Home Organization Transformation Part I

Last Friday, Matt and I tackled a fun organizing project in a client’s entry way and dining/living room. We started this project with a jump-start during last month’s session with my clients – we had extra time after working in the garage. Last Friday’s session was so fun to see the finished transformation on this space, a complete makeover!

My clients have two young daughters that keep them very busy and I know all of you parents can relate to this before photo. When the kids come home from school everything gets dumped on the console table and the floor…

We sorted through all of the items, lots of school and artwork, books, and miscellaneous stuff that was lost in the shuffle. We were able to empty the tall cabinet and repurpose it in the dining room (I’ll show you that part of the transformation tomorrow). We cleared out the drawers and the console table and hung up a few pieces of artwork. Now the space looks fresh, clean and organized. By moving the tall cabinet out of the space it looks much more open doesn’t it? As my clients live with the new space we can make tweaks to what needs to be kept on the console table so it will be user friendly and easy to maintain.

There was also a pile up of shoes in the entry way. My client really wanted a cubby system in place of the bench so we picked one up at Target and I had my assistant Matt put it together (thank God for Matt, he is so good at stuff like that). I had him match up all of the shoes while I worked on a different piece of the project. Once everything was matched, up my client went through all of the shoes and eliminated those that the girls had outgrown etc..

I bought 2 different shoe organizers at Target – this cubby system and a shelf system. My client chose the cubbies because she thought they would be more user-friendly and I agreed. I like this product because each pair of shoes has a defined space and the dark color doesn’t show the grime that the shoes might track inside. Each unit is $32, a budget friendly way to transform the space.

I wanted to show you the living room that adjoins to this entryway and the dining room (part II of this post which I will be sharing tomorrow). This is the part of this transformation that we started during our organizing session at the end of January. My client had purchased Christmas ornament boxes and a storage bag for the tree but hadn’t had the time to put anything away. I had Matt take down all of the decorations and pack up the tree so we could find a permanent home for them in the garage. After he was finished, we had about an hour to tackle the rest of the space. We sorted the piles and left my client with 2 bins of homework to go through.

When we were finished the room looked great – very comfortable and open (I love the pooch enjoying the organized space from the sofa). My clients really enjoyed having all of the Christmas decorations taken down and organized into bins in the garage. It was a great boost for them and I’m happy to report that they maintained the space really well.