Before #1

I’ve won one storage battle. The kids’ bathroom has a little narrow closet I use to store medications and supplements, as well as first aid supplies and any potion or lotion you can name. I’m a bit of a hoarder when it comes to this stuff. While I do regularly purge and toss expired prescriptions, I have managed to gather a pretty large A to Z collection of vitamins and supplements as well as OTC meds. The ones that are taken regularly live in a drawer in the kitchen. The rest were in this closet. Yes, it was ugly. I am loathe to throw them out since we seem to cycle back through ailments pretty regularly. However, even though I KNOW I have, say, ginger, or stinging nettle, I’m usually damned if I can actually find it when needed. I’ve been saying for a long time that what I need is a supplement library, where I could store everything alphabetically, so that I could find it when I need it.

It occurred to me that although this closet is tiny, the

before #2

shelves are set in pretty far and there is room to put shelves on the backs of the doors. Genius moment. I Googled to find shelving.  Here is what I  ordered from DrawerSlides.com. It was hard to find shelving narrow enough for this tiny door, so these were a bit pricey. We ordered three of them so we could outfit the door from top to bottom.

We installed the shelving (simple job with a power drill) and I got to work. First it was time for another purge, so I sorted through everything and filled a garbage bag. Next I organized supplements and OTCs that we would be mostly likely to use on the door. This was a challenge since some of the shelves were not very wide. I had only three shelves that would hold big bottles.

I organized it in roughly alphabetical order so I can find things. The shelves are so narrow that there is just one row per shelf, so there’s no chance of anything getting lost. Then I organized what was didn’t fit on the door. Prescription meds went into one plastic bin. OTCs went in another. Big bottles stood on shelves. First aid supplies went into two smaller plastic boxes.

After

I also tackled the job of the top shelf of this closet which holds extra shampoo (people and dog!) as well as sunscreen and bug spray. I tossed a lot of almost empty bottles and used a plastic shoebox to put all the sunscreen together in one place so I can just pull it out instead of rummaging in the closet for it.

Total time for this project: about an hour. Total cost: $90

Satisfaction level: Priceless!

I’m so happy with how this worked out that I’m ordering more of this shelving to put inside a similar closet in the master bath.

Check your house for backs of doors where you can add some extra storage. I’ve done this in my pantry. The doors under your kitchen and bathroom sinks are usually a good spot to add some extra storage if you don’t have a closet like this!