Project Organized Closet (Part 2)

Scarves! I don't know about you, but with every closet I've had and every scarf organizational system I've tried, keeping my scarves in order has always been a problem. It's gotten pretty ridiculous since I started college three years ago, a.k.a since I move to one of the snowiest cities in the US and my mom who knits insisted I needed plenty of heavy knitted scarves. Love her and the scarves, though (please excuse the state of my bedroom. I know, it's a hot mess):

I don't know if you can tell from this picture, but I did have my scarves on a hanger with shower curtain rings. Just in case you can't see what the problem is with heavy scarves hanging from a hanger like this, here it is:

This was ALWAYS happening. I guess I didn't think about the fact that I have two cats who love climbing around our closet (even though they know they're not supposed to) when I decided to give this system a try (found here). Don't get me wrong. I still think this could be an awesome system for scarf organization. But it's not for me. So then the question was, what was for me? Before I had my scarves on a hanger, I had them in a drawer (like this one). Obviously, that didn't work because the scarves would get all wrapped and tangled around one another from me digging around in the drawer, taking things out, putting things back in again... And the drawer was almost too small to fit all my scarves. 

I started thinking about what would work for me. It wasn't long before I found my answer. I forgot to take a picture of what it looked like empty, but you can take a look at it here. So far, I love that this organizer is metal and more than strong enough to hold my heavy knitted scarves. And the price is great. So, here's my scarves all newly organized and pretty and right next to my newly organized and pretty purses:

Pretty, right? And with plenty of empty scarf-spaces to fill! :D

Project Organized Closet (Part 1)

Over the weekend, I decided to tackle a big problem that had been plaguing my and my boyfriend's closet: My shoes and purses. Now, my boyfriend's suggestion was to simply get rid of all but one pair of shoes and all but one purse. I know! Appalling, right? For obvious reasons, I wasn't going to do that. :) Really, it's not that I have a ridiculous amount of shoes and purses. Not yet, anyway. :-P But the shoes and purses I do have wind up all over the floor of our decent size walk-in closet. At least, before this weekend.

So, to start, I'll show you pictures of what our closet looked like before I started my project:

This is what you see to the left of the closet door (my side).

This is what you see looking straight into the closet.

This is what you see to the right of the closet door (boyfriend's side).

And this is the floor.

So basically, the problem was that there was nowhere to put  a lot of our stuff that we keep in our closet. Along with my purses and shoes, there was nowhere to put my boyfriend's hiking/camping backpack, his two rifles and his one shotgun. So all this stuff just wound up in the middle of the closet. 

The first part to be tackled was the purses. I've tried several purse organizers over the years. For one reason or another, they don't work out. But when I was at Bed, Bath, & Beyond last week, I found one that I haven't tried before and looked like it might work. I forgot to take a picture of it when it was empty so you could see its design but here it is on Bed Bath & Beyond's website.

If you'll notice, this product has one review and it's very low. So far, I think the exact opposite of what that review says. Well, not the exact opposite. I do agree that the holders at the bottom are so low that anything you put on them would probably just sit on the floor but this organizer has enough holders at the top and middle that I don't see myself needing the bottom ones/. The material this organizer is made of is fairly tough. Canvas, maybe? Anyway, at $9.99, I'm happy with the quality. Mine has got quite a bit of weight on it and is holding up great. I even put my belts on there. Well, the two that I don't wear often. The one I always wear is kept on an organizer I have hanging on the back of our bedroom door.

Anyway, here are my purses now:

Pretty, right?  And yes, my purses are on my boyfriend's side of the closet. He sweetly agreed to give me some space on his side of our closet.

An unexpected plus to organizing your purses? Finding the digital camera that went MIA months ago! I found it in one of the purses I was carrying months ago but haven't touched since. Yay! Such a relief!

Next, were my shoes. I started by looking into different shoe organizers. Like purse organizers, I've always had bad luck with shoe organizers. I knew an over-the door shoe organizer wouldn't work for me because half my shoes are boots that are too big to fit in the pockets and I have too many shoes to fit them all in the organizer. Also because the two doors in our room that would fit an organizer (bedroom door and bathroom door) already have things on them. On the back of our bedroom door, I have an organizer for many different things (I plan on talking about that in a future post) and our bathroom door has a full-length mirror on one side and a towel hook on the other. So no over-the-door shoe organizers over here. A shoe organizer that hangs from the closet rod was out because they also don't have enough space for me. Those turning organizers that hang the shoes and rotate (like this) was out because something like that won't hold my boots and all the organizers of this type are too tall to be in my closet without being in the way of my clothes. So I found two options: this or this. Pros of the first option: sturdy, pretty. Cons of the first option: not available at my nearest Target, a little pricey, not sure if it would organize my shoes as nicely as I'd like. Pros of the second option: simple, affordable, would get the job done. Cons of the second option: doesn't look sturdy. In the end I decided to check Ross to see if they had anything like either of my options. They did! They had something like the second option for $14.99. I'll take it! :)

Here it is:

As soon as I got home, I got to work assembling it. It took all of ten minutes. Here it is assembled and in the closet:

Please excuse Grey, the kitty. She was curious about the strange looking object. :) Anyway, the shoe rack isn't even fully expanded. It's currently expanded as wide as my closet will allow, at 42'' or  about 107 cm. Its max is 45'' or about  114 cm. 

 So I started putting my shoes on the rack. Pretty, right?

 The finished product. About halfway through getting my shoes on here, I realized that I would be saving a lot of room if I stacked pairs of shoes where I could. Obviously, not an option for all my tall boots boot it would (and does) work for my flats, flip-flops and tennis shoes.

For my rain boots and not-Uggs boots, I decided to put them on the shelf right next to the shoe rack, since they're obviously too bulky for it to be practical to put them on the shoe rack. But they're still right next to all my other shoes and easily accessible.

 So I meant to put this picture earlier in this post but either Blogspot's not cooperating or I'm still figuring it out. Most likely the latter. Anyway this was the state of my shoes after I pulled them out of their former place in my closet but before I put them on the rack.  It seems bad until...

 

OMG! They all fit! With *some* room to spare! So I can totally buy more shoes and have somewhere to put them! :D Oh, wait... No, that's bad. Note to Self: No more shoes until you move into a place with a bigger closet. If you find a pair that you must have, don't let boyfriend see! :)

Well, that's part one of my organized closet! It's a work in progress so I'll be posting projects that I've been doing to get it more organized. 

Couponing!

Hi! So here goes my first "real" blog post. I'll be sharing how I go about finding my coupons and organizing them.

I'm new to couponing, but this is the routine I've developed so far.

First, I buy one copy of each of the two major Sunday newspapers in my area. Then, I sit down and pull out all the ads I'm interested in. Then? You guessed it. I flip through them and pull out all the pages with coupons I'd like to keep. The ads I don't want go into a pile and the ones I do want go into a separate pile. By the time that's done, this is usually what I end up with:

To the left are the weekly ads I keep and to the right are the ones I don't want.

Next, I (with the help of my boyfriend) cut out all the coupons and end up with a pile like this:

They are then organized into categories so it's easier for me to file them away into my coupon binder. For example, a coupon for Scrubbing Bubbles would go into the Cleaning category, since I have a divider dedicated to that in my binder. Last, the coupons are filed away into my coupon binder. This weekly process takes about an hour and a half-ish but that's with me getting distracted, taking breaks, watching TV, etc.

But before I'm completely done, I or my boyfriend (sometimes both) will go through the ads/coupons I don't want to make sure there's nothing I didn't want. This particular time, I missed quite a few useful coupons. Here's what was left of my recycle pile after I had double checked it:

(Please excuse Black Bear a.k.a Bear, the kitty. He loves to lay where he's not supposed to. Typical cat. :-P )

Despite Bear, hopefully you can clearly see the many less ads/coupons in my recycle pile after going through it a second time. Before:

After:

I also check Coupons.com and Target.com for new coupons every couple of weeks. If I find any I like, I print them up, cut them out and file them into my coupon binder. If you're concerned about using too much ink by printing coupons, I recommend printing in black and white and printing in "fast" mode, which should be a setting on most printers. If you'd really like to save on ink, think about investing in a laser printer. I haven't done it and don't have any plans to but it does save a lot in the long run on ink! 

And with that, there's my first "real" blog post. I hope it gave you some good ideas, or maybe inspired you to give coupons a try. If you have any tips/tricks/methods about anything coupons, I'd love to hear! :-)

Intro and stuff

Hellooo? Anyone reading? Probably not right now, but hopefully I'll be able to gain at least a few readers. I'm not really sure what my goals and plans are for this blog. To be honest, I'm not even completely sure why I'm starting it. I've always thought blogging would be fun but I was never sure what I wanted to write about. I guess I've finally decided to give it a shot.

A little bit about me:

• Name: Jessica
• Age: 20
• College student? Yes and I'm in my third year.
• Major(s)? English and Public Relations
• Employed: Yes

At this point, I suppose my reason for starting this blog is that I'm living in my own apartment for the first time and I've been having a lot of trouble getting it organized. It's...well, a hot mess. I've never been a particularly neat and tidy person and that's definitely showing in my inability to keep this small apartment clean. Oops! So I guess I started this blog to share the how-to's, tips and tricks of getting by on your own and to hopefully help anyone who will soon be or already is in the same position. Oh, and to get ideas and tips from other readers and other blogs along the way.