Dear Real Simple, My Closet Thanks You!

Can I just start out by saying I am always overwhelmed by the sweet comments I am receiving?! I especially love to check back on Mondays after the weekend, and see the new visitors & followers. Linking up my projects to other design blogs has really brought a lot of new friends to my blog, and I am loving it!! The comments always make my day, and they continue to encourage me to always have those ideas swirling around & have the passion to keep starting new projects. Thank you all so much!

Also, I wanted to mention how awesome our weekend was! My best friend Anna was in town, and stopped by to visit. I got to see her three beautiful girls, and it made my day! Alabama blew away Florida (Roll Tide Roll!!), we got to have Sunday lunch after church with our sweet friends Hannah & Wyatt, and a little shopping was squeezed in over the weekend. Speaking of, I wanted to show off what I scored at Hobby Lobby...

I consider this a thrifty purchase. My reasoning behind this:

1.) It was on sale for 40% off, and I had been eyeing these

for a while now.

2.) I kept thinking about how much I always end up spending on real pumpkins/gourds/etc. every Fall, and then have to throw them away at the end of the season. This would totally eliminate that. I would use this one every year!

Thus, I think it's a money saver in the long run, so it came home with me! :) (Zach loves how I always try to reason out my purchases. It's a habit I have to live with.)

So, back to my post topic...I saw this awesome idea in an email from Real Simple. I subscribe to their magazine, but their emails share even more good little ideas, mostly on home organization. This simple idea is using shower hooks as purse organizers,

and I love it!

We have a great walk-in closet in our master bedroom, but it seems like it's always filled to the brim. I feel like I don't really maximize all the shelves & rods, and this is a great way to do that.

I had cleaned out and tried to re-organize our closets a couple of months ago. Basically, we have three closets in our house (one in each of the three bedrooms). In one Saturday, I went from:

- Closet #1: containing all my pants, capris, skirts, dresses & coats

- Closet #2: containing all my tops

- Closet #3: containing my shoes & purses, and ALL of Zach's stuff (yeah, I got 2 1/2 closets & he got one)

...to this set-up:

- Closet #1: containing NOTHING!...(well, nothing clothing-wise...used for storage only)

- Closet #2: containing what old #1 had (pants, bottoms, etc.) plus my shoes, on the floor on neatly organized shelves

- Closet #3: containing my tops & purses, along with Zach's stuff

Not too shabby for one Saturday, I thought.

But, our main closet (Closet #3) had all of these neat shelves & rods that still weren't being used. I now have my tops on one rack that was completely bare in the beginning. My purses were taking up space on shelves, but thanks to Real Simple's little article, they are now hung with handy shower hooks on another rod that was not previously being utilized. Those shelves that once housed them are now freed up. I'm sure I will find something

to put on them though. :)

It feels great to be using all of this space & extra storage features that were not otherwise used before! And all it took was a quick trip to the dollar store to buy them ($1 for a pack of 12,
and I only bought two).

I wanted to include the link to their article here.

They also give many other great ideas for storage.

I am going to swallow my pride here and show you two Before pics (thank goodness they are Before pics!), showing the beautiful disaster that was my pile-o-purses, along with some clothes mixed in. I can't believe I had all of this wasted, unorganized, ugly space before!

BEFORE

Ugh, embarrassing! Notice I sized the pics smaller, because I can't stand to have a bigger shot of that on my blog. :)

Now, here are the After pics of my organized little array

of hanging purses:

AFTER

I can even still use the shelf space behind the purses, so it doubled the utilization of those shelves! The last pic shows the completely empty shelves that I now have on the other side of the closet.

Ahh... much, much, much better!