Organizing The Closet Under The Stairs

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WARNING: Too many pictures!!!

There is this closet underneath my stairs. It holds all of our games, puzzles, and kid art supplies. Around the corner of the back of the storage closet is where I store our 72-hour emergency kits and a little bit of our long-term emergency food storage. I wanted to organize the back area and create more storage space. As for the shelves that were already there, they just needed a good de-junking. The shelves are mismatched, but when we moved into this house, I already had those three shelves that spanned the heights of under the stairs. It just made sense and I can’t rationalize the expense right now of changing them out when they’re working just fine.

BEFORE

Here is what it looked like before I spent some time working on it. The pictures make this point obvious, but I still feel like stating: I am terrible at taking dark closet pictures. Forgive me and try to imagine pretty magazine-lighting.

It isn’t the worst closet ever, but it just needed some attention.

This area is just a ton of wasted space. The stuff I mean to store here is here, but this space could really be optimized.

DURING

One night after the kids were in bed, Matt and I put the new shelves in. There was still more work to be done, but the next day I wanted to show Izzy the progress. Once we were in the closet together, we started to organize the other shelves without meaning to. We had planned to do something else, but we just got hooked on cleaning out the shelves. Izzy said “I love organizing. It is just too hard to stop!”

The Haul-Away Pile

Here is all the junk we pulled out!! Gone gone gone!!!

AFTER

And here it is now! I’m really happy with how the shelves in the back of the closet turned out. I also added labels to stuff and hung up the art shirts.

A tidy closet under the stairs!!

Added labels. Created different bins for the card games. There is a kids card games box on the other shelf next to other kid games.

Labels with dry erase. Awesome, awesome.

This was my favorite shelf to organize, because I love the new wire bins that fit into the cube shelves.

One for painting supplies and one for art supplies.

Hung up the art shirts on little hooks. So much better than having them crammed into a basket.

This space is way more functional. The simple addition of the shelves multiplied the amount of storage!! I already know what I want to go here, more emergency preparation and long-term food storage items.

The Lonely Pieces Bin

Here is our “Lonely Pieces Bin”. Whenever I find a game piece, I just slip it into this bin.

The Lucky Box

Here is our Lucky Box. I started calling it that after I saw one of the awesome comments from THIS POST.

It is interesting to learn how good it makes me feel as I get these projects done around my house. I’m finally getting done a ton of stuff that I had put off. Like this closet, it is easy to put off things you’ve learned to ignore! Of course, it was way easier than I had pictured, I wish I had made this a priority sooner … but all things in their time.

Here is to getting things done!!!

From my home to yours,
Mary