Congested Closet Turned Creative Corner

by shawnachilders

Are you a gift giver? Do you spend extra money on wrapping paper or gift bags not because you don’t have it but because the thought of finding it is too exhausting to even think about? I’ve been there, I know. And I hope I’m not speaking out of turn to say that it’s possible my client may have had some of the same feelings. She had a closet, a closet that was a tad congested, too congested to allow her to be the gift giver I could tell she was! She didn’t want it to be that way, but she was a busy mama that worked a lot of hours and for real, she almost jumped in front of my camera when I said I was going to take some before pictures! It was a thorn in her side…. she didn’t love it…. at all. I don’t think she wanted proof that this eyesore existed in her home. But all of that was about to change. Here is what we were looking at.

And a peek a little further in…..

So the first thing that we did was remove all the hanging clothing so it could be reunited with clothing in other closets in the home. We also found some clothing items hiding in this basket so those were eradicated as well.

Then it was on to the paper sorting extravaganza. Rolls of wrapping paper were grouped together as were ribbon, tissue paper, gift bags and cardboard/mailing items. I also went through all of her gift boxes and made sure that there were a matching top and bottom, if not it went to the recycle bin! Ain’t nobody got time to play a matching game when they need to wrap something! The name of the game was function and since she had plenty of tubs I just used what she already had to come up with a workable scenario. If she was going to wrap a gift she needed to to be able to find tissue paper by the color, gift bags by the occasion and have one location for the ribbons and bows. In no time at all we had a corner where she could find what she needed in 5 seconds flat and let her creative juices flow instead of walking away in frustration!! Check it out!

And below that shelf there was floor space that easily housed the rest of her things.

Off in the corner we had the gift boxes stored upright so she could just file through to find what she wanted. She was even able to have a box containing her mailing supplies and she said she did quite a bit of mailing. She was afraid I was going to make her get rid of the cardboard but with everything else in order there was plenty of room. I don’t have a problem with it if you really do use it! I also put some of the smaller rolls of wrapping paper where they would be visible instead of falling to the bottom of the other taller container that held the longer rolls upright.

We knocked out that closet and still had time on her session so I happened to look in this little storage bench just outside the closet. It had a few too many things in there so we did a quick purge…

Whala, a grand reduction!

We still had a smidge of time so we headed to another headache closet for a brief spruce-up! She was being tricky and trying to clean some things up before I got my before picture!!! Cracking me up!