Our Lives: Tackle It Tuesday: Coat Closet Turned My Space

We live in a part of the state that is never really cold enough to wear coats. A thick jacket will do just fine if you are at the beach in "winter time". So with the coat closet we have in our condo, it naturally became a place where it houses everything except the coats (same story with the glove compartments in our cars). I have tried to make it work as a business office or other before but it always ended up being a dumping closet. I lived with it for years and it bothered me for years.

Mind you, I have re-organized it many times over, and eventually it still returned to its dumping ground stage.

I know what is the root problem but just did not want to face it. I don't have a junk drawer, I have a junk closet. Stuff in there are waiting for a permanent home.

I think the last time I re-organized it was before Peter's birth. Three years. Sigh. It is screaming for another make-over, badly.

So, here we go again, except this time, I asked for a "desk" to be put in it. I want to make it my little homeschooling office where I can close the door when the day is over. I started this project last week and am planning on finishing the mess by this weekend.

I have an armour as an office right now, but because of our small space, the armour is becoming more and more of an obstacles instead of a working space.

Besides, I am ready for a change.

Before - what a mess!

I don't have any boxes for sorting, so I use my good old paper bags.

Labeled the bags and started pulling stuff out of the closet and sorting them.

When dinner time was here and we needed to use our dinning table, I moved the bags to the staircases.

While cleaning out the papers, I found Joshua's school keepsake envelope I made for him.

and Erik's too. I don't know what happened to Christine's...

Until they left home, your children are not too old to make hand prints for you. :) I treasure this one so much. It brought back memories of days gone by when Erik was trying to be taller than me and that his hands would be bigger than mine. They are much bigger than mine now.

Taking shape...

We bought a piece of glass, a piece of good quality plywood and two supporting brackets at Lowe's. Total cost: $34.00. It would have cost much more if we chose the Plexiglas. I have that piece of fabric from a long time ago (part of a VBS costume), and I placed the fabric between the glass and the wood.

Adding pictures of my beloved family to it! I can change the "background" fabric anytime I want to. Love it!

Put my "essentials" on top of my new desk. I was very disappointed for not being able to remove the black poles at this time. So I tried to dress up the wall a bit with a card. It is not exactly how I want it yet but it will be, one day.