Cleaning and Organizing a Free-standing Closet

BEFORE

I worked with a lovely family whose home is near Lake Champlain. Our first task was with a free-standing red closet with doors. Mom Meg and I made sense of three young daughters’ art projects, placing all materials on low shelves, so they could get to them easily. We put table linens there, too.

Dad Mike has made some wooden plates, so we displayed them vertically, along with ceramic pieces, candlesticks and candles on higher shelves, for safe keeping.

AFTER

Meg is attached to some of the girls’ art, so I suggested a changeable art gallery. She could buy inexpensive lucite frames (the ones backed with cardboard “boxes” and finger holes) to preserve and display drawn, glued and other creations, made both at home and at school. I recommended using walls that everyone in the family sees many times each day.

Holiday Wrap-up

If you’re in the process of taking down holiday decorations, here are some storage tips. Did you buy new ornaments? Did the packaging somehow disappear? You can safely store ornaments in boxes from liquor stores – the ones with sections. Do you have some smaller, and perhaps especially delicate, ornaments? They could fit nicely into egg cartons. If possible, write a list of each box’s contents on its side, so you’ll know what’s where.

Have strings of lights to store? Wrap them around coffee cans, with the plugs placed inside.

Do you have partly used-up rolls of wrapping paper? Tame them with slit toilet paper or paper towel rolls, which you can slide over the ends.

How to store all of that wrapping paper? If space allows, run a wire or two across the top of a closet or along the underside of a shelf, and slide the wrapping in. You’ll save storage space and also be able to easily see what you have.

A Good Problem to Have!

I worked recently with Jacqueline, in the house she and Jayne bought a year ago. The kitchen has so many cupboards and drawers (a good problem to have!) that many like items were spread out, rather than stored together. For example, appliances were in three different locations. We consolidated them in a corner lazy susan.

They host lots of big parties. Most shelves of a cupboard were taken up with plastic cutlery, paper cups and reusable picnic plates. Even though it’s warm now and picnic season approaches, we bagged most supplies and put them in the basement, close enough to grab quickly when the urge to eat al fresco becomes irresistible.

Thinking ahead to the time when they will home-school son Liam and daughter Sarah Jane, we devoted two cupboards to art and school supplies.

With this first project done, Jacqueline smiled so brightly that her expression could have lit the town square near their house! Like so many people say, she shared that she felt lighter. Success!