Mommy On Purpose

What is it about bureau drawers that just begs to be filled with stuff we’ll never see again? Is it the dark, secret recesses or the convenience of hiding one’s clutter away with one smooth, rolling motion into oblivion? The only problem is that, eventually, the clutter gets in the way of said smooth, rolling motion and you can no longer hide the fact that said dark, secret recesses are overflowing.

If I had my way, everything would go in the closet. But, let’s face it, does anyone REALLY have as much closet space as they would like? So we resort to the next most economical alternative, which, unless you get really clever with your storage solutions, is usually a chest of drawers.

Mine used to be horrendous, all three drawers I was allotted as part of the marriage contract (out of 8 total in the bureau we share… how that happened, I have no idea) up until Christmas when I got a whole bunch of new clothes and my closet and drawers vomited all over the floor. So we went to the most logical place to alleviate any home storage crisis: IKEA!

I’m telling you, the Swedes are geniuses. I know, because I am one. Anyway, that’s where we found this beauty for a whopping $120:

MALM dresser, $120 at IKEA

We bought it, brought it home, put it together, named it George, and promptly filled it up with crap. And that’s when I had a major organizational epiphany: space is only half of the game when it comes to being organized. Because even though my clothes were carefully divided up into their new, spacious homes, they still ended up looking just like the $2 bin at a sidewalk sale.

The other half of the game, I realized, was VISIBILITY! You can fold and refold and stack and restack, but what it really comes down to is 6am late for work and you can’t find that black tank top. So you’re going to tear that drawer apart looking for it, and wha-BAM all your folding and stacking has gone to pot.

This is the part where I remembered a post on one of my favorite blogs, written by Rachelle Wilkinson, a mother of quintuplets plus two older children. She shared that she placed folded clothes into drawers sideways so that every single item is plainly visible, no one item sits on top of or underneath another, so searching for and removing the aforementioned black tank top won’t disturb anything else in the drawer! Genius!

My T-Shirt drawer after 5 weeks

It’s a very long-lasting organization solution because you don’t have to go through and re-vamp every week, it uses the full capacity of the drawer (as opposed to those cute drawer organizer cubbies that only use half the volume of the drawer, or they just look like mini sidewalk sale bins–still not helpful!). It practically maintains itself. The only regression I’ve noticed is that it’s no longer color-coordinated like it was at onset. What can I say, I was a little overexcited.

Baby clothes drawer after 4 weeks

Even the baby’s clothes stay pretty tidy, as long as I can keep her grubby mitts out of them…

In other news, I’ve graduated and am now officially a Real Person out searching for work like the rest of everyone else on the planet. So until I find some good web design clients, I’ll be blogging a lot more frequently! Good news for all you faithful readers… :B