Keeping Things Organized

It took me almost a year but I finally got my side of the closet organized. Honestly, I don't know what took me so long, especially being the obsessive-compulsive kind of person that I am! Our bedroom closet has these wonderfully built-in shelves, but I wasn't utilizing them to the best of my abilities. I think I was still bitter about having to leave my wonderfully-built-to-my-needs closet at my parents' house behind (I mean seriously, have you seen IKEA's closets?!) - there was a place for everything!

The big push was when I saw the closet clean-up Sherry did over at Young House Love a couple of weeks ago. Her various bins and methods of storage inspired me to go to Target and buy a couple bins of my own. I finally got to the actual organizing part last Sunday while Shawn was at work.

The whole process took me about two hours, on and off. Of course, halfway thru project organization I realized that I completely forgot to take any 'before' photos of the closet, so I only have some 'after' photos to share. Oh well, my bad. Just imagine the same space, minus the fabric bins, with piles of various clothing on the shelves to the left of the hanging rack, bags of to-be-donated clothing on the shelf above the rack, and the shelf with all my jewelry had necklaces and things strewn about all over the place. A little sorting, hammering, and folding and a few hours later the closet looks like this:

New storage - yay!
I was originally storing all of my undergarments in that little green drawer unit that's underneath the built-in shelves, but it occurred to me that I needed to access those things on a more regular basis than my 'lounge' clothes that were taking up space on the built-ins; so I put all my undergarments in the new fabric bins I bought, and I stored away all of my tank tops, funny t-shirts, and pj/sweat pants in the green drawers. This keeps the mess on the shelves down, and hides all the clothes I don't need to see on a regular basis.


Sweaters, shorts, and hangers - oh my!
I took all the bags of to-be-donated clothing off the top shelf (they still haven't been donated yet, but at least they're no longer taking up space in our closet) and I moved all of my warmer weather clothing up top - my long sleeved shirts, sweaters, and bulky sweatshirts. The bin on the top-most shelf contains all my sports clothing and extra purses, and the pile next to it is all my shorts, since it's still not really warm enough to wear any of those yet. As far as the clothing on the hangers goes, I hung up all of my button-down shirts, skirts, dresses, and jackets, and stored all my belts on that nifty circle hanger from IKEA.


Jewelry all hung up and stored neatly, with plenty of room left over.
I think my favorite part of this whole re-organization process was my jewelry shelf - I hammered pins into the molding from which to hang my necklaces.... all 20+ of them. I honestly didn't realize I have quite that many necklaces! I guess that's what I get for finally organizing everything. I also bought a 3-compartment tray to store all of my earrings, bracelets, and various little knick-knacks.

Yay for complete closet organization! It has definitely helped me these last few days- putting an outfit together has never been so easy! And since we're already on the topic of style-related-things, I'm going to talk about my hair...

My bangs finally grew out to a more manageable length, so I've been spending a little time playing around with various hairstyles every morning. Lately I've been a fan of the ponytail flip, mostly because I'm getting sick of sporting a regular ole ponytail or bun all the time. I've also taught myself how to french braid! (only the front of my hair though, and it's still rough... I don't know if I'll ever be able to cleanly braid the back of my head.)

Shawn laughs at the amount of time I've been spending in front of the bathroom mirror lately, but there are a couple of more complex hairstyles I can't seem to get down quite yet: heidi braids, the fishtail, and these little twists. But there is one twist-and-pin style that I've finally succeeded at!


(see the tutorial at Hair Romance)
I actually did the twist-and-hairtie, because bobby pins just can't seem to stay put in my hair. Mostly I'm just proud of myself because I spent a decent amount of time trying to figure out what initially appears to be a fairly simple hair style, but proves to be something much more complicated (for me, at least). The twists would end up too high on my head, or one way larger than the rest, or they just wouldn't even stay put at all. But after much messing around, I finally struggled my hair into submission. What? I'm a girl; I never said I wasn't girly.

If that was too much closet & hair-talk for you, well, boo-hoo. No apologies here. Just let me bask in the glory of my clean closet and hair-styling-success.