I hate to admit it but this is the before photo of the closet in my TV room. The TV room was formally the master bedroom. However, the basement in our house is only semi-finished and wasn't a good spot for a rec room so we converted the master bedroom.
While this closet can get messy, in this particular before photo it is extra messy. I have been cleaning out several other places in the house and some of it I knew was going to be housed in this closet. Most of it just got tossed in there in the frenzy to get other things done.
This closet is quite deep on the right hand side. It's a terrible layout for a closet because the clothes would all end up deep into the right side and it was really hard to see everything that was in there.
Things got piled up pretty deep! I pulled everything out of there and started purging.
An old shoe rack held the TV trays in place (just barely).
Look! I see floor!
This closet is now designed to be my linen closet. The old one wasn't working for us (next blog post) and we needed a place to store large blankets, extra pillows, etc. It is also my gift wrapping closet so I needed a new way to store all my gift wrapping supplies. This is what I had before.
I used an old garment bag to store all my gift wrap. I put cards, pens, tape and everything else inside a gift bag and hung the handles over the hanger inside the garment bag. The thing is, while we were re-doing my youngest son's room he was camped out in the TV room. It was nearly impossible to open the closet door and I needed to wrap a gift. By the time I squeezed into the closet I could not find what I was looking for inside the accessories bag without taking the whole garment bag down and out of the closet. It was extremely frustrating and I decided to try a new way to organize my gift wrap.
We took out the rod inside the closet and all of the shelves that were already in there. I painted and then Mr. P put up 6 shelves in the deep end of the closet. These shelves are 20" deep so that they would hold large comforters with ease.
And now for the after!
I am so please with how it turned out! The shelves are nice and deep and hold a lot of stuff.
The top shelf holds books and games that are rarely used. The second shelf has 3 down duvets and a large sleeping bag on it! I love those large vacuum-sealed bags! And these ones are lavender scented!
The next 2 shelves hold blankets and clothes. Notice the date on the plastic storage bin? This will tell me when to go through it again. I put a few clothes in there that I really liked. Unfortunately, in the past few months I have gained a dress size and they are a little snug. If they are still snug on June 1, 2013 then they will be donated.
The bottom 2 shelves are practically empty!
This is the part that I love the most about the new space!
This is the gift wrap station! This was made from an over-the-door pantry organizer that I bought at Solutions. In the US, Elfa makes a great gift wrap storage system. However, I have been unable to find Elfa products here in Canada. This system was almost identical but it didn't have the top wire piece that holds the gift wrap upright. But in looking around I found a couple of paper towel holders that worked wonderfully! The lower one is installed correctly and the upper one needed to be screwed to the track. The wrapping paper doesn't fall over and it is easy to get to.
I added a second basket at the bottom to hold two plastic containers. One holds all my cards. I like it because I am limited to the number of cards I can have. One year I counted all the cards that I had. They totaled 360 and I only send out around 20-25 each year! I now can only keep a reasonable number of cards in that bin. The other plastic container holds all my accessories; tape, scissors, pens, tissue paper, labels, etc. They are easy to access now.
A couple of eye hooks and a metal bar hold all my ribbon at the top.
The gift bag hanging up holds all the other gift bags.
A couple of hooks and bungee cords hold the TV trays in place.
A couple of coat hooks and an iron holder from Ikea keeps the ironing area off the floor.
And finally I hung a towel rack on the inside of the door to hang table cloths and runners so that they do not need to be ironed.
I am loving this new closet. Sometimes I just go into the room to open the door and smile.
Come back on Wednesday when I will show you how the old linen closet wasn't working and what I did to organize it.
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