Tidying up: party closet

This was one of the best perks of the house- a storage closet for rarely used items, located in the dining room. I renamed it the Party Closet! It has been a thorn in my side lately because it looked like this when I opened the door:

Seriously?! Piles of junk everywhere. Shelves crammed full and no real thought given to how things will be stored.

I was just glad these items weren't clogging up my kitchen cabinets anymore. We were overflowing at our old house. I really don't like having a lot of clutter and items around, but I do like to have options for party supplies. Reading the Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up gave me permission to let go of things I rarely or never use.

I just took items out one by one, and created a discard/donate pile. I recycled lots of napkins, and dealt with some really annoying issues.

I found this box shoved into a back corner, and when I opened it up, my first reaction was "Oh my!" (said aloud), and I was the only one in the room. Or in the whole house. When Bean came home, I told him to look in the box and he said the exact same thing, "Oh my!" We will go through this treasure trove of souvenir shot glasses, souvenir wedding CDs, and varied selection of thank you notes in the next day or two and I suspect most of it will go away.

That lovely box was shoved in front of my wedding bouquet! I don't really know why I paid an arm and a leg to have this thing preserved like this. I loved it very much the day of the wedding, but I don't love looking at a creepy bouquet behind glass. It's no wonder I never really looked for it, even as I wondered if we had kept it or not.

The bouquet was hiding this beauty. A mass of cords from when we had our satellite hooked up when we moved in. I was feeling motivated, so I dealt with it immediately. I wrapped the big black one into a coil, taped it along the baseboard, and snipped off that beige cord that lead to nothing at all.

And here's what I ended up with! I only donated about a quarter of the items, including a food dehydrator that we got as a wedding gift and literally never used, and a set of TV trays that always fell off the stand and were a hideous cherry wood color.

And now here's the view. We will get a new set of TV trays because they are very useful during parties for creating little stations for drinks or appetizers, but I want to be the one selecting them for their style. And without an annoying stand that doesn't hold onto them.

This side holds all of the party supplies- drink glasses all together, pitchers on another shelf, mason jars and milk bottles (used for a specific purpose) are up high. The white 3-drawer storage unit? I bought it to organize my medicine cabinet, but it was too big to fit in that cabinet. In a stroke of genius, I labeled each drawer "Forks" "Spoons" and "Knives" and threw all the random boxes away, consolidating them into this one unit. I'm still patting my own back for that. Then there's a shelf just for food platters.

On the other side, I put a couple of 3-tiered servers up high, along with the wedding bouquet. I'm classifying it as sentimental items so I'm not getting rid of it yet.

Along the back wall, I arranged all of the vases since they get used more than anything. Now I feel like I'm going to a little shop to select which one  to use. I'm planning to hang a couple of hooks up near the ceiling to hang my seasonal wreaths. If they have a spot, I'm more likely to switch them out.

We kept our fondue pot even though I can't remember the last time we used it. More large vases get their own shelf here.

I have to admit, as I was pulling everything out, I had an extreme urge to halt the project and paint this closet. I can't stand the idea of beautifully arranging things on old dirty shelves. But that was not the main goal of this project, so it will just have to wait. I caught the decluttering bug this weekend so I have a few more projects to show you that we are working on now!