Closet Organization

We enjoyed another snowstorm over the weekend. Our family is getting so used to snow that anything under a foot elicits only a slight nod of interest. Andy and I shoveled for two hours Saturday morning. We passed the time by pretending we were prison inmates on work release or prison inmates tunneling our way to freedom. He and I were particularly motivated to get done quickly because we were determined to make a very special purchase. Once we had the driveway clear and the van started, we could not get out of here fast enough. We went straight to Sears for this beauty…

Forget diamonds. A snow blower is this girl’s best friend.

With the rest of our weekend work lightened up considerably by the snow blower, I was free to jump right into working on our 2015 master to do list.

My closet was due for a deep clean and overhaul, so I started with this quick closet organization project.

I love having my own space. This is the first house that Andy and I have lived in where we do not have to share a closet. My closet features a spacious built-in dresser. It also has plenty of overhead storage. The main problem was that the top of the dresser was my new dumping ground for out-of-place items.


Because I had a bad habit of stuffing things on top of the dresser, I had plenty of items that could be living somewhere else taking up valuable space. An example of this was the family stray sock collection.

First, I removed everything from the closet that did not need to live there:

Next, I purged all of my unneeded or unworn clothing. I do this at least once per year because I do not like a stuffed dresser or closet. I did not have too many personal items to get rid of but , I had been throwing M’s outgrown clothing on the top of my dresser.

The closet purge generated one bag of trash, one bag for Goodwill and one laundry basket full for consignment.

With the closet clean, it was time to organize. I tidied up my hanging clothes. I like to hang my wardrobe according to color. It makes it easier for me to find and coordinate outfits the 2% of the time that I am not wearing a hoodie and jeans.

As I have mentioned before, I am an avid runner. I have plenty of gear, clothes, shoes, and electronics that I use for training and racing. I use all of it, but not every day, so I needed to store it all accordingly. Recently, I have been losing everything from my running socks to my iPod cord. It has been a source of frustration as my time to run is carefully scheduled into our days, and I was missing workouts due to disorganization. It was taking nearly 30-40 minutes to track everything down for a gym workout.

My key objective was to create a place for every bit of my running equipment, so I could just grab it and throw it into my gym bag. In order for that to happen, I had to decide how many categories I needed for my running clothes and gear. I had two main sources of frustration:

• The top dresser drawer held everything running related (gear, nutrition, etc…) plus my regular underthings. As a result, that drawer was frequently ransacked, and I could not find items easily.
• My electronics were in various locations including getting buried under junk on the top of the dresser.

With my frustrations identified, it was easy to create a plan. I used three bins that I already had on hand to separate my running gear into three sections, Socks and Compression, Gear (such as nutrition, water bottle straps, drawstrings, etc…) and Hats. I labeled them with paper key tags.

Next, I used two clear bins from the dollar store to round up my electronics and some extra items. I intentionally chose clear bins so I could see the contents at a glance.

With most of the extra running items removed, there was plenty of room left in the top drawer. I used two dollar store* bins for my regular underthings. I resist buying at the dollar store, but sometimes they have just the right item for my projects. These collapsible bins are perfect for dresser storage if the drawers are nice and deep.


The rest of the closet project was just a matter of putting things back where they belonged.

Here is a quick tour:

I spent $4 on this project. The system is working too. I am able to quickly grab what I need, throw it into the gym bag and go. Success!

*I was asked which dollar store chain we have here in my town. It is a Dollar Tree store.