baby girl's closet

Last Sunday I had the whole day to myself to "accomplish stuff" - Jeff was away for the night with his brothers for some guy time (which included 27 holes of golf, lots of beer drinking, and much obnoxiousness I'm sure). Our project list keeps growing as we prepare for baby meakins' arrival, and I decided it was time to do something about her closet. Afterall...we need to take pride in making a beautiful home for our clothes. :) Here is a picture of her closet before I began the project...

I have to say, I was quite proud of myself. This is a project I would never normally tackle without Jeff's help - I loathe activities such as configuring shelves and using a screwdriver, much less making a long trip to Home Depot by myself. BUT...time is precious, and maybe all these pregnancy hormones gave me the extra determination to get this job done.

I looked at different closet organization systems online, but all were pre-set for specific closet sizes, and baby's is quite small (which is unfortunate - thankfully her clothes are pint-sized for the time being :). In the end I remembered a client telling me she used basic shelving from Home Depot for her nursery, so I decided to sketch out a little something just in case this was a good option. I wanted to maximize my shelving space, but also leave a larger spot for a clothes hamper or diaper disposal thingy. Here is my basic sketch...

I took my little amateur sketch to Home Depot and cornered an employee on the closet organization aisle...sir, is this something that would be pretty easy to install? to which he said yes! Maybe about 15 minutes later, my cart was loaded with all of the materials I would need to assemble the organization system, including three custom-cut shelves.

Got home, busted out the screwdriver, figured out how to install some drywall screws, and got the basic bracket system attached to the closet wall. After that, the rest of the system basically snapped into place and wa-la!! Baby girl now has a LOT more room for her growing wardrobe. The picture below is very preliminary! I plan on adding a lot more bins to the shelves for toys, accessories, etc. Shoes will be lined up on the floor below, and the remaining shelf space will be used for folded clothes and other extra gear. Also I still need to figure out what to do about all of that wasted space in the top of the closet.

You should've seen Jeff's face when he got home and see what I had done - he couldn't stop laughing....probably picturing my 31-weeks-pregnant self designing a closet system, going to Home Depot and loading up the cart, then installing it all myself. Now that's determination! :)