Hi friends, here I am again, I hope you aren’t sick of me with all this closet posting. As I near the mid-way point though I’m starting to tire out so if you have an idea for a post that I haven’t covered yet be sure to let me know.
Every year when I go to Ontario to visit my family I always help my sister with her organizing projects. We always have so much fun. She is one of those gals that just needs someone to sit with her and crack the whip a little bit 🙂 Once she gets started though it’s hard to slow that girl down. She becomes a purging machine!
In the past I have done a number of spaces with her including her nursery, her kitchen, her most excellent toy storage and her front entryway.
This time we started with her front entryway. Yes we had done it before (link above) but that was back in 2007, 6 years ago. Since then she has had two kids and needed to give it a bit of an update to accommodate their growing needs. Plus she needed a backpack station as my oldest niece is now in Kindergarten. It’s not a huge closet but we were able to make it work.
Closet before:
We kept the same system as before with the cubbies we had previously implemented. Those were still working well. Our main goal was to find more space for all the small shoes as well as make room for the swim bag and my sister’s purse. All this was going to require a big purge of the space.
The only way to do that is to empty out the closet completely.
I say this over and over again but it’s so important that I’m going to remind you again. The fastest and easiest way to organize a closet is to empty it rather than do the organize by shuffle method where one just shuffles through the stuff trying to make it work. Pull it all out and do a proper sort and purge outside of your closet. It makes a big difference. Would I lie to you? I know it sounds like it would be more work but it actually goes much quicker and I do believe once you have everything sorted “like with like” it becomes painfully clear what you have too much of.
Also remember that it will look worse before it gets better.
Get excited as you watch your purge pile grow. It’s exciting!!
Here is the after:
So the biggest thing we added was a shoe organizer similar to this one:
This was about $9.00 and allows room for quite a few pairs of shoes. She is using the lower slots for the girl’s shoes so that they can put them away themselves.
My sister also switched out her hangers in this closet to the thin hangers as well.
The swim bag is now located in the top left hand corner and her purse found a space on top of the shoe cubbies now that they weren’t littered in shoes. And look room to spare!
Finally she created a backpack station right by her front door using the wall space she had there and some Command hooks. It turned out great!
I hope this gives you some ideas for organizing your own small entryway closet. Have fun with it!!
Let me know if you have any questions about what we did.
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Ashton says
I have that same shoe holder, and I have limited myself to only the shoes that can fit in there, with the exception of boots. I know that seems like a lot of shoes for one person to some women, and hardly any to others. But when I’m shopping and see a pair of shoes I like, I think to myself, “Which pair am I going to get rid of in order to make room for these?” As a result, I don’t buy shoes very often!!
Laura says
Yes setting boundaries like that is an AWESOME way to maintain organization. Love it!
Susan says
Please write something about organizing per supplies! We have a disaster closet full of pet food, toys, paper towels and various disinfectants! We need some help! 🙂
Laura says
Hi Susan, I just saw this post over at I Heart Organizing and thought of you:
http://iheartorganizing.blogspot.ca/2013/10/five-super-simple-ways-we-organize-our.html
Lot’s of ideas there 🙂
Lynne B says
I still need ideas for the tall skinny space above closet shelves in a rental home. Your neat containers were nice but a little smaller than I need and a bit expensive. We just put extra shelves in similar closets (as you’ve shown in your sister’s closet above) when we lived in a home we owned. Thanks! From a navy family of nine . . . .
Shawnda says
What an improvement. It looks like it will work much better for their changed family structure from the last go around. That’s what I like and hate about organizing. On the down side, you’re never “done”. On the up side, if something isn’t working (either because it doesn’t function the way you THOUGHT it would, OR because your life has changed), you can just reboot it and try something else. I have learned though to give it a full trial before giving up on a system.
One thing I can envision having to change about the new design in the next few years? The hooks for the backpacks. Command hooks will work for now and will give your Sis an idea whether the placement is right, but even with heavy duty drywall anchors, the original hooks I used eventually pulled out (and did a fair amount of drywall damage in the process). I ended up having to use 3″ deck screws in studs to hold the hooks for backpacks for my middle and high school kiddos because they have so many books and supplies. I realized last week that my son’s hook has bent considerably and I’ll probably have to replace it again. I hope it’s not doing as much damage to his spine as it has to the hooks!