Obsession: Organization

I've been bitten by the organization bug for a while. It was maybe a year ago that I spent a couple of weeks finally organizing a huge bag of photos I'd been dragging around with me for years into an album of at least a near approximation of chronological order. Alert readers will remember that around that same time I organized my junk drawer.

A short time later I got turned on to The Container Store and, most recently, I've been into Real Simple.

In the past, my idea of being organized amounted to congratulating myself if my socks matched or feeling smug if I could locate my tax records in under an hour. This whole disorganized condition was exacerbated by having a son who, it turned out, somehow possessed the ability to retain an almost encyclopedic knowledge of where everything was located in our chaotic household. Many is the frantic morning before work I can remember pacing around smoking nervously while a five or six-year-old Chase unearthed my car keys from behind a throw pillow or found my favorite black flats after I'd somehow managed to kick them off behind a door.

When Chase grew up and moved on, among the swirl of emotions I felt was also, very incidentally, the fear that I would never, left to my own devices ever, be able to find anything again.

But, gradually, I got better. And lately, I've been on what can only be described as a tear. I went from my junk drawer to the back porch, from the back porch to my dresser drawers, from there to the utility closet, to my own closet which has, at this point, undergone several organization attempts that haven't entirely taken.

This passed week has been a little nuts.

I've re-done my dresser drawers, my closet, and, saints preserve us, I've even finally tackled the dreaded Linen Closet. And all I can say about that is two words: Space Bags.

Run, don't walk to the nearest WalMart and invest in some yourself. It really is true, you can cram a TON of CRAP into them, vacuum the air out, and store said things in a third of the space they used to take up. Check out the top shelf of my linen closet:


In total, those bags contain four blankets, two quilts, a queen sized bedspread, assorted textiles, some curtains, and one hideously ugly afghan made by Satan's insane (and quite possibly color blind) Aunt Ruth. Actually, you can see the afghan in that middle bag? That bright yellow, maroon, orange and white thing on the left? Yah, that's it. We're saving that. No, NO you can't have it!

ANYWAY...the point is that before these items were space bagged, they were taking up approximately one half of my shelf space and they are now stored in less than one half of a shelf.

Here is the finished linen closet and, please note, EMPTY SHELF SPACE, the Holy Grail of organization.

I've also purchased shoe storage boxes which are storing my out of season and little worn footwear.

And, finally, a partial shot of my closet.

I'd love to stay and write more, but my frozen foods need alphabetizing and after that I need to re-stack my paper clips.