Closet Organization

Much needed I might add.  Traci @ Beneath My Heart recently challenged readers to makeover their closets. 
She said “Next Monday, I am going to share with you how I organized THAT closet in my home.  You know the one…every time you open the doors to THAT closet, you say, “This closet is driving me crazy!””
When I read that I knew exactly what closet she was talking about.  My craft closet. {Dun dun dun}  The one that my husband hates to vacuum past as invariably there is some sort of thread or twine or yard peeping underneath the doors to get caught in the beater bar of the vacuum. 
When we moved into this much bigger than the house we were living in house, I dreamily thought that I would use the dining room as my craft room.  I would never have to put the sewing machine or ironing board away.  I would be able to leave uncompleted projects on the desk instead of having to clean them up to eat dinner.  And for a while it was glory.  But since this was a non-vital room, boxes that didn’t need to be unpacked immediately were put in there.  And Frank likes things put away.  To him put away means that he can’t see it.  So if there was something that he wasn’t sure where it went, it got chucked into the craft room. 
And there were the kids.  They were constantly hauling all their toys out to the living room to watch TV.  So I did the motherly thing and gave up my space to create a playroom.  But what to do with all of my crafty things?  I sew, quilt, cross-stitch, hot glue, Mod-Podge, paint and any other method of crafting seen in Blog land.  Lucky for me, this house has ABUNDANT closet space.  In our very loonnnnngg hall, there are 2 closets with bi-fold doors.  One turned into  the linen closet.  The other just had a few random things in it.  I moved them to more appropriate spaces and made my self a crafty home.
Fast forward almost a year.  I have become very busy with copying almost everything that see out there in Blog land.  My kitchen table now doubles as my craft desk.  But I shouldn’t can’t leave craft projects on the table all the time.  Once in a while we should eat together in the same room.  Right??!!  In my efforts to clean up multiple projects at once and rapidly, cramming became involved. And my Craft closet became this:
(Don’t judge these pics.  There is a solid wall across from the closet and the is no Earthly way to get a full frontal shot of the closet. 

Since my under the sink challenge didn’t take very long, I decided that today was the day for the closet.    As soon as I put Miss G on the bus, I brewed a cup of coffee, turned the radio up loud and started unloading the closet.  This is a good sized closet, but I truly had no idea how much stuff I had shoved in there and how long this was going to take.  I am so glad that today happened to be a day that Frank has a FD meeting and wasn’t home for dinner @ the normal time.

To illustrate my point, here are a couple during shots.

I found decorations from Valentines, Easter, Halloween and Christmas.

I found lots of these: 

A box of these:  (they are gift card tins that I bought on clearance to decorate ala  A Girl and a Glue Gun.  Christmas gifts for next year are already taking shape)

Even a basket of these: I can’t even remember what they are/were for.  LOL  But Miss G saw them and thinks that they should be adorning things aplenty.
I moved these decorations down to the basement where are empty rooms of space to store my holiday decorations. (Which means that I can make as much as I want, Right??!!)

I threw out this. Just the bags, not the puppy.  He was my only company during this ordeal.  Not that he could get anywhere near me.  There were times that I couldn’t see him as I sat in front of the closet.  My darling husband is going to have kittens when he sees the amount of trash that I put out.

So all this build up, do you want to see the results??

Here we go…I am once again able to hang my rotary ruler and mat as they deserve.  Every spool of thread that I found I put tape on so that it won’t unwind all by itself.  I skewered every spool of ribbon I found on my tension rod after I put a rubber band around said spool to prevent unwinding.  With it stored this way, I can slide the rubber band to the side, unwind what I need and cut it off. 

All of my general crafty stuff lives on this shelf.  White string and twine now live in recycled jars.  The lids need to be spray painted and holes punched in them to thread the string/twine through.The silver can that needs to be twinefied holds glue sticks.

All my paint now has a home of it’s own.  I know that there are several more tubes and cans of this loveliness in my house somewhere.  And there is plenty of room here to store it now.

Cross stitch books and boxes of floss.  Those boxes are next on my organization list.  They are all in # order but I have a bunch  more that need to go in so that means that they will all have to come out, the new ones added to the lineup and then re-stashed. 

And Finally all my sewing stuff is grouped together.  The feet and attachments to my Grandma’s 1950ish Singer.  All the little buttons and hardware for creating.  Bobbins and spools of thread where they should be.

Ahhh, all is well in my crafting world again.  Almost!!  Tomorrow I am getting my hands on a label machine and am going nuts.  And I think that I am going to put some sort of sign in the closet to remind me to keep it looking like this and how long it took me to clean.  Some witty phrase to order in vinyl. 
Any Ideas??