Closets. Part 2

All it took was one week of me putting clothes away in the girls' closet vs our closet and I was begging/demanding Dave to redo ours.  Wow!  I was going to lose it!  Not only was our clothes a mess but they were stored in multiple rooms because we didn't have enough room in our bedroom closet. Nothing was in order and our shelving system wasn't very useful. We were short on space and both of us had fought over clothes storage multiple times. It was beyond frustrating.

Now with our new Elfa closet both of us have all our clothes in our room.  Dave actually has so much room left over he has empty drawers. All my clothes are now neatly stored.  It's much easier to pull things out and put things away.  We swapped sides in the closet because Dave often has to leave for work very early. By switching sides his clothes are easier to get to so there's less chance he may wake us up while getting dressed.  

This is Dave's side before. There was only hanging clothes and most of it was mine.  

Now this is Dave's side.  He now has all his shirts, pants, workout wear, tee shirts, shoes, belts and sweaters in here.  Previously he had his half of the closet plus a dresser.  Now he has the closet and two drawers in the dresser. The rest are now for me!

This was my side of the closet before. You can see what a mess it was.  The shelves were so far apart that all my piles toppled over.  Look at the wasted space between my shoes and my clothes!  It was awful! It was always a mess. I was embarrassed for anyone to see how I kept my clothes.  And this wasn't everything. I had to go into our guest bedroom for my bras, underwear and socks!  

This now my side!  What a difference!  Everything is in order!  Everything is neat!  I can see it all and getting dressed isn't so hard. Before I use to think I know I have a black long sleeve, v-neck shirt but I haven't seen it forever!  That's because it was balled up under other shirts. Our new arrangement also freed up space in the dresser that use to be all Dave's.  Now I have 5 drawers so I can keep all my socks and "unmentionables" in the same room with the rest of my clothes. 

The beauty of being this organized is that I don't want to shop for clothes!  Go figure!  Because everything has a place and I have limited space for each category I know when I need something and when I don't.  If I do buy a new long sleeve shirt, I know I need to get rid of one because there just isn't enough room for more.  This may not seem like much clothes but my goal for the last 10 years has been to become like a sophisticated European woman.  They dress impeccably with very little clothes.  They have better quality items and  less overall. That's my goal. 

The Container Store did the installation again.  They are fast, good and well priced.  The only thing we had to do was pull out all the clothes and previous shelving. They actually came in and filled in the holes and did touch up paint.  It was perfect!  Here's Dave pulling out the last of the shelving and doing a pre-clean up.  

I'm so glad to have these closets!  This one was $1300 including installation and delivery.  If you wanted to save you could do your own installation and pick up the pieces. It looked pretty easy to do. But these days with Dave working so much and me juggling the kids we figured the easier route was better for us.   

  

Closets. Part 1

Part of my daily routine consists of the following: feed the baby, bathe the baby, dress the baby. At least three times a day this is the agenda.  All of the above happens mostly single handedly because I'm carrying Gemma in one hand while doing whatever it is I need to do.  The most frustrating part of the routine was dressing the baby. Our closet system was horrible.  As with any 50's home, storage is rather minimal. Closet space really has to be utilized and ours was not.  Gemma's side of the closet was one big stuffed ball of clothes.  I couldn't dress her with one hand because if I pulled a shirt out an entire stack of clothes would follow. 

And, I guess I should add for those who aren't familiar with the chaos of multiple kids; I'm rarely just dressing one.  I'm grabbing clothes and going because I'm dressing one while trying to coerce the other to dress herself, or helping with homework, or reading, or just simply trying to give two little people attention at the same time.  Add a pile of clothes falling onto the floor three times a day and it's enough to make me go nuts.  

For Christmas all I asked for was a new closet system.  I'm over sexy Christmas gifts!  Can you tell?  Right now I just want whatever makes my daily life easier. Sanity is the best gift.  Calm. Peace. Easy routine. That's all I seek.  

Dave had a hard time with the concept of giving me a new closet. How was he going to wrap it? How could it be a surprise?  Would he get yelled at like the year I yelled at him for giving me a blender? Btw, I was expecting an engagement ring that year so anything other than that was going to get him a yelling.  And finally it took a yelling for the ball to start rolling on getting a new closet. 

The Elfa system at the Container Store goes on sale every year in January to mid February.  I wanted to take advantage of it for 30% off parts and installation. I took the two girls with me one day to the Pasadena store and started the initial design.  They have so many configurations that it can be quite daunting. Thankfully they have designers who will help you and basically design the space for you to best suit your needs.  

I did however, started the process at home by taking measurements of the closet and then writing down every category I needed space for: socks, tights, hats/scarves, dresses-coats-all hanging stuff, sweaters, and on and on.  When I got to the store I was able to see their options and know immediately where they would work best.  

The girls' new closet is amazing.  I can't even explain how much easier it is to get things in and out. Here is the same space before and after. As usual, I forgot to take more pictures of the before. The only items we had taken out were the hanging clothes which were right where P is standing.

The space is so much better utilized that I actually had empty spaces now!  Imagine that! Empty space in the closets! It's like hidden gold! We also have a hook where we can hang an outfit for the following morning. It's little things like this that can make a morning run so much smoother.  

This is Gemma's side.  The pull out drawers make it easy to grab her clothes with one hand. Now, the shelves are properly spaced out. I have more of them and my stacks of linens aren't falling over.  There's not just the girls clothes in this closet! There's bed linens for all year around as well and...

...I even have a few drawers for clothes she'll grow into.  One challenge with storing kid's clothes is that they grow through stuff so quickly.  You need a section for clothes to come, which could be in a month or a year, and clothes you want to store for the next kid line .  The girls were born in opposite seasons so with some things Gemma is just getting to wear them for a little bit because she outgrew them or the weather changed. 

I made sure to put clothes at P's height.  Things that she can grab for herself like socks, sweaters, hats I placed in drawers down low.  It's made our getting out the door process easier and putting things away easier.

This is now my "morning control station".  I sit on the stool with both girls where almost all of their clothes are at arm's length between the closet and the low dresser.  Girl's can be a challenge to dress. Fortunately, P is very accommodating and the getting dressed process is very smooth. We don't fight. I feel we compromise pretty well on what she'll wear but I also think that how we have this set up makes it easy to make choices for both of us.  Just about everything is at her level so she can grab it all herself.  I'm not sure how long this phase lasts. I keep hearing other parents tell me their girls dress themselves but P still wants me to be a part of the process.  Quite frankly, I'm happy about it. I like this time together.  

Anyway, this closet was done for about $1100. I like that nothing is permanent.  Some other  systems I saw wouldn't give me the flexibility of moving drawers and rods as the girls grew.  Elfa seemed to give me the best solution for the least amount of money while still being well built.  All it took was one week of me putting clothes away in this closet vs our closet for me to ask Dave for another closet. Ours was next! 

Drying Rack

Summer is officially over but the weather in Southern California doesn't play along with the official Labor Day notice.  We're in high swimming season in our heat.  With daily swimming comes a daily 10 pounds of wet towels and suits. They inevitably end up draped all over our patio furniture or on every door, towel rack or hook around the house.  

One of my pet peeves is towels draped on doors or over shower curtain rods.  The towels end up covered in regular dust from doors or black dust from shower curtain rings.  I also have a thing about drying off from a shower with a towel that was used to dry off from the pool or ocean.  If you're clean and you use a chlorinated or salt water towel to dry off you're technically not clean any more.  It's a bit OCD, I know, but I swear I can smell the chlorine or sea water on a person when that's what they've done.  Yes, I have a "dog-grade" nose. 

One day while browsing Remodelista, as I often do, I saw this drying rack.  I had to get it!  I love it! It now keeps all our wet stuff all in one handy dandy place.  Only problem is the rack is very light weight. If it's placed in certain spots in our back patio the wind blows it over and sometimes right into the pool clothes, towels and all.  Dave hates that about it.  I may try to strategically weigh it down with weights in the middle or we have to keep it in this one place where the wind doesn't catch it. I like that I can lift the dowels out to add or subtract a spot to hang things.  It also rotates which is convenient when grabbing all the clothes off to do laundry.  

The drying rack has a certain European flair to it. Not sure my pictures capture it but it does look pretty cool and I've gotten lots of compliments.   If you're interested you can find it here.  

Living Room Changes

We're like ants moving piles of sand back and forth over here.  We made changes to the guest bedroom.  Which caused us to move all our books, both in storage and on a shelf, out of that room and into the living room.  We always intended to have a wall of books in the living room but it's taken 4 years to make it happen. 

We decided on the Helix bookcases from CB2. Four of these fit the intended wall perfectly. We pulled almost all of our books out of storage and now have them out on display for easy access. Oddly enough, it's our 4-year old who really enjoys going through them. 

Before putting the bookcases up we had to repaint the wall. P loved to help. But just like the last time she helped me paint a wall she found this type of painting to have "too many rules" and "not fun". I was still happy that she wanted to help.  It's the storm before the calm that prohibits me from doing projects like these any faster.  I hate this stage of the process.   Furniture is moved, books everywhere, complete chaos! I hate it!

Another big change was getting rid of the big tv!  You may remember seeing this great big black box in most of our living room pictures...or maybe not. I tried to hide it as much as possible.

Dave bought the TV before we were even together.  The picture quality is still great but we can't connect it to any online devices; ie Apple TV, Hulu, Netflix, etc.  We decided to downsize in screen size and take advantage of the black Friday sales after Thanksgiving.  Online access on the TV may not seem so important but we got rid of cable almost a year ago and now just watch what we really want to watch from all the online apps.  No more $200/month cable bills!  It justified getting a new TV.

Just in time for the holidays our living room that once looked like this, now looks like this:

In it's previous location, the TV got glare from almost every window. In it's new spot we get no glare. Watching TV during the day is enjoyable and I can even watch from the kitchen and dining room.

 Before, the far left couch was all the way up against the wall. The spacing was odd in relation to the fireplace. Now with the bookcase on that wall the couch is pushed in closer  to the fireplace and the other couch which created a more intimate sitting area.  The entire room feels cozier. 

 

There will forever be toys in this room. It just is what it is with small children in the house. I've come to find it soothing instead of a mess.  We do try to keep it somewhat contained.

This is the view from the hallway as you enter the house. I love the new bookcases and all those books meeting us every time we enter.