I'm Crawling Out of the Explosion

Have you ever had one of those wonderfully brilliant organizational ideas?  But it would make a giant mess and your house would look like a Goodwill exploded?  

Yeah, I had one of those.  

Ever since we've moved to this house, the master closet has been lacking in function.  It wasn't set up well at all and we had a ton of wasted space.  Also, Steven and I have really needed a "home" for all of our "office-y stuff."  We haven't really had a place to file papers or anything like that.  Consequently, the top of his dresser and my end table were always a mess.  Or the shelves in the closet were a mess.  Yuck.

So a few weeks ago we hatched a plan to build a desk for our room which we affectionately named "command central."  It was going to have doors and everything so it wouldn't look like a desk.  I loved the idea!  

But honestly, my man has more work than he can handle right now (he's a pastor and works a full time job) and one more project on his plate wasn't a great idea.  And the money would be better used elsewhere.

I'd brainstormed a ton trying to come up with a solution that hubby and I both like and on Monday it hit me....what if we took the big black cubby shelf from the school room (you can see the tour here) and put it in one side of our closet? The school room had begun to feel rather squished anyways. I thought it over and what it would involve and then I texted him the idea.  Mr. Chambers approved.  Hooray!  

But in order to do this, we would have to 

1) Rip everything out of the school room closet, put shelves in there to hold everything from the black shelf.

2) Add a second rod to my side of the closet for hubby's clothes and tear out the other rods, etc. from his side.

3) Move the big, beastly shelf.

So we did it.  Tuesday night.  We are officially nuts!   And not as young as we used to be...oy.  Especially when hubby as to leave for work at 5:00am!  

Anyways, here's some pics of the evolution of the process.  (And pardon the not so great pics...I just used my phone.  I just couldn't handle breaking out my big girl camera in all the mess.  Seriously, I couldn't even get to it.)

School Room closet:

(this is after I had cleared off all of the shelves)

I still need to purge and reorganize this closet, but I had to quickly get everything off of the black cubby shelf so hubby could move it.  But already I'm loving the deeps shelves and all of the space! For the shelves we reused shelving from hubby's side of the closet so we only had to buy two boards.

 My side of the closet...of course after I cleaned off the shelves and floor. =D

 Second pole added....

...and clothes hung!

His side of the closet:

The big part is done, but I'm still going through stuff and organizing and purging.  It's insane the amount of stuff that can hide in a closet.  But also, it's pretty awesome how we were able to maximize the space we do have.  Things that took up a ton of space in their old homes, are now using less in their new home.  I love that.

The cubby shelf still needs the rest of our papers and such added also.  And those closet doors are getting painted. ASAP.  It's making me crazy. =)

Since Tuesday night the school room has gone from looking like this:

 to this:

You can actually see the table!! =)

And our bedroom floor (and my dresser!!) looked like this yesterday morning.... 

But currently it is MUCH better and now there's just a pile for our upcoming yardsale that needs to go in the shed.

I strongly dislike, perhaps even hate this process, but it's SO worth it.  We are getting all we can out of our closet space, and also the school room is more roomy.  (Although the school room is getting purged even more!)  Looking forward to having it done and basking in the results of a nicely organized home.  

FYI, I've been drinking way too much iced coffee during this project.  Just in case you wanted to know. Cold brew is the way to go.

And it looks like I'll be making an IKEA trip in the next day or two to get a few things to help with all this organizing. (One perk of ripping my house apart, huh? LOL)  Can't wait to show you the final results of the explosion. 

Wish me luck.   

=D