Small Closet Organization

Small closet organization may be the most critical closet organization in your home. The space in these closets is at a premium. Any excess clutter will make the closet largely unusable. When it comes to organizing your small closet you must be ruthless about what you put in to it. You may choose to buy closet organizers but that will be one of the latter steps in the process.

When you start to organize your small closets or cupboards you must be very disciplined. The first step you should take is to remove every single item out of the closet. Once the closet is totally empty, give the closet a good cleaning. Sweep and mop the floor and dust all of the shelves. This might also be the time to put on a fresh coat of paint. I always recommend painting the interior of every closet in a nice off-white latex paint. Don't make the mistake of using an oil paint as your closet will have a strong paint smell for a very long time.

Once the closet has been emptied, cleaned and perhaps painted, you can then get started on the organizational aspects of the closet organization. The first step in the process is to review the contents of the closet with a critical eye. As a general rule, I recommend getting rid of 10% of the contents at a minimum. In other words get rid of 1 out of every 10 items. If you tend to be a bit cluttered, try to get rid of more than 10 percent. Be very disciplined at this point. You may actually want to leave the items out of the closet for a few days in order to choose to get rid of things that you really don't use or need. For example, don't hold on to green shoe polish on the chance that you might buy green shoes in the future. Green shoes are ugly but in the unlikely scenario of being gifted unpolished green shoes you can always purchase more polish. The same goes for red polish.

Once you have purged at least 10 percent of the closet contents you can start to think about putting items back in the closet. At this stage you should narrow the focus of the closet. Try to store your belongings in categories. Store like items with like items. For example, keep all of your cleaning supplies together. Keep the bottles of cleaner with the rags, brooms, mops and pails. Decide on what the focus of your closet will be. Start with one category. For example, start with cleaning supplies. If there is extra room add another category like extra light bulbs or extra batteries. Small closet organization is easier if you organize the closet in terms of distinct categories.

After you have determined the categories of items, then you can apply your mind to returning the items to the closet. At this point you might want to consider what I refer to as closet infrastructure. For example, are there enough shelves and or hooks? Should you invest in some plastic bins to help keep things sorted out. You may want to move a shelf or add other shelves. Don't make do with what you have just because it is there.

There are excellent small closet organizer systems available. There are pre-fab closet organizers and custom made closet organizers. A quick google search is a helpful way to figure out what might suit you and your closet. You can purchase these systems online or at home hardware stores like Canadian Tire, Lowes or Home Depot. Home Depot has some cheap closet organization systems. If you cannot find something that suits your closet you can order a custom made closet organization system.

Closet organization can be a difficult and relatively mundane task. Get rid of items you never use s a first step. Fortunately there are some good ideas for small closets. You need to be diligent and disciplined. However, if you follow the steps mentioned above you will be well on your way to a well organized small closet.

Does This Clutter Make My Butt Look Big

Clutter, clutter, clutter.

as you may have read in my previous posts. You can buy all the newest closet organizers and closet organization systems on the market and it might not do you any good. I think the biggest obstacle to having an organized closet is that we have too much stuff. When your stuff becomes too much it is no longer referred to as belongings, it is now referred to as clutter.

It now appears that getting rid of clutter isn't just good for your closet it is good for your physical and emotional health.

Peter Walsh has written a wonderful book that links accumulating clutter with eating, food and the body. I found the book insightful and inspiring. He has three prongs to his basic weight loss premise: stop watching tv, start eating meals at home at a table, and get rid of clutter in your life. It sounds simple enough. It twins with my pet peeve that more and more people don't eat their meals at a table.

Check out Peter Walsh's new book.
It has lots of creative new ideas and spins on conventional thoughts about getting rid of clutter and organizing your closets and your life.

Before the Closet Organizing

Most of us would say that organizing our house is a on the top of our lists as a worthwhile goal, but is it a priority? And why is that? Why closet organization so darn difficult? I think that the difficulty with organizing is not getting a system, or actually doing the organizing, but is more about the stuff we are trying to organize. I know with my house, I have such a huge assortment of STUFF, that I just can't seem to find a place for everything, let alone keep it organized.

So really, before we ORGANIZE, should we be looking instead at DECLUTTERING? I am proposing right now that although many people would say "what's the difference?", that in fact they are entirely different concepts.

For example, if I were to try to organize my bedroom closet, I would find:

• new clothes
  
• old clothes
  
• sports clothes
  
• sports equipment
  
• knitting stuff
  
• sewing machine and bag of material
  
• old board games
  
• box of old cds and movies
  
• pictures that didn't go with the new decorating scheme
  
• some old papers and books from school
  
• and more clothes that I will never wear again

That's a pretty big and varied list (yes, my closet is reasonably big). But it's pretty disorganized, and about 1/2 of the stuff I haven't touched in months/years. It's time to organize. Which, what I'm trying to say, means that I will declutter my closet first, then I will have a much better chance of creating an organized closet where I can find things (ie, not everything piled on top of each other).

I've been reading a great website which has a ton of information to help you get in the right mindset for uncluttering your life, and then getting it organized. Like this blog entry about what to do with forgotten closet items ... we save boxes and boxes of old belongings for a reason, but often they are left in closets or basements and never thought of again. If we happen upon them, do we again just blindly 're-organize' them? Or do we take a closer look, and look at the impact of decluttering our lives ... sometimes that means leaving old memories behind, and making room for new ones.