59. Guest Room

My mother-in-law is coming tonight. She's staying, which she usually doesn't do, mostly (I think) due to our cats. But I need to leave the house at 7 tomorrow for canoe training and water rescue certification, so it makes sense for her to come tonight and just start the day in the morning. This meant I actually had to clean the guest room, which is my Dorian Gray Memorial Room, frankly. It falls apart so the rest of the house can appear clean. These days it has been covered in my dining room--all the stuff from the walls, the cabinet, and so on. Plus it is also my sewing/craft room and therefore creeps towards chaos at every moment.

To top that all, the cats love this room. They love sleeping on the bed and leaving giant mats of fur. The older two are fond of barfing on the rug. So I had to dig the place out, change the sheets and blankets, and vacuum the heck out of it.

But now it is done. Still cluttered and definitely my sewing area, but the bed is clean and made, the two dressers (Leo's and a blanket chest) are tidy, the table with my sewing is explainable instead of shameful.

Time for the rest of the house to promptly fall apart.

29. Shoes

I do not own many shoes. Two pairs of black heels. A pair of "Sophia made me buy them" chunky green mary jane-ish things. My black leather heeled things I wear all winter. Flip flops. A pair of white sandals that are no good to me. Biking shoes, garden shoes, hiking boots (but those three all live downstairs). Gretchen down the street pressed me on this the other weekend. Was I forgetting any special occasion shoes? No. I wasn't. Seriously.

All of them (except the work shoes--meaning gardening, biking, and hiking) I will be keep on these shelves at the bottom of this closet organization center I put together this past week. And note how I store them. My cousin Joey showed me this. You know him. He writes little books about how to dress right and what to keep in your closet--his day job is a stylist/personal shopper kind of thing for women with not enough time and too much money. His life is bizarre. But still every Christmas my sisters and I compete to see which one has dressed "right" for Joey. More bizarre.

But the shoe thing. Store them one facing in and one facing out so that you can see the front of the shoe and the height of the heel at the same time. I love those sorts of little tricks that take no time to set up but actually do work.

It might make me buy more shoes. Not like Bevin level or something. But maybe a few more pair as time goes by.

27. Clean Closet

How about this? It's my winter storage--sweaters in the cubes, winter pajamas and turtlenecks in the drawers (three drawers are empty as of yet. And then on top, my costume jewelry (my good stuff is elsewhere) and chains and bracelets organized so I can see it all.

All from Target--just their flat pack build it yourself closet storage stuff bolted together. Cost me $85.

Above on the built in shelves are still items that I keep in my closet although would work better in a hall closet--a large pack for long camping trips, my old baby sling, my flute, a few stocking stuffer/last minute birthday gifts...

And below, my shoes. Yes, I own few shoes. But I'm going to store them right. More on that tomorrow.

25. Spring Cleaning: Closet Update

Umm.

My closet is a small thing, a footprint of about 8 square feet with a regular door that opens out into my room. It has 10 foot ceilings like the rest of the house, though, and so it is one of those spaces that would be more useful if it were turned on its side. But no. It has two shelves above the standard closet hanging pole.

I started by taking out all the clothes I will never wear again. What I had left was so little at this point--I'm not working outside the home and so I don't have a bunch of work clothes, and my standard wardrobe is all folded in drawers. I counted what I had left and stood there blinking. My closet was a waste of space.

I took the hangers with the clothes I do occasionally wear, including three wedding-appropriate kind of dresses, along with Sophia's First Communion dress and a few other things that were stuck in my closet for whatever reason, and took them to Mike's closet.

Mike's closet is probably more appropriately called a "trunk room." It is a big walk-in closet off the bathroom. I say "big" in comparison to the rest of my house's closets. I have, of course, a total of 5 closets if you count the pantry. Pantry, hall closet, one in each of the second floor bedrooms, and Mike's closet. Oh, and there are two linen closets but really they aren't, since they don't have doors. More like built in shelving.

So yes, it is a big closet. Big enough Mike keeps his dresser in there. There's a chair to stand on to reach the top shelves. We use it for storage and his hanging clothes.

I rearranged hangers in his closet so that they were all decent, tossed the beat up wire ones, and put my clothes to the left-hand side. Everything fit.

Going back to my closet, I took out the random assortment of "put this in my closet" stuff. I have a sewing machine in there that I need to do some repair on, for instance. There is a tub of vinyl records. A tube with a couple of posters we've always meant to get framed but haven't yet (this year we will, or we will get rid of them). Leftover boxes from Christmas packages. A sweater I forgot I owned (and kept, I like it).

So now I'm on pause. What do I do with this closet? Do I hire the folks that are doing Ann's closets and have them redesign it? Do I do it myself? Do I stick a bunch of tubs full of crap in there? Hmm. What to do.