Stubborn

stub·born  

/ˈstəbərn/

Adjective

1. Having or showing dogged determination not to change one's attitude or position on something, esp. in spite of good arguments or reasons...
2. Difficult to move, remove, or cure.

That's what I am. I freely admit it. When I get an idea in my mind, it is the best idea and I don't rest until it is done....or something like that.... :D

Well last Wednesday I was madly organizing my room, trying to get it cleaned up before Ty and his fiancee Jessica came up to visit. When I realized that my closet is awful. It's tiny and crammed with junk/clothes/shoes/everythingthatdoesnthaveahome. So I grabbed my handy dandy yellow notepad (love those mini ones!) and started drawing out what my new closet would look like. I measured and re-measured and drew out the plans. It was going to be awesome!
(after this chicken scratch I made it official by typing it all up and even breaking down how much all the wood would cost, I was $4 off!)

I obviously didn't get it done that day, I didn't even buy the materials that day. Ty and Jessica arrived reallllly late Wednesday night/Thursday morning. They just left Sunday afternoon but it was really fun to have them here and we got to meet Jessica which was cool. So we did lots of family stuff those days, no time to work on my new closet. Which is fine.

Saturday I did have a little bit of time so I cut all of my boards to size.

 First I measured and marked each board so I would know the exact pieces that board would make. That was very handy.
Cutting all the boards didn't take a whole lot of time, maybe about two hours (that includes digging for the correct tools-the tool section of the garage is next on my list).

A couple days later (today) I had a few hours between work and going back to work. The above is a ^^photo of my closet BEFORE ^^

Yaaaa....can you see why I need some help? Ridiculous.

There are 35 pack boxes of those thin velvet hangers at costco right now, seriously the best things I have bought in a long time! My mom bought me a box, then I went back and bought 2 more ($10 each!). So what I have a lot of clothes! I do have one whole box leftover for future use though.

These things are awesome clothes don't slip from them and they take up half the size of a regular hangers. Serious space saver.

   I have this $4 ikea clothes rack that I used to house all of my hanging clothes until the closet it finished. My room is literally an obstacle course right now.

Today I managed to get my 'shoe rack' done! Hurray. I cut little dividers for each of those shelves to split them in half, but I actually like it better without them, plus i have more room. Which I obviously need because I still have several pairs of shoes that don't fit.... (donation time!)

everyone scoffed at me and told me to get a pre-packaged closet kit. Glad I saved myself hundreds of dollars and proved them wrong!

 Tomorrow perhaps if I have some time I will finish up. The only parts I have left to do are cut 3 hanger rods and screw in 2-3 more shelves on the sides. To the left of the shoes will be a skinny rod to hang my long dresses. There will be a short shelf below those dresses for additional storage (remember we don't waste space). 

To the right of the shoes at the top will be another hanging rod for all my 'tops', sweaters, shirts, etc....Below that I am going to put another shelf and rod for all my skirts. That way, each type of clothing is sectioned out and much easier to sift through. The side shelves will be gone through and cleaned out, they are a mess right now.

Hopefully it will all be done soon so I can have my room back! 

My fingernail polish organization corner now! :) I obviously love the stuff.

Maybe this should be a 2nd post but I'm including it here....

We also worked hard and fast to get our craft room done. It was a disaster but between the garage, the laundry room, re-doing food storage, organizing closets, painting, etc....it got done finally.

 Walking in to the room this is what you see (Nicole, do you notice no more pink/white wall?:))

 The back 'kitchen' corner

 This is a craft cutting table I made for my mom for her birthday (2 months later....). I bought two of those expedite 4 cube bookcases for the base. Then got REALLLLY lucky at the re-store and found this heavy duty solid table top for $10. It was ugly and brown but I painted it and it works perfectly! There is a rounded spot at one end for all of the cutting supplies and the table fits our huge cutting mat exactly....literally exactly.

 The other side of the room has more of those expedite bookcases and desks for my mom and I to work at. Lots of storage.

 And looking towards the back.
It's nice to have it all organized and put away. Let's hope it lasts longer than a week :)

Going UP

(Random fact, I've never seen UP! the movie...I have it, I should watch it.)

I took last week off for 'spring break' then said just kidding it's not really my spring break (mine's NEXT week) but I took it off anyway. My mom also had the week off and Sam went to Utah for the entire week. Heckkkk yes.
Well it wasn't a break. Each day we devoured another room leaving a wake of destruction as we went.
Seriously I now know where I get my crazy jump from project to project and start in the middle of things and go overboard with ideas/biting off more than I could chew. My Mother.

We shopped for supplies Monday morning and got started when we got home. This is what we did.
1. Re-painted 2 walls in my parents room
2. Started making two mirror frames -one for practice- and a 'picture frame'
3. Spent WAY too much time distressing/staining/gluing/figuring out said frames
4. Cleared out under my parents bed whoa!
5. Started cleaning out the garage in the middle of the 'crazy living room filled with junk from under the bed' project
6. Bounced between those three things for awhile
7. Cleaned/organized kitchen drawers
8. I decided I didn't like the hall closets and their lack of function so I spent about an hour figuring out new ideas for both the small hall closets
9. I started thinking about organizing the tool/work section of the garage
10. Re-did hall closets
11. Finished frames
12. Made new 72 hr kits and lists of emergency stuff

phew! It was a loooong week but it wasn't bad. I ruined four pairs of yoga pants, two sweatshirts, and a pair of socks or two. wah wah.

The entire point of this was to show you the closets!
Did I ever mention I love power tools? They love me too because I still have all of my limbs!

So my mom emptied this closet before I could take a 'before picture' lame. It was a hot mess. Stuff falling out EVERYWHERE shoved into each nook and cranny. For an idea of what it was like imagine all of this:

 In that one closet....yiiikes. This was my Friday activity. Organizing this stuff, building the new shelves, and putting everything in it's new place.

not everything is folded nicely yet just seeing where things are going to go.

This is afterwards. I hate wasted space and with a lack of storage it's important to think "UP!" 

There are lots of things you can do vertically do make storage.

What?! Just ignore me. I re-do two closets and I think I'm Ty Pennington.

 

Here are some of the tubs I bought to organize. We found a fishing tackle box for like $6 and organized all of our medical stuff in it. I wanted a toolbox but we couldn't find a good one.

I labeled the top of the box to indicate what is in each slot of the First Aid box. If anyone needs moleskin between now and the apocalypse come on over.

The other good part of this closet is the over the door organizer. My mom found it at Costco and it seriously cleared out an entire kitchen cupboard and under a bathroom sink. So much storage. It's so vertical!

This is a before pic of the 2nd hall closet.

 Really I don't make this up. Everything gets piled on.

 A couple more befores

 From this photo can you guess what I'm thinking? If you guessed, go "UP!" you're the winner! All of that wasted space makes my neck itch. I think a guy must have put this up....(my dad meant well!)

After making more shelves and some unscrewing and re-arranging This is what happened:

 Coat racks up. Top shelf longer to fit all of the sleeping bags that were lodged in the top of the other closet before.

 This is where the cleaning stuff going so they each have their spot that goes "UP!"

 Put in the new shelf and wrapped it in damask contact paper. Just because. When I placed this shelf I measured the coats and screwed the shelf in right below the coats.

 That shelf created a handy spot for the little cart of cleaning rags/supplies. There are also three boxes. One of them is full of plastic bags, one is for aprons (Nicole do you have some of my aprons from the FR?) and the other has misc. winter items that were buried.

 The 'before' picture of this closet had that white cart in it. You just can't see it because it was buried under coats.

And it's done! There are the same number of coats in here are there were before. See how cool it is to go "UP!" (why do I keep doing that? It's dumb and I'm annoying myself).

You gotta do what you gotta do:

Conveniently/coincidentally everyone was gone Friday night so all of my limbs help build these projects :) There was some serious 'stud action' going on. I couldn't get the screws to go through the wall and some of them started smoking. So I had to readjust the shelf height but it finally worked!





Thinking vertically will give you A LOT more storage.

Tonight was spent trying to finish up the craft room. Pictures of that later ughh! Decided to paint it last minute so I did that tonight then made a craft table. OK I'm done I'll talk about that later. 

OH one more- pictures of my HUGE completed mirror frame. FINALLY DONE!

 Close up. If you want to have some fun, distress a piece of wood. Really awesome to purposefully ding something up.

 Before and After picture. From ugly gold sliding mirror closet door to whatever it is now. haha. Big.

Goopy

One thing that kind of bugs me is when I paint my nails and the polish is goopy!! Hashtagfirstworldproblems.
But seriously I have throw away so many 1/2 full bottles because of that. Well one day I did this trick and it degoopified my nail polish!! Here's how, it's very scientific and complicated so try to keep up. Ill go slowly.
Step 1: remove the nail polish cap
Step 2: grab a bottle of polish removed--any kind will do
Step 3: pour some remover into the bottles cap
Step 4: pour a bit into the polish bottle
Step 5: replace both lids and shake the polish bottle
Step 5: paint your nails and bask in the ungoopyness of it all!!

I've done this to a bottle of nail polish several time and it still is going strong. Now my problem is the brush won't reach far enough down to get it all, but ill take that over goopyness any day!!