Closet Case

***Pssssst....It's my birthday! I'll be sharing what I did to celebrate sometime next week!***


Welcome to my Monica closet.

You know what I'm talking about, right? Clean freak Monica's secret closet full of crap from Friends?

{via}

Yeah, I used to have one of those. It's a storage closet just off our balcony where we stashed all our holiday decor, Ryan's camping gear, our intertube, gifts for others, stuff I wanted to donate to Goodwill but hadn't yet, and other random things we don't have space for in the apartment. The place was so crammed with stuff that it was becoming a major pain to put things in or get things out of this closet. I mean, I can't imagine why:

So I decided enough was enough! I started pulling the crap out of the closet, and already it was looking better:

Behind the piles of crap were my holiday decor bins, nicely organized. I do my best to put away my decor nicely to keep next year's decorating easy peasy!

And here's what the closet looked like overall before I sorted through everything I'd removed:

Ahhhh. Much better. Of course, still had to put some things back in it, so I got to organizing. Three of the boxes I pulled out were ones I'd previously packed. They mostly contain gifts for others and stuff I bought for craft projects to do this summer. They're all things that either Ryan and I or my parents (after their upcoming visit) will haul back to Missouri.

Many of the other loose items in the closet were either things I wanted to donate to Goodwill, or things that we don't need/use in our kitchen now, but that I'm holding on to so we can take them to our lake house. We have outdated cookware down there, so it makes sense to replace it with the items that were displaced by wedding gifts in our kitchen.

After a little cleaning inside the apartment, I was able to find space for the things I wanted to keep. I stashed two of the "Go home" boxes on the top shelf of our office closet, and one behind the curtain in our laundry room. And I actually had a completely empty underbed storage bin in our bedroom, so I filled it with the kitchen items that we'll take to the lake someday.

I picked through the rest of the items I'd pulled from the closet, and came up with three bags of things to give away:

And one sort of random bin--holiday items that don't fit in the existing containers, birthday decorations since they're aren't enough to merit their own bin, a few containers and baskets that I'm not currently using to organize things, but that I don't want to part with, etc. 

Considering that these items previously created a tower of terror in the closet, the fact that I have them down to one bin is pretty great! Once I stuck it back in the closet, the final product looked like this--not the prettiest space, but still functional!

A Monica closet no more! Check out the side-by-side before and after:

It's so much easier for me to get things in and out of the closet now. I'm glad I eliminated the inevitable headache that would surely have resulted from me digging out my Christmas decor bins next November (or getting out those "go home" boxes for our trip home this summer!) Now I just need to maintain its cleanliness. That means no more stashing donation items there, and in general, no more decor hoarding! Someday I hope to have an indoor storage closet for our rotating decor, like Thrifty Decor Chick's, but for now I'm using what we have!

Do you have any dirty little secrets in your living spaces? A particularly unruly cabinet? A rug that you really do sweep everything under? A spot that you cover with an ottoman or end table?  Please spill!