DIY Nursery Closet Details

 Happy Monday everyone! Today is my official 4th of July holiday and it is always so nice to have a three day weekend. I personally think that having three day weekends every weekend would make for a much happier lifestyle, can we make this a reality? Today I wanted to share our DIY nursery closet which was finally completed this weekend. We have been working on this closet for quite some time and it finally ready to go! 

Overall, creating the structure of it was not difficult and did not cost much at all. I ended up picking a design based off of The Greenspring Home blog and although we are not great DIYers, I think the closet turned out great and wasn't necessarily super difficult if you are a beginner DIYer. 

Supplies Needed

Closetmaid Vertical Organizer 

2 Closetmaid White Laminate Mounted Shelves 

Closetmaid White Metal Shelf Bracket Support Kit (optional- we didn't end up using ours because we aren't going to be storing anything super heavy on these shelves)

Wood Closet Rod

Wood Closet Rod Pole Sockets (2 Piece)

Step by Step

First of all, disassemble any previous closet structure. We had a wire shelf with a single hanging rack installed in this closet- think builder grade materials. I actually really despise wire shelving, I think it looks super cheap and was not a fan of the single hanging rack because baby clothes are so tiny. There is so much wasted space underneath them when hanging. One afternoon I got my screwdriver out and used my muscles to pull the wire shelving out of the closet. It was anchored in and involved some serious tugging, but I only needed Tim to help me with one anchor that I just could not get out of the closet.

Once your old closet system is out of the closet you will probably need to patch holes and paint. I patched all the holes myself, sanded everything down and then painted. I didn't do a super thorough job painting since we would be installing a new system and you wouldn't be able to really see the paint job behind it anyways.

Here is the closet, patched and ready for the new system to be installed.

After you've completed this, you want to build the vertical closet organizer. What I did was build the bottom three bottom squares and then built two more separately knowing that a shelf would separate them. This left one square unused because it wouldn't fit nicely in the closet with the two shelves I wanted. 

Now before actually installing anything we did some measurements. I wanted the vertical organizer to be centered in the doorframe which meant that it was not centered in the closet. We measured both sides to figure out how long we needed the wooden dowel to be cut since we wanted four hanging sections. We also had to cut the shelves since they were a little too long for our particular closet.

Here is the closet laid out without the wooden racks installed yet. 

I also purchased some storage cube bins from Amazon. I picked the pastel pink but there are a variety of colors depending on your preference. I really wanted to lean into the light pink for our little girls closet. I filled these and then pulled them back out so Tim could install the wooden clothing racks. 

Tim took the lead on installing the dowels and then wood glued them into place. Then the following morning it was time to fill the closet!

I measured all the areas available and then headed to HomeGoods to pick up some bins for the top and bottom of the closet. I also grabbed some more hangers so I could get all of her non-pajama outfits on hangers.

All the baskets were purchased from HomeGoods so I unfortunately don't have links for them. 

I also got the adorable elephant piggy bank at HomeGoods. I thought it would be a sweet subtle decoration that will also come in handy to collect change.

I haven't finalized the organization of the closet yet, but I will share what I've done so far. The top left basket holds muslin swaddle blankets. The middle pink bin holds bottles and pacifiers that will need to be sanitized. The top right basket holds our infantino baby carrier.

The top left hanging section is for newborn and 0-3 month clothing. The top right hanging section is 3-6 month clothing.

The top two pink bins hold clothing and shoes that have been handed down to us but are in much larger sizes. We won't be using 2T items for quite some time but I haven't established a system for clothes to grow into so for now they will live in these bins.

The bottom left hanging section is 6-9 month clothing and the bottom right is 9-12 month clothing. I realize that it is a little silly to hang all of this in the closet, but I know our sweet Ellie will be growing out of clothes so fast I think it will be easiest to keep everything hung during the first year and rotate sections out as she grows. Once she is a size for more than just a few months I will section the closet off by clothing type instead of size and keep sizes that she will grow into elsewhere. 

The three pink bins hold burp cloths and bibs, wipes and size 1 diapers. These diapers are the backups to the changing station I have set up with newborn and size 1 diapers. Since we are unsure if she will wear newborn diapers from birth, I set up a section of them for her but also set up size 1 diapers in case she goes right into those. I also have several drawers in the nursery filled with extra diapers that are still in packaging, but these are diapers that were taken out of their packaging for a quick refill.

The bottom of the closet bins hold feeding supplies on the left (boon drying rack, breast milk storage bags, nipple pads, etc) and extra hangers on the right.

As I mentioned, I haven't exactly figured out my organization systems in here yet but this is a good start and I can certainly adjust as we go forward and see what we need.

Here are two quick sneak peeks of the rest of the nursery....

There is still a lot to do, but I feel so much better about the status of the nursery! My mom is throwing us a baby shower in a couple of weeks and they are throwing me one at work the following week so I know we will have more items to organize in here, so I'm trying to not go too crazy. 

Now, one last look at the gorgeous closet...

Ahh so pretty! Have a great day everyone!!

Two Small Ikea Organization Projects

Good morning!

Today I'm sharing two small projects that were done this weekend to help organize our home. On Saturday my mom offered to puppysit Sophie so Tim and I could take the hour and a half drive up to Ikea to get some shopping done!

We had a ton of items on our list (and have another order arriving next Sunday too!) but we managed to work our way through the store and found a solution for quite a few projects that we have planned.

Today I'm sharing two that I implemented pretty quickly and had done on Saturday night and Sunday.  They were small projects but I think will make a big impact in our house organization.

This first problem was our front closet. Tim saw this shoe rack and thought it would really help our front closet because our shoes were totally out of control. In our apartment we used a plastic shoe tray to contain all our shoes which worked fine but now that they are all inside the closet it was looking out of control.

See what I mean? I also needed to take all our sandals and put them away in our own closets since we won't be using them until next summer. One I had our shoes organized I put the shoe rack in and started putting the shoes away and setting everything up.

So much better right?! Small change but a big impact!

The next project took place in our basement laundry area.

I knew I wanted a rolling cart for between my washer and dryer and I had the perfect one picked out at Ikea. 

Once Tim put the cart together I brought it down the basement and got it set up in my laundry area.

I love that it gives me space to store my laundry supplies without taking up the top of the dryer!

Super simple and easy but makes a huge difference! In the future we are interested in getting a new washer and dryer and moving the laundry room into an addition upstairs but for now this works just fine!

Those are two projects I did this weekend to organize my house, what projects did you do this weekend?

A Quick Broom Closet Fix With Command Hooks!

Today I want to share a quick fix I made to our broom closet! 

If you've been following along you know that I'm passionate about cleaning and organizing. The closet in our hallway is half a broom closet and half a linen closet. The linen closet side is pretty organized but the broom closet side was driving me nuts. When I went to pull out the vacuum the mop would attack me! I needed to get this cleaned up a little bit.

Here's where we started:

Just a disorganized mess!

At Walmart I picked up these command hooks. I picked up two packs so I could hang four items and once I put them to good use they made things look amazing!

Check it out! I'm so excited to get these off the floor and on the wall.

These command hooks are labeled heavy so I'm hoping they hold up nicely.

So much better right?! I am very happy how this turned out especially since I can't make any major structural changes in the apartment. I really love making small changes that make a big impact.

Have you done any small  projects that made a huge difference in your living space?

Velvet Hangers For The Win!

Earlier this year I purchased a ton of Huggable Hangers for my clothes. It worked wonders but it was an expensive habit. Recently I looked into other velvet hanger options and found Zober hangers which were $45 for a pack of 100, where the Huggable Hangers were $30 for a pack of 40, quite the difference! 

I decided to order a pack of 100 so I could get all of Tim's clothes hung on velvet hangers as well and hopefully create a little more room in our closet. 

I received my box of 100 hangers last night and quickly got to work.

First I took some pictures so show you how crowded those chunky, plastic hangers made everything.

Yes, Tim has a lot of clothes! I think he has more then I do. Honestly, this isn't even all the clothes he has- we have a ton in our guest room closet as well.

These hangers all came nicely in bags- one was broken- but only one so it wasn't too bad!

Here's what it looked like once I put all of his shirts on new hangers...

Look how much more room there is!

I decided I would hang his pants on these hangers as well since they work so great.

Pants are a little trickier and obviously take up more room- but I still think they look great!

Since we can't make any structural changes to the closet I am pretty limited on what I can do and dream of someday having a walk-in closet but I think this change gave us a little bit more room to work with.

Just a reminder- this is what my side of the closet looks like! I think I'll be ordering another set of hangers soon since we still have another closet full of clothes to put on better hangers and I'm pretty sure we will need more once everything comes out of the wash too!

Do you use velvet hangers? What have you done to make your closet work better for you?

My Monica Closet

Remember in Friends when Monica had a closet that was stuffed with items that didn't belong in any category? Well that's how I was feeling about our closet in the second bedroom. 

I didn't take a true "before" picture because I had pulled a ton of stuff out onto the floor first.

Okay, so now you get an idea of what it was packed with. The piles of books on the floor are a collection of books, yearbooks and scrapbooks. I don't know why I hesitated for so long on putting them in our basement storage unit but I knew it was time to buy some new storage bins and move them downstairs.

I know these are all items I want to keep- I certainly don't want to get rid of my yearbooks or scrapbooks. (Especially not my scrapbooks- I worked so hard on them) but they are not something we access often so why are they hanging out in our easily accessible closet?

I also had a ton of scrapbooking supplies I'm not looking to get rid of but I also am not using. Someday when I have space for an office I will make a nice storage area for these supplies- but until then into storage they go.

Also I think it's time to store away the overalls we used for Halloween costumes last year since we haven't touched them since then. Since they were a little pricey I will keep them stored with our other Halloween costume items in case we can use them for another costume in the future!

I also stuffed any plaques we had been storing and some frames with certificates as well. We don't ever look at these and they were just sitting inside one of the baskets in our living room. That's valuable storage space for things we actually use often so I'm glad to gain it back. 

With Tim helping I managed to get all of these bins down into our storage area where they will be safe and sound until we decide to move.

Now I am able to store the gifts I have picked up for future presents, giftware, clothes and bags.

You'll also see a few random items including a speaker and bath mat but it looks much better then before! I'm sure there are a ton of items to declutter in here but for now I'm just trying to keep things organized until we have the chance to go through everything.

Also, I used my label maker to make some nice labels for all my bins. It's always good to know at a glance what you have stored inside.

So that's my Monica closet and how I've rearranged storage in this apartment of ours. Thanks for stopping by!

Do you have a Monica closet?

One Year Later

Can you believe we've been living in our apartment for an entire year?

Last year I shared Our Moving Story and then shared some pictures of our apartment in different posts. You can see all of the posts revolving around our apartment here where I've shared decorating and organization that we've done over the past year. However, today I thought I would share updated pictures of our apartment.

I spent a ton of time cleaning one day recently (cleaning routine post AND speed cleaning video are coming soon!) and decided to take pictures while everything was looking super sparkly.

I clean starting in the back of the apartment and work my way towards the front so the first room you get to view is our bedroom.

Our bedroom hasn't really changed in the last year. We still have the same comforter but did get some new softer sheets from Kohls which have been amazing. We are still loving our Ikea furniture which has held up very well.

I am still working on getting all our hangers switched over to huggable hangers, my side is almost complete and then I just have to get through Tims!

Not too many changes in here at all but we love our bedroom. It's peaceful, relaxing and I don't want to spend the night anywhere else!

Our second bedroom has a nice bed for when we have guests, but also holds our dirty laundry and quite a bit of storage. I didn't do much with the decor at all just hung up a few things and threw some random decor items on the nightstand. Also the paint on the dresser and nightstand are peeling but that's something we will just have to deal with until we move out since I don't want paint fumes inside our apartment!

I love the curtains in here even though Tim thinks they are boring. I prefer nice neutral items with random pops of color if I choose. No need for crazy color everywhere because that's not relaxing to me.

This room is definitely not as put together as I'd like. We have piles of paper goods stockpiled in here, a bin of paper memorabilia, tons of childhood trophies, a spare tv, and you don't even get to hear about what's in the closet!

I swear I don't like to hoard items and really only keep items that are important to us, but this room needs some serious work and decluttering in the next year.

I love Tim's Gronk picture and I'm so glad I've inherited it by moving in with him :)

Just some random decor on the nightstand...and onto the next room!

Our bathroom is super small and simple. It could definitely use some more organization because we've been just adding products to it throughout the past year.

Nothing really new in the bathroom! (It's not the most exciting room in any house I don't think)

We have our "middle room" which we use as an office and to store some kitchen supplies.

My desk area is really unorganized right now. I kind of unloaded everything into the desk when we moved in and honestly haven't touched most of it since. I really should I go through all my desk supplies and donate what I'm not using. There are probably a ton of things I could toss at this point as well.

On the right hand side of my desk is my Alex 9 Drawer Unit from Ikea where I keep all my makeup and most of my beauty products. There is still plenty of decluttering that could happen in there.

On the left hand side of my desk is my jewelry armoire which could also be decluttered quite a bit. I know I have plenty of things in there that I don't need or want anymore. My list of areas to declutter keeps getting longer and longer!

I have my Target cabinet filled with extra kitchen supplies we don't have room for in our kitchen as well as our recycling area.  We go to our local transfer center every Saturday to drop off our weekly recycling since our apartment only has a dumpster and no recycling program.

I love my Martha Stewart file organizer. I like having a TO DO section where I can put items that I need to take action on and a TO FILE section for papers that need to be filed into my file drawer.

The next room is our kitchen....

We have a small galley kitchen and often dream of having a bigger kitchen in the future. We still have all the same appliances as last year but have upgraded our rug to one from Kohls and picked up a new nicer trash can at Target.

It may not be the prettiest, biggest, or nicest kitchen but it works for now!

I think my favorite room and the one we certainly spend the most time in is our living room.

We have updated from a candy bowl on our table to a simple teal tray with a candle and a few decor items.

Our gallery wall has been added to since we first moved in and is my favorite project.

That's it! Our cute little apartment :)

We are loving it here but are also dreaming of owning our own home and have started looking at houses and property. We plan on hopefully purchasing so we can move out next May/June but we will see what happens!

Thanks for coming on the tour!