Spring is almost here! I always get in the mood to refresh our space when the weather starts to warm up. So today, we tackled Peyton’s closet. Like most closets, it’s out of control! As you can see it is bad. She has just been tossing it all in and letting it pile up. This is causing her and I a lot of stress in the morning as we try and get ready to leave the house. She can’t find her shoes, she can’t find socks or the dress she wants to wear. It’s literally driving me nuts and making me late to work because it’s leading to Peyton meltdowns when she can’t find what she wants every morning. So, we are going to change that. Today, we are decluttering, organizing and cleaning this closet!
At first look, this closet is overwhelming! There is so much going on. We have toys everywhere, shoes tossed in there with a bunch of clothes jammed in too. So our first step was to empty out the closet. That’s right, we took everything out. I put it all on the floor or bed or whatever available space there was in her room. Once the closet was completely empty I used my steam mop to clean and sanitize the floor. Surprisingly it wasn’t that bad. But then again, there was so much crap on that floor that it probably took all the dirt and what not, protecting the floor.
Once the floor dried I started to hang back up her dresses. Peyton loves her Dot Dot Smile dresses, as you can see she has an extensive collection. I decided to hang her dresses up by style, first I did the cap sleeve dresses, then the tank dresses, then the empire dresses and lastly I filled in with her fancy dresses and other sundresses that were not Dot Dot Smile. Now she can easily see which dress she wants to wear!
On the other rack, I decided to hang all her jackets and sweaters together. This time of year she going to need to layer so having it all in one place will make it easy for her to find the perfect layer each morning. I will share this, my favorite hangers are the velvet hangers. The clothes stay on them so much better than plastic ones. And as you can see, I ran out of velvet hangers. But they are on my list! So I will be changing out all her hangers for velvet ones in the next week. The clothes fall off the plastic ones. Plus the plastic ones are larger so they take up more space.
Our other problem was Peyton’s shoes. She’s a fashionista. This girl has shoes! I had tried a shoe basket but that didn’t work out. All her shoes would get dirty and she could not see what she had so this time I opted for a shoe rack. I know it’s a little unconventional but I decided to put it up on her shelf. She’s not using that space for clothes and this way it’s up off the ground. So I put together a shoe rack and we started looking for matching pairs of shoes. For a kid that tells me she never had any tennis shoes, I was surprised I found a few pairs. She just didn’t know where they were. And I also found sandals! So no need to do any shoe shopping right now. Peyton was very excited to find all her shoes and see what she has. It was also a good time to go through and get rid of all the shoes that are too small for her.
That top shelf in her closet was full. Tons of toys that she never even plays with! So I made Peyton sit down and go through the pile of games and toys. She sorted them into 2 piles, one to keep and one to get rid of. I will admit, I was surprised that she decided to get rid of over half the toys that were up there. When I was done placing her games back on the top shelf we had over half the space still clear! It was a huge open space. I never thought we would have that much open space on that shelf but I’m glad we do. I had always wanted to put her American Girl dolls up there. She does play with them but I hate that they just sit on the floor or in a corner when she’s done. Those dolls are expensive and I much rather have them sitting on a shelf where they can be protected from daily chaos. Now they can. We gathered all of Peyton’s dolls and placed them on the shelf.
Now we have the top shelf organized, the clothes hung, now it’s time to move to that floor. This was by far the worse of her closet. You could not even see the floor when we started. The brown organizer is for her socks and underwear. I find it easiest to have them in the closet with her clothes. She’s already in there picking out a dress and shoes why not grab your socks and underwear while you are in there too?
We also have 2 organizers for doll clothes. Peyton is huge into American Girls so naturally, she has a ton of clothes as well. She got her first Bitty Baby when she was 3, then came the twins a few years later and then the American Girls shortly after that. With over 5 years of collecting clothes for Bitty Baby, Bitty Twins and 18″ Dolls we need somewhere to put it all. And this works.
I also got Peyton a large bin to put her stuffed animals in. I did manage to get her to part with a few but for the most part, they got to stay so we needed somewhere to put them all. In the bin, they went! I just wanted them up off the floor, this was a good compromise.
Peyton and I worked as a team on this closet and it took us a day. It probably could’ve been done faster but I didn’t want to rush her, she was making some tough choices on what to part with. Overall I think we did a great job. Peyton’s closet is now organized, she can find exactly what she needs and I am happy because I can see the floor and I don’t feel like I want to scream when I look inside.
So, the only expenses for this closet makeover were the shoe rack, velvet hangers, and the bin. The bin we already had so I just repurposed it. The velvet hangers I had to buy another pack and later I will be buying one more pack to switch out the plastic hangers. The shoe rack was probably my favorite improvement.
We are going to be going room by room over the next few months. Showing you how we are reducing our clutter, using furniture in non-traditional ways and showing you some multi-purpose furniture as well. If you have a problem area in the home you are looking for a solution, please, message me! I’ll give you some suggestions and we may even do a piece on it. Because, trust me, if you have the question/problem, there are many many more moms and dads out there with the same one.
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