Condensing Your Closet

Having just reorganised my own closet space I'm hoping I can help some of you do the same. 

It's the time of year when thoughts turn to new beginnings, why not start the new year with a little space to store whatever 2012 may bring?

Here's my simple step-by-step guide to condensing your closet...

Firstly you need time.

 Set aside at least half a day for this.. It's a bigger task than you imagine if you want to do it right.

It may even be an idea to enlist the help of a friend. If they're a similar size to you they might even take away your cast-offs. One mans trash and all that.

Get it all out.

You will never successfully condense your closet if you can't see everything you have. Everything needs to come out, yes your room will look like a bomb's hit but it's only temporary. If you can see everything it might shock you how much you have you'd forgotten about.

Make three piles.

Keep, Laundry, Throw. If you have a really hard time getting rid of anything I would suggest investing in some vacuum storage bags. Put anything in your throw pile in a bag and stash it away. If you don't miss any of the items in the bag for 6months you never will! Get rid of them!

Be prepared to try everything on.

There will be things you can throw away at a glance but there are others that you need to try. Jeans and fitted items you haven't worn for more than a year are good examples of these.

How does it make you feel?

If something doesn't fit well or make you feel great throw it out. You want getting ready in the morning to be something you enjoy you don't  want to start your day feeling bad about yourself! You're not having a "fat day" your clothes just don't fit you. Don't hold on to things from 10 years ago intending to slim in to them.. you don't need that kind of negativity staring at you every day!

What's your style?

I'm a basics girl and love layering cardigans over tshirts, jeans, leggings... basics! More recently I've been better at buying things that will work with each other but a lot of my clothes don't really fit my style anymore. My taste has changed over the years and even items I like and that still fit well.. is there any point in keeping them if they don't go with anything else? This is time to be ruthless after all.

Miss BB

New Closet Organisation

This is a follow up to my "cleaning out my closet" post so for before pictures check that out first here.

I was pretty shocked at the amount of jeans I own.. this is AFTER I cleared out everything old and ill-fitting and it's still a pretty large section of my wardrobe dedicate to denim. Shamefully I even discovered  own two identical pairs of grey skinnies from Primarni.. why??

This is my "current" wardrobe.

I like to keep everything I'm wearing right now in my main space and use the other closets I have to store my lesser worn or seasonal clothes. I was using one wardrobe soley for evening wear but it really limits how often things are worn. I have now gone through and picked out my favourite pieces of the moment and put them all in my main space so I will see them more often and they're more likely to get an outing. Who says evening wear can't be worn during the day? Winter is the perfect time to mix it up. You can wear your dresses with thick tights and boots and casual-up an otherwise formal outfit.

My tops are organised by type, although they would look prettier arranged by colour I know. They go from jackets and blazers on the left through vests, tshirts, long sleeves and jumpers.

I've hung my favourite belts over a hanger for easy access. They previously lived in another closet in our then spare room (now nursery) but now I have a waist again it's nice to have them within reach.

I have my vanity set up in my bedroom now but I've avoided wires trailing all over by keeping my hair styling in the wardrobe where I'm lucky enough to have built-in plug sockets. 

I have two large plastic boxes filled with nightwear and lingerie. I have very little drawer space so this was the best option to store the things I really don't want to hang. They're designed to go under the bed but unfortunately they don't fit under mine. They are stackable though and the lids will click shut even if they're over-filled. A must-have for anyone with limited space and too many clothes.

So that's my new closet. If you're interested I will do a post on how to condense what you have and decide what to keep/what needs to go. It's tough but sometimes it needs to be done

Now I'm going to leave you with some of my favourite shoes...

CLOCKWISE - Kurt Geiger, Primark, BCBGeneration, Jimmy Choo

Miss BB

Cleaning Out My Closet

My closet has gone neglected for too long now, action must be taken!

I threw in the shot of my shoes for a little balance (not EVERYTHING is a total mess) but the rest of it is just a nightmare. I have more clothes than I know what to do with and I need to be ruthless. The worst thing is only a couple of months ago I had a big clear out and threw away tons of ridiculously small items I've been holding on to for 10years and my closet seems no better off. I started off today but it's a pretty big task. I've already made a HUGE pile of things to send to the charity bin but I'm not done yet. I will try and get the finished post up tomorrow and will perhaps film a closet tour while I'm at it. 

Shamefully what you see above is actually all secondary storage.. my main wardrobe space is this...

That's what I'm really not looking forward to tackling but it must be done! 

I tend to keep my "current" wardrobe in there and then split my seasonal/rarely worn items in the other closets but believe it or not I'm running out of space even with the bags of stuff I'm getting rid of. No wonder it all gets in such a state. When your clothes are in such disarray it's impossible to shop smart. You end up buying things you already own or lots of things that just don't go together - which is absolutely my problem. I love my basics but outside of that I have huge gaps in my wardrobe that I never fill because I have no idea what I actually have. I'm constantly buying plain tshirts for example (which I have in abundance) but rarely buy cardigans to layer over them so the ones I do have are falling apart from continuous wear and soon enough I'll have none fit to wear at all. Fingers crossed I can get myself organised enough to offer you guys some storage solutions and purging tips.

If all goes well it could be the start of a new style series. New Year seems like a good time for something like that, what do you think?

How do you organise your closet space?

Miss BB

My New Set Up..

Firstly I'd like to point you all to Fee's post today on MakeupSavvy.co.uk which was the inspiration for my afternoons productivity. I'm very easily influenced (as many beauty addicts are) and it took me approximately 5 minutes from reading Fee's post to moving my first item of furniture. I was sitting on my bed admiring all of the beautiful natural light streaming in and wondering why I wasn't utilising it. In my makeup room I had the worst lighting, the only good light I got was obscured and therefor uneven and shadowy. It had a small window on the side of the house that faced a brick wall.. not ideal! Much as I loved having my own little space it didn't feel warm or even very "me".. it was just where I went to get ready and film my videos. So lighting got the move started but another thing that appealed was I wouldn't be able to be as messy. When you have a dedicated room for anything you can close the door on any mess you've made.. moving my makeup area to the bedroom meant I would never be able to leave my dressing table in a state like this again....

Getting ready day to day it doesn't generally get this bad but after a couple of videos and not putting things away it can get worse... much worse! Stuff would pile up all over the place.. I could never find ANYTHING! So now I'm hoping my dresser will be a more organised, grown-up space.

For those of you that don't know what my room and set-up were like before here's a picture..

*sorry about the quality*

And here's what it looks like now...

Everything is gone and it makes me a little sad but we needed a space to store our clothes in that limbo period between washed and ironed and somewhere to set up the ironing board - previously the nursery was that space but I don't think Milo will appreciate that somehow.

So once I'm done taking all of my stuff out this will be that place. 

If you follow me on twitter you will know that while reorganising the furniture I suffered a major trauma. Our crappy old BT phone socket was wrenched from the wall leaving wires connected to nothing and me disconnected from the world. I didn't cry.. I just felt a little numb and continued my move. Intermittently I'd use the poor internet connection on my iPhone to try and find a solution but failed to find anyone with a similar problem or anything that told me what wire needed to go where. It was a dark time. Eventually I bit the bullet and called BT... I was informed that as I had broken the socket I would be charged £180 for an engineer to come out and fix it.... waaahhh!! Not what I wanted to hear AT ALL. 

I'd all but given up hope when I stumbled across a site that talked about replacing the fascia on a BT master socket... MY SOCKET! It says everywhere online that you are not allowed to tamper with the socket, it is in all the BT contracts that you must not do any repairs, it all must be done by a BT engineer... well let me tell you.. before I shelled out £180 I was damn well going to have a go myself. The problem I had was the front of the box had come off and there were two loose black wires poking out... I had to strip the wires back so I had enough exposed wire to work with and connected them to the relevant places on the underside of the faceplate. I connected my router not expecting much but low and behold it connected straight away... faster than ever before in fact. To say I was pleased would be a massive under-statement. I know I broke it but by god I fixed it.. MYSELF from some very complicated looking diagrams and I am extremely proud of myself! I wish I'd taken pictures before I fixed it to show the state it was in but all I have to show you is it here in working order and masking taped-up within an inch of its life. I think it will need at least another layer of duct tape and possibly smothering in no more nails... that thing is never coming off again!!!

I know that was a totally non-beauty topic but you can't imagine what it feels like for me to lose the internet... it's like chopping off a limb. No exaggeration!

But anyway... the reason for the post was the big shift around which as I said was all down to Fee's post... 

My only words of warning would be.. don't do anything ridiculous like I did.. much as I love my new set-up it would not have been worth the end of blogging and YouTube altogether... Fee nearly had a lot to answer for!

I'll do a full post on my bedroom now it's all done.. hopefully before Milo arrives and takes over everything. This will be a room I spend a lot of time in in the next few weeks so I'm really happy to finally have it feeling finished.

What's in my Closet?

This is the closet in my makeup room. It should have a hanging rail but the previous tenants insalled extra shelving which suits me just fine! Down the right hand side I have all of my handbags/clutches/purses and in my old plastic makeup storage. Down the left hand side I have hair products,skincare products, makeup bags and miscellaneous other stuff. In the bottom is basically junk that belongs nowhere else.

The closet is floor to ceiling so there's an extra bit on top.. see below

That's where I keep my sewing machine, fabric and random magazines I've held on to over the years.

Until quite recently all of this stuff was all over my house in various draws and cupboards and this closet just held a lot of junk that needed throwing out so now it's finally organised I thought I'd share it with you guys. I was shocked at the amount of stuff I actually had when it was all in one place. I found so many products I'd doubled up on and forgetten about so now if I want to try something different I can just pluck something out of there instead of shelling out more cash for more clutter. It really opened my eyes to the amount of products I buy and only use once or twice before moving on to something new. I am positive I don't need to buy another body moisturiser for quite some time and yet inevitably I know I will. 

How do you store all of your lotions and potions?

Spring Cleaning..

Ok so it's not quite spring yet but I decided my makeup room needed a serious turn around.. I have so much more space now.. I've move out two pieces of unecassary furniture and organised as best I could.. I'm really pleased with it!



I have my wardrobes to organise next... This is just a glimpse.. I have a lot of wardrobe space.. It's just not being used to its full potential right now!















I really struggle to throw things out so I hoard and hold on to clothes I've not worn for years! Not anymore!! It's cut throat time.. This week if it's not fabulous - it goes! I will keep you updated on my progress as I organise!

Any wardrobe organisation tips are very welcome!

xoxo

Miss BB