Organizing the Closet Disaster

It's clothing week over here at the 31 Days of Organized Chaos blog.  Today, let's discuss closets.  I currently have three girls that share one closet.  Yeah, I know.  Here's what it looks like:

Clothes, clothes everywhere.  We have some of those multi-layer skirt hangers, and those help a lot.
 

 In amongst the stuff on the floor are a couple of bookshelves.  Here is where the girls store their books because there is no other room to do so.  I'm thinking that since they never look at those books that we should pack them away and utilize the shelves for clothing or shoes.

This top shelf is actually quite big and deep, which I suppose can be a positive and a negative.  I have absolutely no idea what is in those boxes.  I wonder if they know.

And I wonder why they usually just toss their clothing on the floor instead of hanging it up.

Since this is a rental house, I don't want to do anything permanent or expensive, so I'm looking into cheap and easy ways to help them organize this area.

Of course Pintrest will be a minefield of ideas for this project, but my basic outline is to empty the entire closet first.  Then, we need to go through all of the clothing and only keep what is necessary and in season.  We'll also have to go through those boxes and books and decide where we are going to store them.

I'm sure I can find some kind of a storage or shelving system for that top shelf so that there is more than one level to it.  We have a sturdy step stool that they could keep in there so that they could access whatever ends up on top.

I'd also like to utilize those shelves for shoes and work clothes that the girls have (two of them have work uniforms).  I think it would be much better than using them for books they never read.

Since these are plaster walls and the landlord doesn't want us nailing anything into them, I'm not able to add another rack, but that would come in handy.

The long and the short of it is this:  we just need to take some time to disassemble and then reassemble the entire thing.  This is almost 6 years of accumulated build up.  As you know, when you let things go for a long time, it soon becomes an overwhelming task.  Ideally all three girls would be home on the same day (which really would require a small miracle at this point) and we would tackle the project together.  Short of that, I might just have to go in there and blast through it myself!

I can only imagine what kind of things we will find hidden in the dark recesses of this closet.  That is one of the main reason why it is so important to maintain control over your closet.  If you don't, you will not take full advantage of the clothing you have, and you may even spend money you don't need to because you'll rebuy something you already have but have lost in the mess.

If your closet looks like this (or, dare I say...worse), set aside a day and take back your closets, ladies and gentlemen!  It will make getting dressed in the morning a much more enjoyable task.

God Bless!
To see all of the posts in this series, you can go here.