If you remember from Part I of this mini-series closet design for beginners, we started you out with some inspiration for getting your closets in order, and gave you a little picture of what it would be like to finally get your closet organization disasters under control. It's good to start out any intimidating job with a little dreaming, don't you think? If I didn't psych you up and rave about just how fabulous your closets could be with a little cleanup, and ergo your living spaces, then you might not be as excited to dig right in and get this show on the road.
Ok great, now that we've gotten you exicited all over again about getting that mountain of forgotten 'stuff' under control, lets jump right in with part II.
So what did we accomplish in the Part 1 closet beginner excercise? If you've been following along, you'll remember that the first part was where we essentially:
- decide what this closet should be for - is is going to store clothes, linens, kids stuff, seasonal stuff, sports stuff ... or a combination. It's probably best if you don't make every single closet in your house a collection of all sorts of stuff - it makes it hard to figure out where anything is, and will eventually lead to another little 'closet organization meltdown' down the road. So, frist step, pick a theme.
- drag everything out of the closet, and decide if it fits the theme. Take some time to sort things into like items, and if your stuff doesn't fit the closet's newly decided theme, then carry it straight away to another closet, where you're going to have to do this process all over again. Or better yet, do some purging now, figure out if there are some things that are non-essential that you could donate, re-gift, or throw away.
- get rid of any non-essential items. Understandably, you can't get rid of everything, so feel free to keep a bit of extra stuff, but make sure to limit yourself as to the items that you keep. There's a certain amount of room for some 'could be useful' and 'oh, that brings back memories' items. But in general, you have to take a hard look at whether the stuff you have stored in your closets is really neccesary in your life, or whether it is actually weighing you down.
- Repeat the last step! This is the hard step, but probably the most important step of all. You have no doubt done an excellent job of sorting and organizing by this time, but have you really pared your belongings down to just the essentials? Like we said in the first article, closet organizing is really composed of two skills - #1 organizing and #2 knowing how to keep the clutter and junk to a minimum. So just get rid of anything that you really don't need. Ie, when was the last time you used it? When will you realistically use this item again? By that time, will it be outdated, worn out, etc?
So, do you have that all done? All your stuff is organized into nicely organized groups of stuff and you're ready to put it all back. Well, hang on. Here's my favorite part. You need some CLOSET ORGANIZERS! And I'm not talking about the cute little bouncy chicks that come to your house and help you sort things into 3 bins. I'm talking about real life, solid, plastic closet organizers, wooden closet organizers, metal closet organizers - you get the picture. This is where we get out the measuring tape and power drill. And then head off to home depot to pick out the sturdiest fashionable closet organizer that we can find. Or for those of us with a renovation budget and a dislike of tools, we can start searching online for a custom closet company, and start choosing a system that will fit our space and fit together like a neat jigsaw puzzle all ready for us to neatly shove our stuff back into.
Ya, I know we really haven't covered all that much ground in Part II, but the truth is, I wrote part II of the series as a Part I exam - because I really didn't think that by now any of you have actually gotten through the real work of Part I. You have to start somewhere, so think of this as a second chance to get through this whole series and accomplish your organizing goals by the end. Look forward to Part III, where we walk you through (that's a walk-in closet pun btw) choosing and buying for real, actually screw into the wall and hold your stuff, closet organizers.
