Craft Closet Update

Small and Organized Storage Closet

Happy Monday 🙂 If you’re an American, I hope you have the day off today for President’s Day. If not, lucky for you, I have an exciting post (plus an awesome giveaway) to distract you. I’m sharing the last update of our tiny under-the-stairs craft/storage closet.

But before we jump into the after pics, here’s a quick reminder of where we started. I work freelance for DecoArt, so I have a lot of their paints on hand. I needed a better way to organize them so I actually knew what I had (those boxes are full of paint, too), and I needed to be able to easily get to them. As you can see, this isn’t just my craft storage closet, either. We used it for general storage, like extra drinks, the vacuum, and the cat pan/cat pan supplies. It’s a lot for a small space. Plus, the floor was unfinished concrete that was constantly dusty and really hard to keep clean. The space needed some help.

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Here’s the Before:

And here’s the after!

This is the glamour shot when you look to the right as you walk through the door. (Love these shelves? See the full build plans here.) The paints are organized by paint line, and then by dark to light within each paint line.

I also mounted a few shelves for smaller paints, painting supplies, stains and finishes, and spray paints. The shelves are mostly leftover pieces from the bigger paint shelving or pieces from my wood scrap pile, and they are hung using one L bracket into a stud.

Great view of the flooring here. I used a vinyl peel-and-stick flooring, and it’s perfect for the space. (See the process for laying and cutting it here.) It’s really easy to maintain and sweep up, which is a huge improvement from the dusty concrete with paint splatters all over it.

Another view of the back of the space, which shows more of the hanging storage on the right: My crazy cat bag, which stores our reusable grocery bags; a sewing mat; and a screen. I just used a simple hook and some nails for these things.

I kept the black metal shelving that has been in the closet this whole time. It’s just more organized now, and it’s at the front of the closet, making it easier to get to. (And yes, we have boxes of cheap wine from Whole Foods. They don’t sell it in Maryland, so we buy it in Virginia. Try not to judge us too much.)

For the cat people…

And the most glamorous part of the closet, the cat pan, plus the cat pan supplies behind it.

Cat people: this part is for you! We have used this litter system, the Breeze Litter System, since the kitties were babies. We have two of them, and we bought our first one at a PetSmart because we didn’t have time to wait for one to be shipped. As we were walking back to our apartment with it, someone literally yelled across the street to us, “that litter system is amaziiinnnggg!!” And they were RIGHT.

The Breeze system is a pellet-based system and is awesome because it all but eliminates the tracking that you get with traditional litter. It also does an awesome job with odor control and can be easily taken apart and cleaned. It’s a little bit more expensive than traditional litter because it’s more involved, but we buy the bags of pellets and the pee pads in bulk on Amazon to help keep costs down. (We will also occasionally do it through Chewy.com if we get a coupon in the mail.)

For example, one four-pack of pee pads is $8.75 on Amazon, which is $2.19 a pad. But if you buy a box of ten four-count pads, the price is $57.38, which is $1.43 a pad. We also use a Litter Genie, which is another huge help for a small space and is totally worth $15. That’s the blue and gray thing in the pic below. It’s just like the Diaper Genie if you have one of those, but it’s smaller!

Okay, ending the cat people portion of this post… 🙂

As I mentioned, we also store some cleaning supplies like our vacuum in this closet. I had it removed for the previous pics so you could get a better look at all the shelving, but here is what the closet looks like every day:

And because I’m really soaking up all of this paint shelving glory, here’s one last glamour shot of my newest pride and joy. Doesn’t it make you happy?

Before & After Shots

A few before and after shots to really make you happy, too. What do you think of the transformation in this space? Do you have a small storage space that you need to maximize as well?

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