Organization Queen

y husband is an organization king. I guess being with him for so long has made me somewhat of an organization queen.

I have my own personal office in my house because I do some freelance work on the side, but my husband always comments how I should organize my space better. I have piles of paper on the side of my desk with some receipts (that I need to file) and other little things that I'm currently working on. I guess with the tax season looming I decided to start a better filing system for my receipts. Previously I was storing them in an accordion-style folder, but it was starting to bulge on the sides. Plus, I didn't really organize it well so some of the receipts were mixed up with others. I decided to check out Solutions today. Did I tell you that that's my husbands favourite store? Actually I'm starting to really enjoy going there because I always get great ideas on how to store things better.

Originally I was planning on buying a similar accordion-style folder that was prettier than what I had and I was going to buy more than one to solve the problem of the over-bulging. However, the only accordion folder that they had didn't have enough compartments and I didn't think it made sense to buy 5+ just to get the amount of compartments that I needed. I think each one had about 4 compartments? Then I saw these plastic file folder containers. It had built-in ridges on the inside where it held hanging folders. I thought this was an even better idea. They had one with a handle at the top, but I didn't like the colours- it was a dark opaque colour with a clear top. The one I bought (see below for photos) was a steal at $8-9? Plus, they are stackable.

I know it doesn't look like much, but I really love it.

The lid partially opens if you only want to get something from the front, but it also opens all the way. I think that's a really neat idea.

I bought these light gray hanging folders at Staples for $15? The one I bought was letter size and it came in a set of 25. They also had different colours, but you know how much I love gray...

I had a whole bunch of pretty file folders from before that I never used so I decided to use them for this filing system. This one is from Boon. I also have ones by M.O.

Look at how organized everything is now. Now I won't dread tax season. I'll be looking forward to it!

Here's a category, for example, pulled out. It's labelled Electricity. I keep all my electricity bills in there.

I showed my husband after I finished doing this and he was pretty impressed.

I also bought a little something for my beauty storage area. It's also from Solutions. They had a whole section on beauty storage solutions and my eye went directly to the plastic lipstick containers. Currently, my lipsticks were all in a drawer and it was a pain to look for a certain colour from a certain brand because sometimes they were hiding under another lipstick tube. I loved how this container kept each lipstick separately. They had an 8-slot one, a 12-slot one, and other configurations, but I chose the 24-slot one that was stackable with another 3-slot compartment underneath. I thought that would give me enough room to put all my lipsticks in there. There was no way I had more than 24 lipsticks...

Instead of stacking the 3-slot compartment with the lipstick compartment on top, I decided to keep it side-by-side and put it in my drawer. Unfortunately I realized that I had more than 24 lipsticks in my collection so I have a few stragglers that are still in my previous lipstick storage container. That's ok. I'll just keep my most-used ones in this compartment.

The 3-slot compartment has some makeup tools- sponges, spoolies (for my home-made lip scrubs), brush guards; paint pots and lip balms, and some blushes that I'm trying out at the moment. The rest of my other face products are in my previous makeup storage. Basically I'll put whatever I use daily in these compartments.

So here is the lipstick storage container stacked. It becomes too high to put in my drawer. I think if I were to do it this way then I would have to put it on my vanity table.

This is when it is unstacked.

I would love to do something similar to what Richie Nickel has as his makeup storage (with the same Ikea vanity), but I don't think that will happen for a loooooong while.

Shoe display project

y closet has been bothering me for some time now. I mean, I love the fact that I have a walk-in closet, but I hated how disorganized it was. I kept my shoes separate in my shoe closet downstairs, but I wanted to put it all in one space- my walk-in closet. I've been scouring different websites to get some cheap ideas and I was inspired by one blogger in particular- Closet Full of Nothing's Carolina's closet (see image below). I loved how she displayed all her shoes in a white shelving unit. Of course, I don't have nearly as many beautiful shoes that she has, but I still wanted to give my shoes the credit that it deserved. They were all currently in their respective shoe boxes downstairs.

So after much measuring and checking out different stores this weekend I settled on a small bookshelf unit from Ikea called the Billy bookcase. It was just the perfect size to fit in my closet without being overbearing and the depth was perfect to fit the length of all my shoes. I also liked the fact that it had adjustable shelves as I had planned on putting boots on the bottom shelf. Plus, it was a steal at $49! So if you look at the photo below you can see all the hard-work that went into putting this all together last night with my sister. It was actually quite fun because we were talking and drinking wine while we were putting it together.

This is how my closet looks when you first open the door. The shoe display is the focal point.

I put all my pretty girly things on the top on the bookshelf. I didn't have time to put a print in the photo frame (also picked up from Ikea!).

If you look to the left of the bookshelf I put a collapsable shoe storage hanger to fit the rest of my shoes. Unfortunately I still have more shoes downstairs, but it's much more organized this way...

Here's another view.

Do you like my new jewelry stand? I picked this up from Solutions. It's a jewelry stand from Umbra. It was only $24, which I think is a great deal. I can hang necklaces and bracelets on the branches and put rings and earrings on the tray at the bottom.

Now every time I go in my closet I feel so happy!

So to have more usable space in my closet I purchased a hanger bar kit that attaches to the main hanger bar up top and creates another bar at the bottom to give you more hanging space. Brilliant! That was also a steal at $7.99.

All in all I'm so happy with how it all turned out.