So this is really not that exciting to anyone but me, but I have to document it so I can prove that my house was actually spectacularly organized at one point, ’cause this is probably the only time it will ever look this good. =D
This first part is kind of a followup from the last post about costume/sewing supply storage. I’d love to see what other people do for costume storage solutions!
I’m a huge fan of ziplock bags because they act like vacuum bags. You can sit on them after you pack your costume in and flatten them out quite a bit. =D
There’s also that handy label on the outside so you can write what the costume is.
And on the outside of all my bins, I keep a list of what’s in the bin so I can just look at the lids and know which bin I need to dig through. If I’d been smarter, I would have put the lists on the side of the bin that is always visible, but I didn’t think of that until much later.
For the costumes that can’t be packed into bins, I have a standalone hanging closet that I attached coasters to. The coasters make it easy to roll the closet around the garage.
I try to limit the costumes I put in this closet because it’s really not designed to support the kind of weight I put on it (victorian dresses get heavy!), nor was it designed to roll around, but it’s been holding up pretty well! I keep expecting it to keel over any day now, but we’re going on 7+ years and it’s still standing!
And now we’re on to the boring stuff… I spent last week rampaging through the kitchen organizing it. As my friend D puts it, “I find that cleaning is best done rampage-style.” She’s right. Once you get going, momentum builds and you just want to organize ALL THE THINGS. But if you stop, it’s all over.
So I started with everyone’s nemesis: the spice cabinet! Before:
Corner cabinets are so awkward. I decided to go with corner shelf units and some turntables. Not the most efficient use of space but it worked out pretty well, and now I can see that we have 3 containers of curry spice… which is amazing because I never use the stuff. @_@ I have no idea how long they’ve been back there. Spices don’t go bad right? LOL
After:
I got a bunch of tiered expandable shelves for the other cabinets. I really adore these. They’re super sturdy and expand out really far.
The canned food cabinet and medicine cabinet pre-rampage-cleaning:
And after:
And some more random photos… this was during:
And then after when I got everything back into the cabinets.
I made Marcus donate all the plates that look like they came from the 70s… which they probably DID since they were probably from his grandparents. ^^;
And since I was on a roll, I decided to organize all the sink cabinets too.
I got an expandable shelf unit for each of the bathrooms. This unit turned out to be much narrower than I expected but it worked ok because I had boxed everything into bins from Target or Daiso. I’m a huge fan of bins for everything under the sink because then when stuff dribbles or drools (which it always seems to), it’s into a bin which is easy to clean.
And now I can easily get to the kitty scrubbing towels! Which I’m sure Yoyo and Bobo are thrilled about. =D
So the best part of this whole process was the number of times Marcus went: “Wow… I have no idea where that came from!” when I asked him about something. ^^;;; To be fair, he’s had a number of tenants before I moved in so who knows where some of the stuff came from.
Ok, enough organizational photos… next post is all kitty photos!
