Organization is not my strong suit. My closets are piled from top to bottom. I have junk drawers in probably every room, not to mention junk corners for the larger items that don't fit into the drawers. The small size of our house doesn't help. Nor does the fact that it was built in 1926, when rooms were small and closets were smaller. Despite the remodeling and add-ons, we simply could not find the room to store all our stuff. When baby number two came into our lives, two things immediately had to happen:
1.) Project Simplify
2.) Project Build-A-Shed
The first is a work in progress, as it kinda commits to a lifestyle change, and not just a large seasonal donation to Goodwill. The second was thankfully completed this past spring, aiding to a huge step towards my goal of organization.
However, since there is always room for improvement, I have been scouring the depths of
Pinterest for some much needed help in this area. Easily distracted as I am, I got lost looking at colorful home decor, baking goodies that will add inches to my muffin top, and diy projects for every piece of piled up junk in my home. Feeling a lack of creative outlets with too many ideas swirling around this brain, I decided on a project and decided to get started (I mean, the weather is only conducive to painting for a very short period of time).
You've all seen Monkey's adorable rock star room, right?!? Well that adorable painted bedframe? It was my husband and brother-in-law's bunk beds from back in the day. It happened to have an attached dresser. Which we detatched due to lack of space in his 1926 bedroom. Aaaaand....I didn't really like the look to begin with. But his once organized little closet is now piled with bins of clothes that fit him as an infant, blankets stacked so high one falls over every time you open the doors, and bulky Halloween costumes. It needs help. And here's where the dresser comes into play!
Combining my love of organization and diy projects, I am painting his dresser (to match his bed) but with chevron stenciled drawers! I had leftover paint and the dresser....so this looked like a time consuming, but FREE project! SCORE! I
recruited begged my husband for help, since the first step of turning our junk into treasure was quite a deal of hard work.
Here is the before picture:
 |
| And I should add this is after a little work... |
As you can see, my husband and his older brother spent quite the time covering every square inch of this dresser with stickers. Stickers from the doctor, from the grocery store, from car repair shops, and even clothing inspection labels. You name it...they stuck it. It was ridiculous and tacky and I question my in-law's parenting skills.
Serious. No, I'm kidding. But yet
serious. (Mom...I
love you!)
Since my husband's despicable behavior was mostly to blame, I let him do the grunt of the work. But I did ruin my nails by peeling and scraping. Some came off surprisingly well while others disintegrated as you attempted to pry them off. Then came the tools as we tried to get an edge on them. The most stubborn faced the fate of the sander, and then more scraping, and the more sanding, before finally revealing the original wood.
Since my husband invested in this awesome sprayer last year (you know, that you dump in your own bucket of paint, water it down a little, and shoot the stars??) that was my plan of action for this next step. But he insisted that hand painting would work better. Since I am an utter
failure at hand painting, I let him at it without my assistance (which we all know would have created more work and frustration for him anyway).
And here comes spousal argument #1 -- (summarized)
Him: You always have these big projects and I end up doing the
whole thing!
Me: I am perfectly happy doing the painting - SPRAY painting. YOU are the one who insists on hand painting the darn thing and you KNOW you don't want my help with that.
Him: Eer Ugh Eeh (or something else unintelligible).
{**Okay, admittedly it might be slightly exaggerated too, but you get the gist.**}
 |
| I guess we primed THEN painted =) |
We had decided on orange for the body of the dresser, and then white drawers with the orange chevron. So we pulled out our old Behr paint in satin (I hate the finish, but oh well) and he went to work. I kept the kids out of his hair until he was finished and then we called it a day. When we had painted the bed frame we learned it really needed a couple days to cure, so we figured we would pick up where we left off next weekend.
 |
| I guess Monkey learned his posing skills from mama ;) |
Next weekend:
Okay drawer fronts painted white - that was easy! And since this was leftover Benjamin Moore paint (my FAAAAAVE) we knew we could get back to it the next day.
Two weekends later:
Okay. You could
technically insert spousal argument #2 here, but in all honesty we were BUSY the last couple weeks. Though this bulky dresser sitting right outside my sliding glass door was driving me a bit bonkers, so I attempted to take matters into my own hands. I got out the painters tape and the
tutorial on Pinterest for the chevron and realized -- this looks like math. This likes like over-Megan's-head-type-of-math. Then I proceeded to put the tape away and give my husband some grace. To add to that a bunch of our unessential to do list items got pushed on the back burner when great-grandma's health started to decline. Family trumps all - end of story. Well, except this isn't the end of our dresser's story, so I'll continue...
Out comes the painters tape, ruler, orange paint, paint brush...you get the picture. Babe asks how big I want the chevrons, how many rows, ect.
Insert spousal argument #3:
I honestly don't even remember how the argument went exactly, but what it boils down to is that I know exactly what I want but sometimes, I have NO IDEA how to explain it. I am a visual person so lets just say that he would spend the time and effort to tape it all out only for me to tell him it wasn't right. Not good.
On our third try to communicate, my husband nailed it! Then came the tedious process of peel and snip (go check out the tutorial
HERE if you have no idea what I am talking about). Again, I wasn't much help with this so I ran wild with the kids playing squirt guns while he labored over my project. I was going to offer to paint but he was halfway finished before I noticed. But I could see frustration on his face so I came over to check it out -- the paint was not going on smooth, was not covering evenly. He added a second coat to try to make it look better (which it did, mostly) before peeling off the painters tape. But when he started removing the painters tape, the paint literally started PEELING! Now, we have ALWAYS had issues with Behr's satin paint, but this was ridiculous!!!!
Needless to say, we did not do the rest of the drawers. And I am totally BUMMED! Every now and then I will peek at it from a distance and smile because it is exactly what I had pictured....until you get close that is. And you see the hideousness of it. =( So I'm not sure what the next step is. The rest of his dresser is in his closet, with bare white drawers. The chevron drawer is sitting outside awaiting its fate. I would love to see chevrons, but we're not going to repaint all the bedroom furniture.
Anyway. In hindsight, I'm not exactly sure why I thought this was such a great solution for closet organization anyway. All his clothes fit in his dresser great, are easier for Monkey to reach, and stay organized longer. But the dresser is so bulky, I can no longer fit anything on the bottom of his closet (which used to contain tubs of his baby clothes). On the bright side, it has forced me to go through the closet, get rid of stuff we don't need, and make it easier for him. But I can fit much less in the closet now. My husband and I both agreed that overall it was for the best, but just didn't fit my original goal. That's okay though, I'm still happy we did it.
So tell me....what are your tips and tricks for organizing closets and what lengths have you gone to to get it that way? OR...what are your Pinterest fails?!? Please tell me I'm not alone here.
