Coat Closet Makeover

Happy January 1st! Our Michael’s Makers challenge this month was to organize an area of our home. So, naturally I picked the absolute worst area of our house to tackle. This closet serves as the drop zone for pretty much everything. It holds coats, backpacks, cookbooks, art supplies and anything else that we want out of site. It has gotten so bad that you had to kinda lean into it to get the door to shut. Know what I’m talking about? It was high time for a coat closet makeover.

My husband is so embarrassed I’m sharing this photo. But here it is guys! The shoe organizer on the door started out as a great way to hold pens, pencils, crayons, markers, etc. But the etc. has gotten out of control. The coat hangers are too high for our kids to reach, so they just toss all of their stuff on the ground. It’s one of the places I hope the door never gets opened to when we have company.

First, we moved the adults coats/jackets to a different closet and got rid of everything that didn’t belong in here, so this is only holding the kids stuff. Hooks on either side hold their coats and backpacks and the baskets keep lunchboxes contained. We added 2 more shelves to help corral the art supplies and more bins for things like hats and gloves and snowpants and even their sunglasses and headphones. The black bag holds my reusable bags. Notice how the door is completely empty, no more clutter hanging out here!

There is now room for snowboots and shoes to live in the closet too. I’m so happy with this transformation that now I want to leave the closet door open for all to see!

The next shelf holds the contents of that messy shoe organizer. On the left, sliding drawers limit the search for pencils when it is homework time and those cute pull out bins in the middle house random things like chalk and super glue and even dice. Apparently we have quite the dice collection. I added vinyl labels so the whole family knows what is where and where to put things away when they are finished.

My favorite are the totes on the right. They have a top insert, so on the bottom we have our crayons.

And the top holds are colored pencils, erasers, some washi and a pencil sharpener. Every thing has a place and everything is in its place!

Likewise, the Play-doh is in the bottom and all the Play-Doh tools are on the top. Which means we don’t have to dump out the entire bin of Play-Doh to find the right color or the pair of Play-Doh scissors!

 

Michaels just launched a new line of storage and organization product called Cre8ted Spaces available in stores now and it has tons of different colors, bins and office supplies – with more than 300 new items in 4 coordinating colors, you have to check it out!

If you don’t know where to begin, you can always take a look at some of the fun storage projects on Michaels.com or the other 49 makers’ ideas on The Glue String for tips on designing, organizing and decorating their favorite places!