Craft Closet Organization Project

Behind this unassuming door in my upstairs office/craft room was an embarassing secret..........

 Inside was a very disorganized mess of things that I use for my various crafty projects, including all my supplies for the stamping that I do, my crochet yarn, sewing machine, pattern books...... I also have a big box of rolls of ribbon that I buy whenever I see it on clearance anywhere, but that didn't even fit in this closet. A small computer desk that I've had for years sits in the corner of the room and on the desk sits the box of ribbon and numerous other things that should be in the closet, but in it's current state of disarray, I was reluctant to add even more to the disgrace of my craft closet. Most everything was in some kind of storage container, but nothing was organized well and I usually had to dig through and remove things to get at certain items.

Here is a small peek through a crack in the door....I couldn't even bear to take a picture of the closet as it was. I hate disorganization!  To explain this shocking spectacle, in my defense, other closets in the house were organized nicely long ago when we first moved into the house 4 years ago. Anyone who has ever lived in an old house ( like our 1886 Victorian) knows that old houses are notorious for having little to NO closet space. The basic floor plan of our house has never changed since 1886 except for the addition of a closet in the master bedroom by the previous owners. They used space that had been occupied by a back staircase to do this. As it happened, the office/craft room closet was the least important of the projects that we wanted to work on and it has languished the last 4 years, steadily becoming messier and messier. Nobody had ever bothered to add any shelves or anything to it; the closet basically had only a single clothes rod in it and (strangely) a towel bar had been affixed to the inside of the door.

It doesn't help that currently the hubby and I share the office, which is technically a bedroom. With five bedrooms in the house and just the two of us, we obviously don't need five bedrooms. This room was used as an office by the previous owners, so we also designated it as 'the office'. We hope that soon we will be able to start on the "Man Cave Project" as we call it.....one of the unused bedrooms that has been empty since we moved in is slated to become Erik's 'man cave', where he can take his computer and his desk and his stuff out of my hair and leave the room for just me!

Now prepare yourself...........a picture of the stuff that I yanked out of the closet....

EEEEeeekkkkk! This would be where the music from the shower scene in "Psycho" would play....(Note: the computer on the table did not come from the closet; that's my old PC which has been hanging around, refusing to leave, like a malevolent ghost. I have hopes it will be exorcised soon).

Aaaaahhh!!!  (Can you see Olive hiding behind the pile? Hint; she's the weird dark blob under the table. There's a heating vent in that corner and my big pile o' mess wasn't going to stop her from going there.)

It's hard to believe all that stuff fit in there!

The closet space that we had to work with is 45" wide by 35" deep, so basically a little less than 4 x 3 feet.  Kind of like an upright shower stall.....did I tell you that Victorian houses have small closets?

We had just enough room to put in this; these shelving units are from ClosetMaid.

In this photo Erik has yet to insall one of the drawers and there's another wire basket for the very bottom. I plan to use the wire baskets for my yarn and leftover sewing fabrics.

On the left there's a sectional corner piece with deep shelves that I plan to use for larger items, like my sewing machine, sewing box and storage bins for my stamps. There is room for a second corner sectional to go on top of it, but I decided not to purchase a second one just yet.  I have another storage kind of thing that my father made in his woodworking shop for me last year that I think will fit in there nicely instead. I can always buy another one if I decide I want more big deep shelves. When I took these pictures Erik was still working on the installation.

Behind the panel doors are some shelves. It actually came with 3 shelves, but we only put in two so that I can put taller items on the shelves or have room for storage baskets.

I also considered painting the closet first, since it's sort of an old parchment color right now and doesn't look like it's been painted since about 1930, but I decided it didn't matter that much to me.

The good thing about this closet is that, like the rest of the house, it has a very high ceiling. There is actually quite a bit of room up above and on the left hand wall, where we could theoretically put in a few more shelves that I could store things that I don't need to get at very often but could easily reach with a small step stool. I have lots of step stools in this house. With ten and half foot ceilings and closets with the same height (our linen closet, which is HUGE, has shelves all the way up to the ceiling), you need step stools!

I'll have more pictures to come as I get everything back INto the closet!

I'll be joining Susan at Between Naps on the Porch for Met Monday!