Closet storage & organization

One of my main "to-do" items before baby comes was to put shelving systems in the kids' closet and living room closet.

I am a firm believer about how much space we waste with one measly rod and shelf... which is what every one of our closets had. With three kids going into one room and loosing 3 drawers from Brooklyn's twin bed when we got the bunk beds, i knew this was something we absolutely had to do to fit all of their clothes. They have one three drawer dresser to share between all of them.

I feel like we actually have pretty good sized closets for our little ranch house :) so why not make the most of them.

Here is the bad before picture...

sorry I just had my phone and we had already emptied most of it out.

Pretty much, things were piled-to-falling-off  on the top shelf and the rod was full with clothes. AND the floor was a mess!!

And here is the "after".

Sorry we had the doors up and Daniel would not have like me very well if I would have asked him to take them back down for pictures.... 

We ripped everything out and gave it a fun coat of yellow paint.

All of Brooklyn & Tuckers clothes are hanging plus stuff for next season. Just there jammies and jeans are folded on the shelves... leaving the whole dresser for baby. 

My "quality over quantity" concept for the kids' clothes makes those shelves look a little sparse... but I guess that means we can keep shoving kids in this room. :)

After spending quite sometime measuring, planning, looking at product in the stores. I quickly realized that hiring this done was WELL worth the money and stress. I don't think we ended up paying more than we would have if we bought everything ourselves... and they had them installed in less than an hour! Definitely worth hiring out on the closet systems!!

Here is the before of our Living room closet. It is huge -at least in my opinion- for a living room "coat closet". I mean back in the 60's when this house was built did they really hang that many coats???

I am not complaining in the least. We obviously chuck that thing full!!! 

Sadly, most of the kids' toys are downstairs... this is just where we put the games, crafts, coloring, puzzles, books, and little toys like pollys and matchbox cars.

Here it is all cleaned out and painted (a very bold yellow for me, but it's behind doors so it's ok) :)

The after's of this one are my favorite... mainly because it looks and is 1000x more organized than before.

... and we still have ample room for coats...  at least now they are not in front of the book case but well above it!

With all the room I even got to move ALL of our photo albums to the closet leaving out built-in for prettier things :) 

{I bought a piece of Plexiglas for the shelf with books so they wouldn't get stuck or fall through the wires.}  

The top shelf you can't see without looking in and up, but has all our games.

If you made it through this long-winded post you deserve a medal! :)

You'd think my nesting instinct would be well satisfied now, it is much better, but i still have a couple more projects up my sleeve for my poor overworked husband. hehe. I just tell him one at a time and watch his reaction. All for a more efficient house, i say! My next one involves a table saw... anyone have on we can make a couple cuts on?!! :)