After finishing the master bedroom closet de-cluttering this past weekend, we moved on to the hall closet right outside our bedroom door. It had become a catch-all for photo albums, old videotapes, notebooks, random keepsakes and a mountain of spare shopping bags. In short: it was a mess.
Our approach was simple: reverse the careless, pile-it-all-together mentality that created the chaos in the first place. That meant assembling photo albums properly, ditching the “just in case” boxes and bags we’d been hoarding, and — most daunting of all — trimming down the personal keepsakes stacked in those two plastic towers of clear drawers. We wanted to reclaim usable space and create room for items that moved out of the nursery when we converted the third bedroom.
Once we committed to the task, it went more smoothly than expected. A lot of what we’d been saving felt like fluff, and tossing items that no longer held meaning was freeing. Limiting the photos and mementos to the truly meaningful made those items feel special again, instead of being diluted among stacks of junk. After a last flip-through, we said goodbye to many things and filed the keepers so they could actually be enjoyed. (Yes, I campaigned successfully to keep that photo of a blond teenage Sherry with her childhood dog Dante.)
Let’s take a closer look at the closet. Note: Sherry wants to clarify that those were suede pants with a side zipper from Delia’s. Hot stuff.
One rule we reinforced was limiting relationship keepsakes to a single box. Sherry is sentimental about John + Sherry mementos — plane tickets from our first trip together, a napkin from our wedding, etc. Years ago she designated one special box for these items, which helped keep everything in one place and forced limits: if it didn’t fit, we either didn’t keep it or preserved it a different way (photographing an item, or framing truly important pieces).
We discovered we’d accidentally started overflowing into a second box, so we pared things back to that single box. It felt good — fun even — to browse through the collection and remove items that no longer mattered, while adding a few fresh keepsakes. There’s a balance between preserving the most meaningful items and letting every scrap of paper take over your home. Excess memorabilia can clutter both your space and your peace of mind, so we aim to be selective. Living in NYC taught us how to be comfortable with minimal storage, which helps.
In the end we eliminated one entire three-drawer plastic tower by grouping like with like and tossing odd, unnecessary items like old business cards and ancient college notebooks. That cleared a spot for our vacuum — which had been displaced by the nursery conversion — along with our fireproof safe. The safe isn’t full of valuables since we keep a safety deposit box at the bank, but it holds things we’d want preserved in a house fire: wedding photos, a wedding video CD and other irreplaceable mementos.
By Saturday afternoon the hall closet was already looking much better.
Sherry had even bigger plans. Since the nursery swap displaced her wrapping paper and stationery station, she needed a new, accessible spot for gift bags, ribbons and rolls of paper. Previously those items were shoved above the laundry nook or stashed in an under-bed bin — neither convenient for her as her pregnancy made bending over tougher.
She eyed the full-length mirror on the back of the hall closet door and immediately saw a solution. We removed the mirror using the Command strips and headed to Target searching for a back-of-door storage caddy. What we found instead were three inexpensive wire CD baskets that seemed promising — and they were on sale.
We decided to screw the baskets into the door. With a screwdriver we punched a small opening in the back of each wire basket, then screwed them through the basket and into the door in two spots to secure them.
In about five minutes we had two bins on the top half of the door for stationery, cards and small gift-related supplies:
The bottom basket held wrapping paper, but we didn’t want rolls flapping every time the door opened. Our simple solution was to screw two small white coat hooks into the door above the basket and run a ribbon between them to act like a “seat belt” for the paper. The rolls can still be slipped in and out easily behind the ribbon.
In true nesting fashion, Sherry then decided that Sunday night was the perfect time to paint the dated wood trim inside the closet. She opened a gallon of no-VOC trim paint and quickly refreshed the dark trim, shelf and even the dowel. The touch-up made the closet look cleaner and more current.
We also pared down gift bags and added a hanging shoe/sweater organizer (a gift from a friend) to corral remaining wrapping supplies. Now tissue paper, smaller tags, ribbon, gift tins and fabric totes live together in larger gift boxes so everything is grouped and easy to find. It’s a one-stop wrapping station that replaced the unused mirror.
Sherry even painted the pebbled black sides of our plastic bag dispenser to help it blend in. It may have been a tiny task, but it improved the overall look. The closet now looks great compared to how it did just a few days earlier.
With the hall closet tackled, we turned to the shelves above the laundry nook. Those shelves are hidden behind bamboo blinds and had become an easy place to stash stuff without organizing it. Moving the wrapping supplies to the hall closet helped a lot, but the shelves still needed paring down and regrouping.
Cleaning that area was mostly about decision-making rather than strategy: finding smart homes for items, grouping like with like, and finally getting rid of old clutter like a rusty drain snake and a pile of replaced cell phones we’d planned to donate “someday.” I even volunteered to vacuum the dust up there, which felt like a small victory.
We didn’t reinvent anything on those shelves; we just decluttered and organized. The freed-up space will likely be used for baby items, but whatever ends up there, we’re glad to have the extra room as our family grows.
After wrapping up the closet work, we ran a few errands to complete the process:
- Donated a huge bag of clothes, shoes and accessories to a local drop box.
- Returned borrowed books, clothes and DVDs to friends and family.
- Recycled old cell phones at Best Buy.
- Dropped off two large sacks of books and magazines at a used bookstore.
- Rolled in loose change at Coinstar — we turned up $54 from purses, the car and our piggy bank.
We spent about $16 on the three wire baskets for the door and made $54 in change, so after expenses we netted $38 — a small bonus for a weekend’s work. More importantly, we reclaimed usable storage and created systems that will keep things tidy going forward. If you’ve recently decluttered a closet, especially if you culled keepsakes or found clever storage solutions, we’d love to hear about it and see photos.