Organizational issues

Again I have agreed to NaBloPoMo - this time for the wonderfully short month of February. It ought to be easier this time, no holidays getting in the way.

I've still got a lot of back up posts from the 50 Q's and the Life List, so you may be seeing some of those again. However, today I'm not going to go down those roads. I want to talk about something else.

My mission for the last bit has been to turn my apartment into a home. I've moved a lot, in fact I've lived in four different residences since I moved to this city less than five years ago.

When I moved into this place last April, I had a bed, a desk and that pretty much covered it for furniture. For the longest time, I was sitting in a folding nylon camp chair and my TV was sitting on top of my boxes of books.

First I was given stuff by those who knew I would need. Bookshelves and a TV stand. Some people bought me stuff I needed that didn't cost much, like a shelving unit for beside my fridge.

I found stuff, like a recliner and I bought myself a a brand new table and chairs for two. Slowly, it was coming together. Finally, someone gave me a futon to act as a couch. For the first time, I was able to look around and say that I had what was becoming a home.

Now, I'm the first person to admit that my place has it's shortcomings. It really is a nice apartment, but it's small and storage is extremely limited. I've been having to come up with ways to make the best of what storage I have.

As a part of making my place into a real home for me is to make storage and find places for things to go. Just this past weekend I bought a cabinet for over my toilet and a special shelving unit for underneath the sink.

The weekend previous, I changed out my old side table for a shelving unit that was the same height as my bed. It holds more and I can store stuff on the lower shelves. It definitely made a difference in my bedroom.

However, there have been a few issues that I just haven't been able to find the perfect solution for.

One would be clothes that don't hang. I used to just hang everything up. I had a fairly large closet, but my new place has a very small closet. Now the clothes that don't need to hang up have no where to go. For the moment they're piled on the shelf in my closet - not exactly the best solution.

Another problem is my shoes. I have a lot of shoes, but I think I might have to go to an under the bed shoe storage system to accommodate them properly. Right now, they're on a low shelving unit inside my closet, but all my shoes don't fit on it!

One thought on these two problems is that if I move my shoes to under my bed then I can move my non-hanging clothes it a unit at the bottom of my closet which will leave that upper shelf available for storage. Might work, right?

Another big issue is cleaning supplies. Right now, I have no good spot for my broom, mop and vacuum. The Vacuum sits in the living room against the wall, the broom and the mop lean up against the corner in my kitchen. Not ideal. I don't even have an idea to solve this one.

Lastly, there is my den. It doubles as an office and the room for my cats stuff (you know, litter, food, scratching post). Although it is, to some extent, organized, it is also the room where I store EVERYTHING. I have a huge shelving unit that is full to the max.

It might do me some good to try to go through everything AGAIN to see if I can get rid of some stuff - either selling, giving away or throwing away. It'll take time. It's piled to the ceiling. Then maybe the cleaning supplies can find a place to hide back there.

There are still a lot of little things that I need as well. Towel racks would be nice. A shelf above the stove for my cook books. Something better to store all my DVD's.

Any ideas or suggestions for organizing a small apartment? What interesting solutions have you come up with for your storage issues?