My poor hall closet has had so many purposes and finally, we settle on the hall closet makeover. There is no common space storage in my house except a hall closet and a cabinet in the bathroom. This little closet has become the transition space serving so many purposes as I negotiated what went upstairs and what went downstairs. Whatever I needed quick access to, went there.
From the very beginning, I knew this space needed to serve as storage for centralized recycling, donations, batteries and chargers, tools, as well lightbulbs. There were so many things in this closet over the years. The most surprising thing was probably all the medicine that ended up there and medical supplies.
They started out in one of my under-bed drawers. You can read about me clearing those in this post. It was a disheveled mess. Then more medications presented a need for a sharps container. My previous injections pulled the needle back in to make it safe to throw into the regular trash. The newer medicine does not.
Hall Closet Tour Through Time
The hall closet was my only central storage, though I had a linen closet in the bathroom for towels. I knew I couldn’t afford to lose this space to any bedding. Since I’d been decluttering prior to my move into this house I had so many things to declutter that the dedicated shelf was overflowing and then still I had piled all over.
It took me quite a while to stop stuff shifting my donations. I say stuff shifting because I’d stack them against the office wall. Eventually, it would bleed in with other things. Since there were so many donations, I actually used the self for quarantine items. Things I thought I could part with but wasn’t sure.
I originally stored my shop vac in this closet too. I’m not entirely sure why, but I was actually using it in the house frequently so I wanted it to be easy to grab. Oh yeah, kitchen remodel. There was always debris in the beginning.
I had also kept some basic electronics in this closet. I have a random cable box, like so many do, but it’s in the basement. However, I was still setting things up in the house and didn’t want to go to the basement every time. So the hall closet served as my central work hub. My office supplies had outgrown their containers and were also shoved in the bin with the cords.
Then I tried to stack overstock toilet paper and toiletries up above the second row of containers on the top shelf, but that made (as Dana K White says) a “crapalanche”. The things above the bins when all directions and it was just a bad idea.
Why the Shelves Were Stuffed
My tools had also overgrown their original storage space. So, these are tools I’ve used and need randomly. Randomly….not frequently. This was the key, so last year I pulled those ones I don’t use just to hang things like art or TVs out and put them into the storage shelves in the basement. They were half full at the time.
Then for a bit, my donation shelf became a shelf full of random containers. This worked because I was able to use many of them. Eventually, I made the tough calls on ones that I couldn’t figure out how to use. It even held generic gifts for a bit.
For a bit, it was also holding purchases for an incomplete or not-started project. These sat on my tools/cleaner shelf, but this just makes it hard to get to the tools you need to complete the project.
The next several years were really about finishing projects and decluttering down to the container limit inside this closet. It took a while for sure but I am there now. At this stage, all I’ve been doing is working on organizing and making things more visually appealing.
