Plans to Organize

As I have mentioned, my house is always going to be a work in progress. Right now, it still has quite a ways to go.

Everything is unpacked and put away, but the manner in which it is put away is a little bit of a disaster in my opinion.

There are two large problem areas: the pantry and the closet.
Let's start with the pantry.

Current state:

After some research the best ideas I have are as follows:



Step 1: Organize food based on use and fragility/weight. Per realsimple.com (my bible), they recommend putting the most frequently used items at waist level, such as flour, cooking oil, etc. They suggest putting lightweight items higher up since they won't break if they fall. They also suggest putting delicate glass high up so that it is less likely to break and to put it in an order with from tallest bottles in the back and shorter ones in front.

Step 2: Buy new things :) My favorite! But also why this is not happening at the moment... Since the food fits in the pantry, organizing it is less of a priority. Here are a couple of ideas I like:

 Steel baskets for little bags and smaller items would be perfect since you can see through them but they are not too hard to clean since they don't hold anything. I would probably get two of these for different shelves.

I also like the canisters up at the top right. They suggest taking items like pasta and putting them in these type of canisters that fit together and you can see through. They recommend glass jars with rubber sealing tops or plastic that is BPA free. From this picture I also like the lazy susan. I don't think we really have space for one in the pantry, but we have our spices and a couple other things in a small cabinet next to the stove, so maybe a little lazy susan in there would be perfect! Maybe it would work for the bottle up on top... ideas, ideas...

Other things I want to do is get hooks or storage for the door, for storing items like a broom or barbecue utensils.

The other problem area is the floor, which right now houses all the dog stuff. We are really good about keeping the door shut but that will no always be the case. I might get a small set of double drawers to put underneath to store her extra snacks and food.

Onto my closet:

 Also a disaster. Let's start with my plan from the bottom up.

Right now I have an awesome shoe rack from Walmart that we bought when we moved in. I want to get another one for Dylan. (We wanted to try it before we bought two). That will help with the shoes in the corner.

The canvas box is for my flip flops (the stash was greatly reduced last summer when Freya was really into shoes...). I feel like it takes up more space than it needs to, so maybe just a little basket would be better, but it is way too annoying to put flip flops on a shoe rack.

Then the hanging clothes. One of my projects after the wedding will be to organize my clothes. I think I generally have them organized by season/sleeve length and type of clothes (dress versus pants versus shirt).  I know my clothes look really full, but it will be arranged better and I can still fit a lot more clothes in there. Dylan definitely has space, we'll see how long he gets to keep all of that... ;)

Another idea for the racks is this:

I have most of my purses bunched together in the open shelf on the dresser thing in the closet, and they will definitely need a new space soon. 

I love this idea! So much easier than baskets and then you can see everything. I will definitely need to put a step ladder in the closet for this, but then I can reach everything super easily! I think I will get these for all along the top and maybe still stick with some short baskets for the middle shelf in the closet. 

A lot of the closet will be more open once we get a bedroom set, since we plan on getting a lot of drawer space, but who knows when that will be.

Those are my upcoming projects.  I may need to browse around The Container Store for a bit before I fully commit. (I have gotten really good at shop-looking and making sure I find the exact right thing) I am so excited to organize everything!