies under the desk, in their bags still many of them. Packing boxes for any orders needing to ship. Bills, mail, wrapping paper. And this was after I had been at it for a few minutes! Not to mention I have been neglecting this poor room as far as finishing up its decor. two of the walls were still naked and screaming for some interest (I have projects to show you about those too!) So last week I decided enough was enough. We had people coming over and I wanted to be able to enjoy the room and not close the door in fear. Not to mention, with my business picking up, I wanted to be able to use the room for what it was intended for. My office.

The first thing that I did was drag all of the random piles of paperwork and bills floating around our house, as well as our too-small bill filing system (that little brown bin) and sorted through all of them. I created name tabs for everything I could think of and sorted it all into our newly remodeled (but not finished) file cabinet. (By the way, I have decided that I love the green!) It felt so good to have our paper monster tamed. And I only used the first drawer for our personal items, so I have the other three for business related paperwork and craft supply storage!

 After working really hard for almost a full day on this room and sorting through a lot of crap..Here is my desk!

 *sigh* I love the look of a clean, organized room. I feel like my stress levels are so much lower! And there is my cutie little chalkboarded pot again! I love it!

 Now I have room for my laptop and can sit in here and work instead of hogging the hubby's office upstairs! Now just to sneak my big, dual-screen monitor down!

 You see that little curtain? Yeah I have an awesome process to show you guys! Easiest curtain installation ever! I love this room now. I loved it before, but there is something about it being neat and clean and girly that just makes it that much more fun!

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True Life: I have a Chalkboard Addiction

I know that there are probably SO many people out there that struggle with this just like I do. In fact, I know my friend Amanda Carver (Amanda Carver Designs) does! She recently chalkboarded a refrigerator!  If you leave something that I think is ugly in color...or maybe just boring...around me long enough, it most likely will get covered with chalkboard paint. Its just a fact that I have come to accept.

A friend at work gave me this brown, glazed clay flower pot a while back because she did not have a use for it. While I did not hate it brown, I thought it was boring. I also wanted to use it in my girl room, which is primarily blacks and teals and greens and the brown just looked all wrong in there.

So the other night I took it out back and shot it. With a can of chalkboard paint! You felt bad for a minute...I know! I did not do my fanciest spraypainting, because it was dark out and I kept hearing noises. I got a few drips, but you cant really even tell. Big deal, right?! I kind of liked the way it looked just painted with the chalkboard paint.

 Once you let the paint dry for 24 hours (this step is really important!), You rub chalk all over the newly chalkboarded surface, to prepare it for writing. It should look something like this, which I also don't hate!

 After doing that, you have to take a cloth, paper towel, something and wipe the chalk off. You don't want to get it all off, just kinda smear it around some.

 Once you have done this...it is ready to be written on! I have found that you should not press too hard the first few times that you write on a chalkboarded surface. It still tends to be a little soft and can scratch.

 I took the flower pot and filled it with ribbons, my glue gun, glue sticks and a few other craft items that are usually strewn about my desk.

 Once I had filled it as full as I could without over-filling it, I tucked it onto the open bottom shelf of the little cabinet that sits on my desk. It is the perfect size for the opening!

This was part of my campaign to organize and clean the girl room. I have a whole separate post about that! And several other little projects to share! :) The long-neglected and poorly organized craft room now looks amazing and neatly organized!