When you live in one bedroom of your parents home at 30 years old, it's pretty safe to say that you are going to have a space vs. stuff war on your hands. For the past several months, my bedroom has been totally out of control. I HATE living with messes, but I ending up in one about 90% of the time because I just don't seem to have the space to put things where they will feel tidy to me. There are people who can shove a mess under the bed or in a closet or junk drawer and call it a day...out of sight out of mind. Somehow it doesn't work that way in my mind. It nags at me. I'd really rather have a visible mess than a hidden one. It feels dishonest to me to shove a mess under my bed just so my floor looks nice. Of course, the result is that the floor ends up a mess as well as under the bed and the back of the closet and the cubbies in the desk and the dresser drawers. It got to a point where I just couldn't handle it anymore. I ended up taking every single thing out of my closet and from under my bed and everywhere else in the room things were hiding. I took it all down the hall to the guest room and piled it up in there so I could get to work. The plan was to arrange my room to optimize space, get rid of anything I could, and come up with some clever storage ideas.
I wish I had take more before pictures. The closet was a disaster. Clothes were jammed in. Most of the upper shelf was taken up with shoes. The side shelves were just covered in junk that had been thrown in there over the past couple years (at least ever couple years I do a big cleaning and purging). The worst and most stressful part though was what was hiding under my bed...
This horrifying mess is my yarn collection. This is literally decades worth of yarn leftover from various projects of mine or my mothers as well as random yarns I had picked up and never used over the years. I'd had three containers of yarn under the bed, but much of it was a huge tangled up mess. It was unorganized and lots of it was really unusable because of the knotted up mess it was in.
After about a week of sitting on my floor untangling and winding yarn in to center pull balls, I finally had it all separated and untangled. The next problem was what to do with it. I wanted to find a way of storing it so I could see what I have and organized it by color. My mom ended up finding these stacking kitchen shelf things, and they seem to be working really well.
I also got that awesome spinning shoe/purse organizer at Bed Bath & Beyond so I could get my shoes off the top shelf of my closet. I love it! It has shoe pockets on the outside and shelves on the inside for storing purses. It turns all the way around too, so I can easily get to the shoes in the back.
By shifting and organizing my shoes and yarn, I was able to clear up a bunch of closet space. this allowed me to get all my winter clothes that were spilling out of my dresser drawers and piled in bags in the other closet, all nicely folded on shelves. I just don't need them all that often, and I hated having them take up drawer space. Moving them out of the drawers allowed me to get all my t-shirts and shorts off hangers and put neatly into drawers. That really helped my closet look neater.
I completely rearranged my bedroom (all by myself!). My bed had been under that window you see above on the other wall. That white bookshelf had been in the corner where the dresser and TV now are. The TV had been mounted on the wall where the book shelf is, but I didn't like it because you could see cables hanging everywhere and it wasn't comfortable for watching in bed. I was pretty dang impressed with myself for taking that off the wall, setting up the dresser stand that I hadn't been using since it was on the wall and figuring out how to rewire the whole thing so that the TV, Wii, VCR, and DVD player all properly ran through the surround sound. In the picture below you can see that little white door. It leads to a closet area that goes under our stairs to the second floor. Most of it is my mom's space and comes out with another door in the hallway next to the stairs, but part of it is mine. I keep my Christmas decorations, old toys, books, etc in there. I'd had my dresser in there too, but I ended up taking it out to put the TV on. I'm much happier with this solution. It makes it way easier to get to my clothes. The secretary desk used to be over by where the white book shelf is now.
In the picture below, you can see my hope chest under the window. It had been in the closet under all the hanging clothes for a long time. It drove me CRAZY there. It made the long clothes bunch all up, and stuff was always falling behind it. Not to mention it just looked tacky. I could never figure out how to fit all the furniture in my room at once though. I'd had a big arm chair and ottoman in my room for a long time. I really like it, and it was nice to have a place to sit other than my bed. However, I really didn't use it that often. It kind of became a place to throw clothes and stuff, and it took up a TON of space. I finally decided to take it out of my room. My mom said she'd use it somewhere else in the house. Getting that out of the room made enough space to be able to get my dresser and hope chest out of the closets. Crazy to think one chair was taking up that much useable space.
I'm really happy with my room right now. Everything is neat and orderly, and that makes me happy. I still need to tackle that under the stairs closet as it could use some organizing too, but I'm going to put that off a bit long. My bathroom is in pretty serious need of a makeover as well. My dad is supposedly going to make me some shelving for it, so when that's all done, I'll probably post pictures.
