**This post contains affiliate links.
Of course I don’t mean you should never let them take any furniture when they move out… just make sure you are prepared for it.
Let me tell you what happened today. Big Sister Olivia moved out a couple of months ago after graduating. She went to live with Big Brothers but has now decided to test those wings a little bit more and move again.
This time she needed a few things and a dresser was one of them. I told her she could have it a while back and I intended to be finished with it by today. Well even the best laid plans can awry.
We were supposed to have finished another couple of projects which would then have given me space to redo our main closet. The main closet was to be turned into a ‘family closet’. At least that was the plan a month or so ago.
It looked easy enough on paper.
As you all know I have been doing a massive declutter and deep cleaning of the house. This has been part of a mission to get more organized. I’ve been working on grouping all like things together so the family closet was just a great solution to keeping up with all of our clothes.
I had originally thought about turning the closet into a bedroom for the girls. I almost did that today when I realized what a mess is gotten myself into.
Back to today’s events… the little girls emptied the dresser. Mr. Awesome and I loaded it into a trailer so he could deliver it. That meant the girls had all of their clothes in two laundry baskets. I guess looking back on it that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing but at the time I thought it was.
This is a pic of after we moved the dresser out. 
The other dresser had been stacked on top of the remaining one. It was crowded and unorganized in there or just a plain mess some might say.
So I decided to bite the bullet and tackle this closet. After all I’d ordered everything I thought I needed and the boxes had been cluttering up the house so why not?
We proceeded to clean out the closet.
I found a couple of my old suits that I really loved.
Then Isabella thought we should leave it like it was because it would be just perfect for hide and seek.
I found my old paper cutter in here. Plus that’s the serger I bought last year. I haven’t taken it out of the box because it got tipped over during delivery and all the spoils fell off. I’ve been procrastinating because I’m afraid it’ll be a bit confusing to sort out. It didn’t belong in the closet so out it came along with that bookshelf me and my sister worked so hard to squeeze in there last year. Sorry sis!
Wow! So much space or so it seems.
Of course we had to give the floor and walls a good cleaning with our favorite wood cleaner from Grove. It smells so good!
I did try out the grapefruit floor cleaner from Grove but the floor pads didn’t work well on this rough wood. They did smell really good though and Isabella was in love with them.
Then to put in the new double rod from Whitmor.
I forgot to show you what the rest of the house looked like after we emptied half of the closet. (We could only do half at a time because we didn’t have enough room. The closet may have more stuff in it than the whole house!)
I have too many square dance dresses, I know. I’ll be purging some soon and hopefully selling a few of them.
This was the first attempt at getting it all in there.
We then put together a couple of new organizers and cleaned out the other half of the closet. 
Jacob supervised and instructed me as to how everything should go. He was also a very good helper once I told him the name of the pieces so he knew what I needed next.
Mr. Awesome returned about this time to find the house a disaster zone. It was really a mess!
After we got the organizers together and I rearranged a few more times I decided enough was enough. The little boys brought their clothes in from the dresser in the my bedroom.
They quickly filled the cubbies while tearing a couple apart in the process. They did a pretty good job but I think I’ll check out the Dollar Store or some baskets to fit in here so it is a little bit neater. I really don’t know how long these doors will last with these little guys either.
Then the girls tackled putting away their clothes.
Again we need to tidy it up a bit but they have a nice space for their clothes. There is another hanging area but they shoved all the jackets in there. I’m thinking of using the old closet in the living room as a coat closet… maybe… but first we need to find a place for their dress up that they shoved in there.
I had bought some shoe organizers with hopes I could use them to store my crinolines.
Unfortunately they weren’t quite big enough and most of my petticoats were too full to squeeze in there. I may try altering these to work but that’s gonna be on another day. I did get rid of two that I don’t use that much and I may try to let go of a couple more. I did say try… I really like all of the ones I have but they just take up so much space to store them.
I mean it’s really felt like a game of musical clutter today. The shed we were going to empty hasn’t been emptied so we have no place to store the furniture that isn’t needed. Then I ran out of trash bags so I couldn’t sort through as many clothes as I intended too. Oh well, progress is progress right?
I did have a mini meltdown at one point. I had somehow boxed myself into a corner and then a closet rod fell. It dumped all of my dresses that I had so carefully organized into the floor. I just had to sit down in the floor and have a little cry. I was tempted to just throw everything in a bag and get rid of it… I guess it’s a good thing we were out of bags.
We started cleaning up the leftover mess that had been pulled out I finally got to a point where it was somewhat acceptable. I fixed some Shepherd’s Pie and moved a few more things while it was in the oven.
The now empty dresser from the bedroom was relocated to the front porch temporarily. Another dresser was moved to where the old dresser had been and the gun cabinet took its place.
After dinner I opened the rest of the boxes that have been piling up including our new garment steamer.
I’ll post about this after I get to use it a bit. I’m excited to, hopefully, not be cooped up in the small bathroom while pressing clothes.
Then there was this neat little over the door shoe organizer compliments from Target Bullseye!
My dance shoes are happy to have a home.
They had been living in a tote under the bed.
Some had been in the back of the closet on that book shelf too.
Whew! That was a lot of work for one day. It all started because I let my daughter take a dresser… lol… I did have all intentions of doing this but this was not the way I had planned it to go.
It was much more work than I had anticipated. Especially since I’m still recovering from a fibro flare. The shelves didn’t get touched yet but I’ll have to wait until Mr. Awesome gets a place cleared to store some stuff. Ideally I’d like to get ever out of the closet that doesn’t need to be in there.
Mr. Awesome had a surprise planned for us tomorrow so I’d better try to get some rest. We still have a bit of clutter in the Main Room and a bunch of empty boxes.
These empty boxes will come in handy when I start to declutter the homeschool storage and toys. Gee… what am I saying? I don’t know how I’m gonna find the energy but maybe the vitamins I found in my box from that discount online shopping club will help out.
I didn’t even tell you about unpacking that box. That prompted me to go to the bathroom so I could put away some soaps, shampoos, lotion, chapsticks, toothpaste, and cleaners. I thought it would be a good idea to go ahead and mix up some of the concentrates which in turn led to me cleaning the bathroom at 10:30 pm. They did smell good though.
I did retrain myself from taking the laundry supplies out to the wash shed. I had been attacked by mosquitoes earlier when I went out to get the mail. It was worth it though as we got some more of our new homeschool supplies.
So basically I just wanted to warn you to be prepared for your house to get turned upside down, inside out, when your kids move out. It will never be the same when they leave.
I’ve checked on her and she is happily settling in to her new room. She got some other furniture too and is working on unpacking. She thought it was funny when I told her what we’d been through since taking out the dresser but I must say it looks really nice in its new home.
I’ll add a picture soon 🙂
I’ll also post some better pics of the closet when we get it completed.
Have a good night!
Pollywog's Place Blog 