Published: January 13, 2011, By Abbe Fenimore

Cleaning Out My Closet

I had finally had enough of my junky messy office closet this past weekend. I couldn’t even get the doors to close anymore and every time I tried to move something to get to something else…I ended up with a bigger mess.  I just couldn’t share the real before picture..it’s seriously embarrassing. Here was my end of the year solution, a little better but obviously still not working.

So, I did what any frustrated and unorganized designer would do…I called my mom. She recently moved and decided to take her existing Elfa storage system from The Container Store with her. There was a random mix of left over pieces so I asked her if she would be willing to part with them. FYI, my mother DOES NOT like to give or throw things away because “one day I will need them”.  It drives me crazy that she keeps everything, that’s why she needed the Elfa storage system to begin with!

After she gave me her “I told you so grin”, I headed over to my local Container Store and had them draw up a free design plan to make the most of my space. I gave the designer details of what I needed and she came up with a simple design to help keep me organized.   The total parts list was about $500 so I headed over to my Mom’s to see if she had any of the pieces I needed.

Things were looking good, we found about half of the pieces on the parts list. A few of them needed to be cut to size, so I packed them up in the car and headed over to have them cut and pick up the new pieces.  So..yes…I was very glad that my Mom had the extra pieces in storage. I was able to save $250 after the 30% discount they are running on Elfa.

If you have never installed the Elfa System, I highly recommend it!  The Container Store provides you with drawings, directions and all the parts and pieces to hang the system.  Once the main top rail is installed, everything goes together pretty quickly.

AND NOW FOR THE BIG REVEAL!

I’m pretty happy with the end result. I now have drawers to keep my fabric samples organized by color! I am also using the drawers to keep my loose stone and wallcovering samples.

I now have a place to keep my current project files, before they were piled up on the floor and always in the way.

My product catalogues, paint decks, and tile samples now have a real home and area easy to find.