$5.98 has never gone so far!

Okay, Martha Stewart I am not. Neat and tidy I am not. But over the holidays, every time someone came over, I had nowhere to put their coats. Not an earth-shattering dilemma, of course, but one that I was not content with leaving as-is. To start with, our coat closet is absolutely minute; our house was built in the 1920's - need I say more? To make matters worse, there's a heating duct that cuts off the back 1/3 of the closet, leaving 1/3 of the coat-hanging rod unusable. There is also no shelving or room for shelving. We have nowhere else to store our vacuum - so that lives in there too. I guess because it's January and it's traditionally a time to get organized, I finally got inspired to do something about it. I literally spent $5.98 at Ikea and spent about 15 minutes, and voila! I have a functional, organized coat closet that I'll even be able to let visitors put their coats in. Here's what I did:

1. Took all the coats out of the closet and separated three ways: coats that are never worn, which I'll donate to CityTeam Ministries, coats that are worn infrequently and so go in our bedroom closets, and coats that we wear all the time and will stay in the closet.

2. Took all the other junk out of the closet. Discovered we owned not one, not two, but SEVEN lint rollers in various states of use and un-use. Threw away 3 of them, vacuumed the killer dust-bunnies that remained.

3. Took out all the mis-matched plastic and wire hangers...replaced them with a set of 8 wooden hangers from Ikea which cost $3.99 total.

4. Hung an organizer from Ikea ($1.99 -I think it's supposed to be for shoes) strategically in front of the heating duct - thus making that space usable again! This is now used for lint rollers (only 4 now!), hats, gloves, and vacuum bags (yep, that thing had to go back in too).

With all the other things that need doing in my house, this probably wasn't that important to do NOW, but the sense of satisfaction it gave me just couldn't go without a mention on the blog. Maybe you'll be inspired to tackle some project yourself this weekend. Good luck!

(I have to warn you: the photo still isn't PRETTY...but you should have seen the BEFORE! :-) That black thing is my lovely vacuum, eating up valuable real estate.)