Turning Your More than 5-10 minutes problems into Marital Bliss

This is actually an unauthorized guest blog by Lauren's husband, David. Hello. She is sleeping right now and I wanted to suprise her with her a new closet. She's been dealing with a lot of change lately and has had too much on her plate, running an outrageously successful business, raising the ironically-named Christian and still dealing with the after effects or a flood/ move/ renovations. I read her blog about the 5-10 minute rule, I'm going to fix this... the closet.

I'm going to give you tips on how to do this yourself on the cheap. I'm also going to ramble on philosophically about life and marriage and maybe even, God help me, design. I teach English Literature by day, and am only the master craftsman by night (check the post time, going be well around midnight) so here are my thoughts and some bad jokes, but its all for a good cause.

The only tools I used tonight were, drumroll please

And my little ryobi drill.So the first thing to do is plan out your closet. Lauren showed me how to do this in our townhouse. She says the most important thing about custom closets are the getting the different levels and spaces to stay organized. Figure out if you need lots of room- tall rods for hanging suits or long dresses, or if you have an inordinate amount of shoes maybe you need little cubbie holes. I know, I know all that sounds custom and expensive, but this is how were going to get around that.

It may not look like much, but this little baby is versatile. we spend 10 dollars on five of these things and ten dollars on closets rods. If you knew how little money I gave Lauren to spend on decorating you be so amazed, but they you wouldn't like me as much. So, first things first, lay out your closet. Lauren had already planned this out before we moved into the house (I know, I know) so I'm kind of cheating, but I did some of it on my own. We have your typical closet. Rods hung at 5 and some odd feet.

Wasted space below and above. We need levels. Lauren fixed this problem at the townhouse. In my closet we took a shirt and a pair of pants on hangers and held them up to see how much room they needed. Wow, if you hang a shirt at six feet and change and then hang the pants at three feet and change, problem solved. You still get a shelf above and room for a pair of shoes below.

So let's move the rod. We had one of these, which makes it more difficult. If you just have a rod resting against the wall in a socket, just remove the rod and unscrew the socket and ignore the rest, unless of course your enjoying the witty prose.

You have to remove the shelf, remove the rod and then pry off the wood molding (I use that term as loosely as possible, it is just a piece of 5/4 x 4).

I remove the old nails and use the same wood, waste not. I make my mark based on where I want my top closet rod to be and nail in the pieces of wood. Important- pieces of wood will sometimes overlap, so the pieces on the outside have to come out first and go in last.
See how the piece of wood on the right extends all the way to the wall and the piece on the left runs into it? Well that means the piece on the left is coming out first. So pull them out, put pressure on the corners and where the nails are or you might pop through your drywall.

Oops. But hey it's a closet and that will be covered up by shirts. Select the height you want your top rod to be and then start putting the boards back up. Use the original nail holes, but fresh nails, because they will line up perfectly with the studs, and will just go in more easily. (to any colleagues reading- sorry about the split infinitives but this is hard work) Now I've always wanted one of these suit valets:


The finish is wrong anyway. So I put the next rod in with one of these beauties and a few wood screws. Make sure to use wood screws.



The key to these thing is to put them into studs. I know the man at home depot will tell you that sinkers will work. The actual packages of the mollies, or sinkers, or whatever new name they have, claim outrageous holding capacities, 50, 60, even 100 lbs in 3/8" drywall. Far more than your clothes would ever weigh, right? I've been there, these are just a few of my bad memories:


I've tried them all. They don't work. They will never work, and if you used them before for other things and they worked, you got lucky but trust me, they won't work here. You need to put them into studs. Use this little machine, wait for him to beep. Then he is happy and you will be too. (look again at the picture above, I've shamelessly put the dreaded sinkers on an end table I built) Anway, I set the height on my bottom rod to accomodate a some pants on one side and a dresser on the other.

Well not exactly, you can get into a philosophical style debate on dressers but Lauren had this elfa thing from the container store. (lauren's into these right now)

And I said I want to keep my clothes in one of those things in the closet. That way all of my clothes live together like a happy family, and I don't change locations when my socks don't match. Its all right there now. We purchased one of those thing for me.
Now these things take up space and I sacrficed most of my lower side to house it. You'll see later what Lauren had to sacrifice.

I also got different size mesh baskets because while I have less clothes, I'm larger than Lauren and my clothes physically take up more space. So she has lots of little baskets and I have a few big ones. Here they are together:

I love this thing. Say bad things about dressers in closets, say bad things about Hemingway, but don't say bad things about this elfa closet organizer, I love it.

So Lauren's side only has half of a rod on the bottom because she has long, pretty dresses that go on the other. Very custom. It took me two minutes to measure the pole length and then three minutes to saw the pole to size. If they have the nice poles that have rubbers caps on the end then buy those so you don't have a sawed edge. If they don't put the sawed edge against the wall so the factory edge stick outs.

In my travels overseas I learned an ancient Chinese secret about getting good photoshoots of closets. Matching hangers with sufficient space in between, even if you have to remove clothes and hide them elsewhere.

Try to ignore the racing stripes, that's where the old board used to be. I will fix that later, remember what's important here is not the nailheads uncovered, I'll get to that later as well. What's important is that as we speak sleepy lauren just stumbled into the room and said "oh my gosh, so much better."

She will wake up in the morning and eat breakfast feeling a less stressed, she'll be singing a song, probably some terrible Cobie Calliet (sp?). After breakfast she will bring a bunch of toys into the bedroom and Christian will make and destroy buildings, in that order, while she organizes her clothes.

While most people see piles of clothes and empty hangers, Lauren sees what was an umanageable nightmare turning into a 5-10 minute mess. Maybe they'll be organized by occassion, season, I can't begin to understand the synesthete's mind, but I can observe its patterns. And I know marital bliss is not found in organizing closets, but I have found doing something nice that you know the other person will like always goes a long way. Now whether or not Lauren is pleased I stole her blog to post on a half-finished closet we've yet to see.

The 5-10 Minute Rule

No matter how beautifully we decorate our homes, if they're messy & disorganized, we can't appreciate or even see the beauty. However, I think of "messes" as reality, at least in my life. I have a toddler and a job, and hence, my house is almost always a mess. BUT in general, I'm okay with this mess, because it can be disposed of in 5 to 10 minutes, tops.

So, I'll never pretend that I can have a "messless" life-- for me it's just not possible-- but I can have "organized messes." I consider an "organized mess"as a mess that's allowed for a time. It's a manageable mess & the most important thing about it is that it MUST BE ABLE TO BE CLEANED UP IN 5-10 MINUTES! That's the rule. It's easy to get rid of because an organized mess has a place where it belongs: baskets, bins, drawers, cabinets, shelves, etc... a SPECIFIC HOME. (This is the key to putting it away quickly, because you're not shoving the mess anywhere, you're putting it back where it belongs.)

I wanted to share with you some of my favorite tools/ organizational pieces used to handle messes and "stuff." Below is a picture of what I consider an "organized mess." The pillows on the sofa are all messed up, toys are everywhere & there are a few magazines/ books laying around. But it would take only 5-10 minutes MAX to get this messed cleaned up. And I'm so okay with it.

In our living room, we have a shelf with baskets full of Christian's toys. (Now I know some might think it sacriligous to keep toys in fairly plain sight in the living room, but it's the way we want to live... we all want to be able to hang in the same room, so I figure for a few years while we have little ones I can give up a half-wall in the living room ;)

Anyway, toys are all over the floor half the time but when we need to get them cleaned up, it takes 5 minutes to put them all away neatly in the baskets. (The key is keeping them in not-too-full baskets because there's always room, even when throwing the toys in carelessly and the little guy can help too. )

This hutch (below) in the family room (pic is from old house) fits tons off storage for toys and also photo albums & other random things. It makes clean-up so easy and totally hides all evidence if kiddies!!

I never regret spending on organizational items like baskets & storage bins. I'm often reluctant to buy them because I would rather spend the money on something pretty, but they're worth their weight in gold.

I LOVe these huge baskets from ikea. It's where I stick all the pages I've ripped out of magazines before they go into my Style Files:

For my office, these hanging file bins are awesome & when there's a mess all over my desk I can easily & quickly (less than 5 mins!!) stow it all away with these suckers:

So, my goal is to have every room in the house obeying the "5-10 Minute Rule." (and right now I'm SO far from that!! It seems as soon as we got our old house in perfect order, we moved!! I'm NOT doing that again!! ) Here's a quick punch-list for our new house:

1) Our closet --> it's a HUGE 4-6 HOUR MESS right now!! We need to install more bars & storage and get things put away nicely. Below is how we've been living: (ahhhh I can't believe I'm showing you this!!) It's tough to feel organized when your closet looks like this:

2) Little guy's bedroom-> Since I stole the toy shelf from his room, he doesn't have anywhere for the toys in his room and unfortunately the furniture form our old house doesn't fit right in his bedroom, which is driving me crazy!!!!

3) The kitchen-> I have more shelves to go up with baskets for extra storage but I'm waiting on the wallpaper install before I can get to this:

4) The entryway-> To put it simply, it doesn't work right now. We need to add some storage & decorate it asap!! It's so drab & unfunctional right now!! (haha check out my dead hydrangeas in the little vase & the dog chow- now THAT'S styling!!! ;)

There just doesn't seem to be enough time in the day!!! but i know everntually we'll get there... (don't worry, i'll take pics! ;)

Now, what to do with all that stuff that doesn't have a place? Arrggg like the strange piece of mail you don't know where to put (you need to handle it sometime soon, but not soon enough to warrant immediate attention) or those stupid screws that keep showing up everywhere (with all of these projects going on right now!!!) or the returns you need to make at the store or your pile of giveaways?


Take stock of the all items that keep popping up and start creating places for them. They're not going to go away and isn't it annoying to have them keep popping up? If you create a place for them to go, clean up is so much quicker!! Different times & stages in your life will call for different random clutter-busters. Wintertime items vs. beach towels & sunblock or screws and tools all over the place when you're in the middle of renovating. Whatever it is, realize the type of clutter you have as quickly as possible and find a place for it. The solutions should be easy & obey the 5-10 Minute Rule. (Sometimes this means not organizing down to the last minute detail because clean-up could be really time consuming!!)

I'm on my way to follow my own advice now... So, how are the rooms in your house? Do they meet the 5-10 Minute Rule? Any rooms on your "To-do" list? would love to know!!

xoxo,

lauren