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Thursday, August 14th, 2008
Today, I’m letting you inside the worst place in my house – the bedroom. I don’t show this room to guests because it’s too, too embarrassing. Only a select few have seen inside the Dungeon of Clutter. And yet, here on the Internet, where everyone and their mama can see, I apparently have no problem showing it off.
Admittedly, I didn’t photograph the heap of clothes on top of Darwin’s dresser, the dust bunnies in the corner (actually I did just vacuum), the unpacked suitcase from back in March (hey, all those clothes are out of season now, so what’s the point?), or the 8-12 pairs 15-17 pairs of shoes on the floor at all times (I just went and counted – ouch, that’s a lot).
But, as promised, here’s photographic evidence of the closet situation in our bedroom:
I chose a pic that shows some additional clutter, so you can really assess the situation. It’s not pretty.
I need to find some way to make this closet stick out less like a sore thumb. The closet doors are fairly nice and work fine, but the color of the wood doesn’t match the dark Eastlake furniture I bought a while back. At some point in the future, I’d like the bedroom to be a little more unified in theme – not matchy-matchy necessarily but at least not look like the reject room at the back of the Salvation Army.
Right now, our bedroom furniture is a big mishmash – a light wood 1940s-ish armoire, a 1970s-ish pale yellow painted chest of drawers with green flowers and a matching nightstand, two white nightstands, an off-white iron bed, the Eastlake dresser, and a whitish bench with a yellow gingham cushion. Some of this furniture came from my childhood/teenagerhood bedroom – the bed, one of the nightstands, the bench – and the rest I’ve collected at various yard sales and auctions. (Darwin came to this marriage with a bag of clothes, a gun, and a four-wheeler.)
One day I’d like to replace the 1970s dresser with a more attractive dark wood one (what was I thinking when I bought that thing anyway? $75 for two pieces – all right!) and trade out the armoire for a darker one we keep in the front bedroom. Then we’ll rig up the Eastlake headboard (currently it’s a slightly-smaller-than-full-size) to use behind our queen bed, and move in the Eastlake nightstand.
But then what about those pesky closet doors? They’ll still be the wrong color. Can you stain closet doors? Is it even worth it to stain closet doors? Or should we paint them to match the trim color (white)? Or should we take them down and replace them with curtains? AHHHHH, it makes my head spin.
Meanwhile, the rest of the room is a cluttered dee-saster. Fortunately, I’ve been watching Clean House and recently bought Linda Koopersmith’s genius book The Beverly Hills Organizer’s Home Organizing Bible. Her major focus is on drawers, and she advocates folding everything neatly and putting them in a drawer in a way that gives you a “bird’s eye view” of all your stuff. I don’t know why I never thought of this before!
I hardly ever use drawers because you can never find anything, and they so quickly become a big mess. Darwin uses the 70′s dresser for his shirts, and I swear to you he hasn’t opened one of these drawers in more than a year. He just keeps wearing the same four shirts, washing them, then wearing them out of the laundry pile without ever putting them away. When he complains about not having anything to wear, I open the drawer and pull out something he hasn’t seen in 6 months.
But if we use Koopersmith’s method – which I plan to eventually convert to (she says only do one drawer at a time, or you’ll quickly get burnt out) – maybe we’ll both be a little more organized in the clothing department. I can quit buying new stuff as much, and Darwin can add a little variety to his wardrobe.
The first drawer I tackled was my underwear drawer. I should’ve taken a before picture. It was – and has always been – a jumbled mess. The stuff I didn’t like was on the bottom taking up too much room, and the stuff I did like was overflowing the top of the drawer to the point I couldn’t get the the drawer shut. I kept my bras in a box, but it was on top of the dresser and, more often than not, I just tossed the bras at it rather than neatly folding them and putting them in the box.
Koopersmith advocates using “bra boxes” and “underwear boxes” to keep your stuff sorted, but rather than spend $5 a box, I found several shoeboxes in my Stack of Shoeboxes That I Keep Because They May Have a Use Someday, and hey – it turns out they do have a use!
Taking all my undies out of the drawer to fold them also let me see just how many of them I hated for various reasons and never wore, and how many had shot elastic or holes in inconvenient places (or convenient, depending on your usage). I tossed the junky ones and relegated the unappealing ones to a drawer in another room because I figured who would want to buy used underwear?
All that left me with so much more space in the drawer, that my bras now fit in it, too. And it closes! It’s miraculous! Just like Linda Koopersmith said, I feel such a sense of accomplishment, and I’m not burnt out!
Here’s the fabulous result:
On the other end of the drawer my bras fit neatly inside!
And now just writing about it, I’m motivated to go organize one of Darwin’s T-shirt drawers!
The closet in your bedroom is pretty much what I’m looking to build in mine…although hopefully mine will start out like what you are trying to turn yours into.
Honestly, I think you should paint the doors white, not only will it go with your woodwork; but with the other doors. I had a closet in my first house that I took off the doors and used curtains instead, it was nice; but doors are soooo much better.
Go with your gut and don’t look back.
I’m not a fan of doors on the closet – curtains fall back into place, and I’m too lazy to close a door.
But I’d go with curtains for a different reason. If you match the curtain color as closely as possible to the wall color, the closet will visually recede into the wall – won’t look like the clunky add-in it is. Alternatively, I’d paint the existing doors the color of the wall.
In the picture, it’s the top set of doors that really stands out to me. I think you should put curtains there (perhaps trick your mind into thinking windows are up there). I’m not sure if I would put curtains on the bottom but if you leave the doors I would paint them so they blend better.
Hmmm. I like the idea of curtains, but doors do keep small children and pets from waltzing right in. Painted to blend with the trim might be nice. I also like the idea of curtains on the top.
I had to laugh at what Darwin brought to the marriage.
Lynn
I think you should either paint the doors white (because it seems your trim is painted white) or replace them with custom wood doors that are dark wood, similar to your Eastlake stuff. I actually (although I love wood) think that with the doors painted white, they would fade away into the rest of the room, and make the nice furniture you’re bringing in, stand out.
ps: Good job on the drawer organization. Your underwear drawer sounds just like mine! (And I’m sure every other woman in North America, lol).
Here’s my humble suggestion: get cafe curtain rods (the little round ones, think 1/2 inch, that fit into tiny end brackets) and mount them to the top and bottom of each door front. Curtains are easy, just a pocket at the top and a pocket at the bottom and voila, curtains with the ease and security of doors! If you could picked a color that matches your paint they’d blend in. As for the yellow dresser: dark brown paint–close enough to match the eastlake. Pick your favorite piece of furniture and start matching towards it. You could paint the wicker a fun accent color too! Congrats on the organizing. It is so nice to have an efficient system!
we have a very similiar closet in our downstairs guest bedroom. the previous owner used that as her master and since the house was built in 1885 there was no closet. in the 1950s she put in something VERY similiar to your’s except when they put it in they also dropped the ceilings four feet so when we restored the bedroom last fall our closet ends at 8′ instead of 12′. anyway…
here’s the before picture (but after the dropped ceiling was removed): http://s292.photobucket.com/albums/mm12/ntcooper528/?action=view¤t=beforecloset.jpg
and here’s our ‘solution’ for the time being (enventually we want to have a custom piece built like another closet in our house that’s *beauitful*…but until then):
http://s292.photobucket.com/albums/mm12/ntcooper528/?action=view¤t=closetafter.jpg
my wife uses old (washed) underwear as dust rags. just don’t let the neighbors catch you rubbing down the dining room table with them =)
I totally agree with Annette! That will totally look great!
Now why didn’t I think of painting the dresser?
I think that closet doors should be kept, because as someone pointed out, they keep kids and pets out of them so much better. I would paint them white or pale yellow to match the walls, and i do think that it would show off your furniture so much better. Good luck.
I also like curtains on closets. And, boy, are your ceilings really that tall? Love it. Keep going on the decluttering. I know it takes forever!
NEVER throw away a shoe box! I keep ‘em all, regardless of how big or small (and those little ones for baby and childrens’ shoes are very useful indeed). All of our drawers which contain small items–junk, desk, underwear, kitchen, etc.–are organized with various sizes of shoe boxes to contain our socks, undies, paper clips, plastic-clip thingies for bags, sunglasses and so on. Even all the kids’ drawers are organized like this. And a tip for expectant parents: shoe boxes are perfect for organizing and storing those tiny socks, onesies, binkies, etc. Tiny t-shirts and onesies can be folded and put in the box “sideways” so that you can see all those tiny shirts and onesies at a glance and take out the one you need. No need to dig through stacks or always find yourself taking only the ones from the top.
Never throw away a shoe box. They are sanity savers! ;-)
P.S. You can use large shoe boxes (or other appropriately-sized boxes or baskets) on cupboard shelves as well, where many small items have to be stored, such as in a bathroom, where there are thousands of bottles of shampoos, conditioners, liquid soaps, hair sprays and gels, tiny bottles of nail varnish….the list goes on. Just sort these items into whatever order suits best and into boxes and you no longer need to dig through a shelf full of bottles and such to reach something at the back, knocking everything else over in the process. Or thinking you are out of an item that is actually hidden at the back. Simply pull the box out and you can view all the contents, front to back, with no trouble at all.
I love boxes.