For Serious: 'Cause I wanna be neat and tidy!

Thank god for visitors.

For serious. If it weren't for the threat of social/parental ostracism, there are areas of my apartment that I would never clean. I'd be moving out and suddenly discover nooks and crannies that haven't been disturbed in four years. That's the sad truth.

Today, spurred on by both my mom's impending visit (she arrives Tuesday) and the ever-looming move-out date (most likely October 15), I decided to tackle the most dreaded of all the junk spots in my apartment: the bathroom closet.

Now, despite the fact that I live in a studio, I have ample storage space. Perhaps TOO ample. The bathroom closet is spacious enough to walk in and close the door after you; there are shelves on one side and a built-in pole for hanging towels. I've been storing everything from sheets to towels to medicine to makeup to cleaning supplies in there since I moved in. But since I've been adding and occasionally throwing things out at random, it's become this black hole of stuff. Here's a picture (no, I did not do anything to make this look worse than it was).

The first thing I did was to go to The Container Store. I don't know if it's the German part of my heritage or what, but being in that store makes me intensely happy and extremely covetous. Yes, I am a disorganized person, but I am entranced by organization. If I'd had more money - and/or a car in which to carry it all - I likely would have left with a box for everything in my apartment.

I made a minor mistake in not measuring my shelves before I went shopping, but I knew I wouldn't be buying things for every shelf, so I had some wiggle room in terms of placement. I bought two divided trays for open storage, two nice cardboard boxes for the things I don't use as much, and two big collapsible canvass cubes for zipping sheets and towels into. Then, when I got home, I took everything out of my closet.

Above you can see my huge empty closet. And a helpful closeup of the dirty floor. Ew.

It's always a good idea when re-organizing a space to take everything out of it first (and scrub the empty space down, in my case, since I am as mentioned above a horribly lackadaisical housekeeper). Then you can sort into piles: trash, keep, give away. I did so, and ended up with two large trash bags and a cracked plastic rolly cart to toss in the dumpster. I also added to my giant pile of stuff to take to Goodwill. Much, much, MUCH smaller was the pile of stuff to keep.

Finally, I organized my "keep" pile into storage boxes. One of my new cardboard boxes got medical stuff: emergency asthma meds, ace bandages, cold and allergy medicine, my heating pad, etc. The other got my hairbrushes, hair dryer, and other more frequently used bathroom supplies. I filled one of my trays with things I wanted to keep in easy reach: refills on daily meds, nail polish remover, lotion; the other tray I left empty as a spot for visitors to put their toiletries. I stashed my sheets and towels away in their respective labeled cubes, and as a finishing touch I pilfered from my own kitchen cabinets to find little storage containers for makeup and cotton pads. As it turned out, my shelves were shallow enough that I had to turn the boxes with the long side facing out in order for them to fit. But I still ended up with plenty of space, and next time I do something like this I'll be sure to measure my space beforehand - just in case I want to work with a tighter plan.