Mom, you may want to be sitting down when you read this post

My mother might actually pass out from the excitement of this post and the accompanying pictures.

I wish I had taken "before" pictures of the closet but basically all you have to do is picture three racks of clothing (one on each wall....one long, and two short) all crammed with so many clothes that you couldn't put anything else on the racks. Then picture stuff from the floor all the way up to the bottom of the clothes and from the shelf over the clothes all the way up to the ceiling. Picture boxes falling everywhere. Purses crammed under foot stools (yes, for some reason we had a foot stool in the closet) and boxes and unused wooden shelving sticking out in such a way you could barely close the door to get to the clothing bar behind the closet door. In short, picture a really full, really messy and there you have it.


We're not 100% done with the closet yet. Lincoln has two shelves he can use if he wants and there are two shelves that we'll probably moving the bedding to when we clean out the linen closet in the bathroom. Also, the empty top shelf above the drawers is where the Tivo and cable box go as they're fed through the wall to the TV on the other side. Finally, we actually have one empty drawer that I'm not sure what we'll use it for but I'm sure we'll find a use.

Okay Mom.....time to be proud of us!

The stuff from the closet. This is just the stuff from under and over the clothes racks.

Getting the supplies ready:

The old single rack across the closet:

The clothes from the closet:

Installing the new shelves. This process might have broken a lesser marriage. Note to self, don't start these projects late at night after a long day.

The new TWO-tier racks and four shelves. On the right there are four shelves. Two are currently empty (Lincoln's), along with my two, which contain my pajamas, sweatpants, and tank tops. Mom will recognize all those things as the items that lived on top of the dryer because we had no where else to put them. Under the shelves is the mini-fridge. We put that in when we moved into the house thinking we'd stock it with beer and wine for the Master Suite. Instead it ended up being a bottled water and formula fridge. We're finally starting to use it for it's original purpose.

Behind the closet door. There is a shoe rack on the back of the door and behind the door are these drawers containing belts, ties, and shawls, swimsuits and pool towels, and purses/backpacks. Underneath is another shoe rack. Yes, I have both lion slippers and rabbit slippers. I also have sock monkey slippers but those live under my desk in the office.

More behind the door stuff. The shoe rack hangs on the back of the closet door. Above the closet door is Lincoln's hat rack. Above the drawers you can see the additional empty shelves for the bed linens and the top shelf (and wires) for the Tivo/Cable box.

And that's it. Next up is the bathroom linen closet and under the sink cabinets.

Take a deep breath Mom. It's going to be okay. We promise to keep it this way until at least your next visit.