Organizing My Entryway

I'm very proud of this project because it took me less than one week to go from idea to fruition. Amazing! This is the area by my front door. It's actually been in pretty good shape since we took down the Christmas tree in January, but some stuff had started to pile up. Then, the other day I had an idea to get a storage unit and fill it with dress up clothes/costumes and various toys that aren't allowed in the living room (things like legos that L has to play with in the kitchen, away from T).

Here's the before: The enormous brown box is a birthday gift for L (his birthday isn't till June). Under the red table are the toy sets we keep out of the living room (aka choking hazards). The backpack is my everyday bag and that's its home.

Under the table you can see the play sets.

This is a wonderful picture of our closet before, the costumes are shoved on that second shelf in a jumbled mess. Nice.

So what I thought I wanted was a 3-drawer plastic (sterilite or whatever) cart I'd seen at Target in primary colors. When I was there doing my normal shopping I checked that out and it was $30. No way--I had previously gotten a similar cart (in white) on sale for $19. They did have a similar cart in fuscia on sale for $18 but I really didn't want to put fuscia in my entryway, so I kept it in mind and went on my merry way. A few days later I was in Big Lots and checked their storage aisle and found this white one for $16--and since I'd priced out the others I knew that was a good deal and I grabbed it. Sadly, the drawers are clear rather than opaque like the primary colored one, but I'll work with it. I saw a tip on a blog to put colored paper in the front of each drawer for decor and disguise. Clever.

Okay, so I put the cart in the foyer and filled the drawers: bottom is girl costumes, middle is boy costumes and top is various toys that T can't play with. On top I put a bankers box (one day I will post about my love of cheap bankers boxes) full of dress-up accessories like hats and purses. I did this in part because I knew introducing a new flat surface (i.e. the top of the dresser) would invite piles (I have a wee bit of a clutter piling problem) so the box prevents that. I hope to one day replace the ugly box with a pretty basket when a bargain presents itself. :-) Here is the cart after:

And here is the entryway after:

Much better! I wrapped the present that was in the huge box so that is gone. Sadly I didn't find a place for everything. The other banker box has baby clothes to send to a cousin and on top of that is a bin I don't know what to do with (ah, indecision). :-(

To see what others tackled this week, please visit 5 Minutes for Mom. Also, Leanne at Organize and Decorate Everything is starting a new link-up called We're Organized Wednesday, so check that out here. Thanks for stopping by!