Avoiding an avalanche

There are a lot of charms to living in an old house.

Beautiful woodwork - from the floors (which I believe are ash) to the crown moulding to the built-in china cabinet - it adorns everything. These days, that wood, well, I couldn't afford to buy it new.

Eleven foot ceilings - they're awesome. Not only do they give our home a sense of "spaciness", they allow me plenty of room for storage on top of our cabinets.

Its a duplex - one of the reasons we bought the place. Having a tenant made it much more affordable.

Closets - notsomuch.

When we bought this house eight years ago (here I'm writing only about our downstairs portion), we had two, 3'x4' closets. One in each bedroom. Hm.

I had a conference call with some colleagues in our Chicago office yesterday, and chuckled when I heard (before the call started) someone trashing an apartment he'd gone to see over the weekend. "Can you believe it only had TWO closets?!? How do they think they're ever going to rent that?!?"

Before we had kids this was less of a problem. I got the closet in our bedroom and Jay put his hanger-required garments in the closet of the other. That's still how we do it now, and the kids each have a large chest of drawers for all their clothes. But after baby #1 we realized we were at a need for more storage space.

Enter project No. 4,357. (I'm estimating by this point we've completed, no, scratch that - STARTED 6,124 projects on this house.) When we bought our house, the downstairs was billed as having three bedrooms. The third, however, we call "The Computer Room". It's 9 1/2' x 6 1/2'. And I'm probably being generous with those measurements.

So in addition to housing our computer desk, filing cabinet and the tall cabinet that holds all my craft, uh, stuff, a while back Jay installed wire shelving that runs along almost an entire wall. Those shelves house everything we don't have other space for.

Fast forward to recent.

To say it those shelves were disorganized would be an understatement. They were out of control. To the point that an avalanche could have occurred, buried me, and I would have been stuck there until a Sherpa came to find me or my hubby got home from work. Whichever came first.

So that was my tackle for this week - those shelves. They're our game shelf, or linen closet, and um, a place for the rest of the crap that has no other home. I KNOW I took before pictures (this one's been on my to-do list for some time) but who knows what happened to those shots. Hope you enjoy the afters.

I know they're oh-so-exciting.

UPDATE! Found those old "before" pics. Warning - they're dangerous!

And after:

Top shelf: boys' photo albums, board games and an old box full of miscellaneous power cords
Bottom shelf: our wedding albums and two large baskets containing our sheets

Below that, top shelf: boys' "boxes" (contain things like their hospital bracelets, clippings from their 1st hair cuts), in the blue totes are the sheets for the boys' beds, then CD cases containing Jay's video games
Bottom shelf: box of candles, extra wipes, computer paper and two plastic drawer units that contain receipts we need to keep and office supplies

It still needs some work but its a huge improvement!

Oh, and have you entered my GIVEAWAY yet?