Back in Another Closet

Apparently organizing the spare room closet and my closet upstairs just wasn't enough for me. Was the thought of a disorganized closet tearing me up inside, keeping me awake at night, causing night terrors in which I dreamt dresser drawers were banging on the walls, desperate to get out of the closet?
Well, no. But I did think it was about time I got Chris's old dresser out of the guest room closet. We put it there originally for lack of a better space, but all it ended up doing was taking up space. So after I finished sprucing up a section of the basement (more on that to come) Chris helped me move it downstairs. It actually works great for storing extra electronic things so they don't get dusty down in the basement.
But then I had an empty closet. With a clothing rod and a second L-shape clothing rod made out of a steel pipe. It was weird and not very practical.
So after a million trips to Lowes and Target to explore my options, I landed on some easy-to-install wire shelves from Lowes. Here's half of the closet after we moved the dresser out and I installed the shelves.

Sort of looks like a pantry at this point.

Below, you can see what the closet looks like if you step in and look to the right. There's still a whole section for hanging clothes, so I figured it wouldn't hurt to take out the second clothing rod.

But it was looking much better once I got it full of pretty towels and sheets.

Guess who wanted to hang out in the closet with me. That's right: Shadow! Either he's getting friendlier or he really really misses his old hiding spot in my upstairs closet.

And there's still plenty of room for coats and hanging items, as well as the vacuum and deep cleaner. Talk about a functional closet. Yay for organization!

Garage Sale!

Yesterday, I finally got my act together and had a garage sale. The weather held out for me and attendance was good, so overall, I'm very pleased with how it turned out. Since I'm not so into being around lots of people I don't know, I'd say that's better than to be expected. lol

I advertised on Craigslist a few days in advance, and Chris posted a sign on Main Street for me the day of the sale. Otherwise, I just figured people driving by would figure it out. Our street gets a decent amount of traffic so I mostly relied on that.

Some of the sale items beginning to accumulate.

I spent about a day and a half sorting through items for the garage sale and bringing everything upstairs. After about 5 1/2 hours of sitting out there with all our junk, I ended up making about 100 bucks. lol Doesn't sound like much, but considering I priced everything around $1 or $2, you can imagine how much stuff we got rid of. I'd say if I had to pile everything into my Juke and haul it to Salvation Army (which is about 20 minutes away) it would have taken me 5 trips. So I definitely saved all that gas money. In the end, I only had to make 1 trip to Salvation Army, and most of it was bags of clothes. Most of the bigger items like furniture sold, which may not have even fit in the Juke.

Sold both these bad boys for $2 a piece. Woo hoo!

 Sadly, I couldn't get a buyer for the writing desk in the first picture, although lots of people were interested. So I'm going to put that up on Craigslist.

During the two days were the sale items were upstairs, the kitties definitely had a fun time checking things out. The big purple rug was among the favorite items of Shadow and Zoro.

Zoro eventually calmed down enough to help me fold some laundry though. What a sweetheart. Notice how he plopped his white belly down right on my black pants. He's fun like that.

Here's a picture I snapped as I was setting up. A lot of the stuff was still in boxes or in the house, but you get the idea. Not the biggest garage sale ever, but there was way too much stuff for our little house. I even managed to sell the surround sound system we inherited from Chris's dad's barn (along with about 10 mice that had been living in the box. Didn't sell the mice, which fell victim to our feral kitties.) The whole system smelled awful, but worked fine, so we sold it for five whole dollars. haha The new owners did not seem phased, so I guess they had a plan for it.

Oh, and the random dining room chair was not for sale. That was my sittin' chair while I watched over the garage sale.

My old tv didn't sell either, but at the end of the day, I put it out front with a sign that said free and it was gone within a few hours. It didn't make it in the car for the Salvation Army trip because it was too big and my car was jam packed.

So is it weird that I am now super duper excited to tackle our basement? With all that clutter removed, I've only got a few more things to go through to either trash or organize and then we're ready to seal the floor, splash some paint around and organize, organize, organize. It's going to be a huge project still, but this is the first major step and it feels good.