Organizing My Closet - Part 1 or Is 49 Scarves to Many?

Every year I have a desire to get something in my life organized and some what manageable...this year its my closet. It is a mess on a massive scale. If you judged me just by my closet you would wonder when my episode of Hoarders was airing.

I can never find anything, everything is crammed in there and I couldn't figure out how to make it functional. Part of the problem may be the abundance of clothes, shoes and accessories currently in my clothes but isn't that the point of a closet to store your clothes, shoes and accessories.

To make matter more difficult I have to share the closet with The Fiancee and its poorly laid out. (I am sure it was designed by some man that thought he will angle it to make it look nicer but really there is just wasted space). 

After staring at the problem for 3 days I took action. (I would like to note that I am only organizing my side of the closet, The Fiancee can fix his side. I'll help but he needs to do the work, its his stuff).

I decide the first thing I need to tackle were all my scarves. I have a lot of scarves. I love them. next to books they may be my biggest weakness. If I see a scarf I buy a scarf. All my friends and family know I like scarves so they buy them for me, often. Even The Fiancee (I wonder how many times I can insert The Fiancee into a single post, I just really like saying it) has bought me a scarf or two (3) since we have been together.

First, I rounded up all the scarves I currently owned. Most of them were hanging on hangers in the closet but a few were in a pile on the floor of the closet, some were in a pile on my blanket chest and there were still more in my car. 

Then I folded them nicely and laid them out on the bed. I then tried to figure out how am I going to organizing all these scarves. It was daunting and overwhelming and just when I was about to throw them all back in the closet I had a moment of brilliance...seriously it was brilliant.

I decide in my moment of brilliance to use an over the door shoe rack to store my scarves. See brilliant. I may not be the first person to do this but I don't know anyone else doing it and it worked amazingly.

This is just a standard 24 pocket shoe racket. I wasn't sure, at first, it would be big enough because despite getting rid of a few scarves I had 49 of them and I wanted to be able to see them and quickly decide which one to wear. 

I discovered that the pockets are big enough for 2 standard scarves to fit nicely. I had already folded them so I just paired them with a buddy and start putting the lesser wore ones at the top and bottom. Popular ones at eye level. The bulkier scarves took up one space and all the little ones that you tie on your purse or in your hair are all in one pocket. The Fiancee (5 times) is impressed and I can even add a scarf or two without having to get rid of any. 

Now I completed step 1 of my closet overhaul...Check back next week for Organizing My Closet - Part 2 or When Did I Buy That?

Tips to Organizing a Bookshelf

If you are like me (and I suspect some of you are) then your bookshelves are purely functional. They hold books with no room for anything else. Often times they are over flowing with more books than you know what to do with stacked high and deep. You yearn to have a bookshelf that could be featured in a home decorating magazine but then where would you put all your books.

And if you are really like me your bookshelves become unmanageable. And if you are exactly like me you decide that you need to declutter your house top to bottom and nothing is save not even your books.

So I am going to share my personal tips for sorting through my books (and since you are like me you will find them very helpful).

1. Take all your books off the shelf. I recommend tackling the bookshelves one at a time. If you try to do all the book shelves at once you will immediately become overwhelmed and freak out.
2. Make four piles. One loved it want to read it again and again and again. Two like it may read it again. Three hated it why do I still own this book. Four haven't read it yet. Occasionally there is a fifth pile why do I have two copies of the same book.
3. Now go through the fourth pile, haven't read it yet, and ask yourself honestly am I going to read it? Make a new pile of the books you will not read.
4. Take all the hate it books and books you won't read and place in a box to be donated or traded at local book store.
5. Now place all the books from pile one, books you love, and books from pile four, haven't read, that you decided you would read back on the shelves. 
6. This next step is the hard one place as many of the books from pile two, books you like, on the shelves. If you are lucky they all fit on the shelves, if you are not so lucky you have to decide which books stay and which books go.
7. Now do this do all of your book shelves.

If you are not OCD and don't feel the need to have books in a perfect order then you are done with your organizing you can now go clean out a closet. If you are like me, and I think at this point we have established you are, please read further.

Dick:  I guess it looks as if you're reorganizing your records. What is this though? Chronological?

Rob: No...

Dick: Not alphabetical...

Rob: Nope...

Dick: What?

Rob: Autobiographical.

Dick: No fucking way

-High Fiedelty

Like your records there are many ways to organize your books and I have done many of them. The most common is alphabetical by author or title, this one is very handy when trying to find a book. There is the artistic way of grouping similar book jackets together, all the yellow ones together. This is the most frustrating way because I can never find my books.

My favorite way is by genre. This is where you get to decide how you would group your books...I don't always agree with book stores.

1. Go through your bookshelves and purge your books (see above steps)
2. Now go through all your bookshelves and get all the books from any genre. (we will start with mysteries).
3. Decide which book shelf you want the mysteries on and take all the other non-mysteries off that book shelf. 
4. Now fill your bookshelf with your mysteries.
5. Do this with all your books, you may have several genres on one books shelf depending on how many books you have it that genre. 

If you are really obsessive with your books like me, and we know you are, this is where it gets crazy. You have to decide how do you want to sort your genre. I personal like putting my favorite authors at eye level and I fit the others around that, here is how.

1. Look at your genre and decide who in that category is your favorite.
2. Stare at your book shelf and decide where your eye goes to first. 
3. Put your favorite author in that spot. 
4. Organize the other books on the other shelf.

If you take it to the level I take it to there are a few more steps you need to finish. You purged, sorted and decided on your favorite author but in what order to you place the books on the shelf. That is simple, chronologically from date of publication.

Of course you are bound to run into the problem where the series was published out of order and are torn. Do you place them in the order they should have been written or the order they were published.

I suggest the order the series should have been written unless its the Phillipa Gregory books and then you have to put The Cousin War books before The Tudor Court books even though the were written in the other order. Having those books in any other order but historical chronologically is a crime.

How do you organize your books?