A Place for Everything

All these life conveniences are not really a convenience because they clutter up your house. This is true to me. I am every day working into finding a place for everything, so there is nothing random sitting on my counters or anywhere in my house. I just don't like messes. Period. 

In the past [almost] two years, I have been trying to figure out a place for all these kitchen electrics I have. I thought, stuffing them in random places all over the house was a good fix until I stubbed my toe for the 500th time with the bread machine that is sitting on the floor of my walk-in closet the other day. Then, I had to finally put my [screaming in pain] foot down and do something about this storage problem.

Now, let me make something clear, we do not lack places to store stuff. We just haven't done anything to any of our storage spaces, including my walk-in closet, to make them work for us... until the past weekend.

I hate showing before photos but here's our utility closet. It's shameful and sad. I don't know why I waited so long to address this.

And here's what it looked like after three days of painting, scrubbing and $40 worth of materials...

We had pretty much everything we needed to get this project done except for the 1" x 12" boards that we used for shelving. This room will be a work in progress for a while but I am just happy that I will not be stubbing my toe in my closet anymore or searching for hours trying to remember whether something is in the attic, in the storage building in the old house, or buried in the coat closet.

I am thankful I have a husband who understands my woes and knows how to do things and is not scared to learn new stuff and help me make all these crazy ideas of mine come to fruition... as long as I don't ask him to paint. lol That room needed a good paint job. I don't really know when it was painted last.

Sorry about the quality of some of the photos, they are all taken with my phone and posted on  Instagram. I painted the laundry room the same grey I painted my kitchen. It is called Silverplate from Sherwin Williams in Cashmere. I love the creamy low luster finish on it, the washability and durability too. I used SW Daffodil on the stencil work.

I got the stencil way back in the fall from Cutting Edge Stencil it's called Cassablanca All Over. It is easy to do but not really if you are impatient. I love the results I got, but the odds of me doing this again in my house is pretty slim unless it is the only way to go. It is very meticulous and time consuming. Your hard work does pay off though!

Then we applied these pieces that will  hold up the shelves and carry the weight. I did have to kind of do a little bit of work on the edges of them. They looked a little crazy.

That's my husband, John [above] painting the wall braces. He did have to paint to give me a break from   stenciling. How chivalrous! :)

This is the right corner. I did order some organizers for my baking sheets and cake pans. They won't just be sitting there looking like they do in the photo very long. I promise.

And of course, I had to make sure there is space for the Margaritaville essentials on the very top shelf... Although they aren't all up there yet! 

We are still working on making the bottom part more efficient. We definitely need some storage bins. One really good buy is the new light that replaced the ceiling fan. I wanted to DIY the lighting but I just didn't want to mess with it any longer. I just wanted this part done so I can move on to overhauling my kitchen next.

I do have to say that tackling this closet has emptied the kitchen island, all of my tall cabinets, and a couple bottom cabinets in my kitchen. Woot! I hated it every time I needed a stock pot and I had to pull out 10 different pans out to get to it. Now, I don't have to do that anymore! 

Also, I am an out of sight out of mind kind of girl. If I don't see it, it never gets used. This is why my house is organized where [if I could help it] I could see everything at a glance. Check out my kitchen here. 

I used to have trouble keeping track of how much pasta, sugar, flour, chocolate chips or coffee I had because they were all crammed in a cabinet so I kept buying them every time I feel like a craving to make pasta or bake or cook comes around. Then I would end up with piles and piles of the same thing. So my husband came up with this solution. Why not make everything be where I could see everything. And since then, we saved a lot of money and trips to the store because I knew what I had and I can see it from where I plan and prep meals. 

The same thing also shows in my [old] craft room here.

The new craftroom is taking a cleaner approach since it is in the very front of our current house. It is the first thing you see as you walk in to the foyer. I don't want it to look too messy because it does get messy in there from all the work that I do. It's all about pretty storage solutions, really.

It's just exciting that my utility closet has been finally addressed and is now making good sense.

Until the next project!!!