Grace Part II: The Walk-In Closet

Grace's husband has many hobbies which include photography, music, and drawing. Grace has many memory boxes including letters+postcards, pictures, and old tapes on film. Together, their 2 bedroom condo holds about a 5 bedroom home worth of stuff! Our job to tackle this time was their walk-in closet, aka the catch-all closet.



The first step in the process of cleaning out a large closet like this is to Take. Everything. Out. And I mean everything! Their living room served as our organizing room and this is what it part of it looked like during the process. Lots of stuff!
 

      

We straightened up the clothes and decided to donate over 20 pairs of shoes (which before, had exploded onto the floor). Now they all fit snugly here in the organizers.

   

Before this corner was a mess of electrical wires, holiday decorations, books, film, and photos. Now the items are sorted into clear bins and placed in a way that maximizes the closet's space.

 

I color coded the hanging items, and sorted from less used items to dresses to short sleeve shirts to long sleeve shirts. Also the area above the clothing has been sorted into clear categories.

    

A simple folding job and decluttering leaves these shelves useful again.

 

    

Before there was so much clothing crammed in the shelves that it was mimicking an avalanche! Now it has been folded to perfection.

     

Another area of the closet, behind the closet door, served as a catch-all for miscellaneous items including first aid supplies, books, travel pillows, gift wrap, and more.

Grace and her husband were great about purging the items here, and now they even have extra space!

In the end, 6 bags of trash were thrown away, and 2 bags + 1 box were donated. A successful 7 hours! I'll be back next time to work on the kitchen. Stay tuned!

Grace Part I: The Bathroom

Deep dark corners? Products that have been long forgotten? Drawers crammed so full they can no longer close? Check, check, and check!

Grace's spacious bathroom offers lots of great storage space, however when left unorganized it becomes un-useful. A few bins, some new drawer liners, and a huge heavy trash bag full of throw aways later and Grace had her bathroom back!

See how far those cabinets go back? Yep, they were stuffed full! Now, all the expired medications and old beauty products are out and organization is in.

The random assortment of things under the sink were a jumbled mess. Now there are bins devoted to lotions, skincare, hair styling & hair products, & bulkier medicinal items (such as rubbing alcohol & hydrogen peroxide).

Whew! Look at all those bottles! The medicine cabinet exploded onto the bathroom countertop and about 80% of the bottles were tossed. The medicine cabinet was then organized and cleaned out. Back to their home these little orange guys went: we can see the countertop again, woohoo!

Overstuffed drawers? No thank you! Your go-to items should be stored in easy to grab drawers while your every-once-in-a-while items such as cold/flu medication, insect repellent, or first aid kits can go underneath the sink. We whittled Grace's products down to her daily favorites and the rest went "bye" (as Grace likes to say when things get tossed into the big black bag).

I'll be back next week to conquer another room!

♥

Aubrey's Garage Crafting Space

Last week I completed the office section of this client's garage, now it's time to move to the crafting section of the space. Here we have piles of old mail, receipts, electronics, donatable items, and of course- crafts!

(front view)

(side view)

And there you have it! 1 large box went to a local shredding facility, many more items were added to the "garage sale" pile, and everything else found itself a home. More will be done later this year, specifically their holiday decorations section and tool workbench. See you in December Aubrey!

Aubrey's Garage Office Space

What was once meant to be a workable office space, had turned into a clutter fest. Adding square footage to your home by utilizing the garage is an awesome way to take advantage of space. The other corner of the garage (which we'll work on next weekend) is meant as a crafting table/storage area. Can't wait to see how nice the garage will be once we're done! Here's what we've done so far:

3 large bins of mail needed to be sorted through and in the end we got it down to just these 8 clear boxes. We labeled all the paperwork to create a system that will now be much easier to store bills, user manuals, and work notes. After happily swimming in a sea of paperwork for about 4 hours (see the before pic?!) all has been sorted out and the space is useful again. Next week: the craft corner! Stay tuned.... 

Clarissa's Craft Closet

Clarissa has got to be my craftiest client! She enjoys crocheting, beading & jewelry making, scrapbooking, sewing, loves to wrap beautiful gifts, AND sells Scentsy! Therefore, her craft closet was absolutely overflowing- even into the adjoining room next door! A little spacing logistics and purging (1 kitchen size bag full of trash & 1 moving box full of donations) led to a more organized and efficient space.

the carpet's clean again

everything is more accessible now

all done! now the crafting can begin :)

Returning Client Melani's Rustic Country Home

This 1920's cottage located on 2 acres in Oceanside is full of antiques, wrought iron, wooden furniture pieces, annnnnnd (wait for it) clutter! In six hours we covered the dining room, living room, AND bathroom. The results are here:

The kitchen table was a dumping zone for the overwhelming amount of beauty products.

Melani's family can actually eat at the table now!

This hutch stored many odds & ends- burned out tea light candles, tons of change, puzzle pieces, lids for water bottles, you name it, it found its way here.

Now the hutch is restored to its original purpose of a bar station & a displaying area for some cool antiques.

       

This nook was overflowing with old baby bottles, candle holders, rags, & lots of clothes and toys on the floor.

Now the nook is cleaned out and looks fresh. We even added a little seasonal cheer :] yay for Fall! The dining room area is now complete.

On to the living room.... piles of books, CDs, DVDs, paperwork and more toys and change.

The entertainment center was organized by getting rid of all CD jewel cases and storing the disks in 4 big black CD binders. We also got rid of all the DVD movie cases and stored the DVDs on CD spindles for easy access- kids movies on one and regular films on another! Books went to the bookshelf (remember the one we organized last week??) and paperwork was sorted through.

The bathroom was an explosion of hair products & accessories, jewelry, makeup, bath stuff, and lotions. Remember the kitchen table? Well now that that's all cleaned off, all the products found a home here in the bathroom.

   

This built-in organizer in the bathroom was not being utilized! I thought this storage space was awesome. We organized to the nines- lip liners, lipsticks, lip glosses, eye shadows, mascaras, eyeliners, brow stuff, facial serums & moisturizers: it all fit perfectly here.

Even the floor got a makeover!