out of control

In our home, one of us is slightly less organized and a little less neat... Care to guess who is Mr. Messy Pants??  It used to drive me crazy sharing one walk-in closet with Nick because his mess tended to gravitate to my side of the closet and eventually into the room. I figured that once we each had our own closet (something I'm thankful for every single day!), I wouldn't be so bothered by his disorganization. However.... it started creeping into our room again and I decided to take control of the situation.
This week Nick was gone for two nights on a business trip, so I decided to surprise him with a little closet/dresser reorganization. Here's what his closet looked like when he left on Monday night:

Yikes, right?!

You can see he has a small space, with little room for hanging clothing. In order to maximize space, I took down all the dry cleaner's wire hangers that weren't in use and made a pile for returning them to the dry cleaner on our next trip.

Then I pulled out all Nick's sweaters and put them in a canvas bin. Since it's no longer sweater season, I figured I could store these in my closet (I have lots of extra space) during the warmer months.

Finally, I reorganized the clothes; hanging all dress shirts together, all pants together, and all casual shirts together.

I "freecycled" the laundry basket from his closet, since we never use it anyway and it was a huge junk collector. (In our building we have a table in the laundry room where people put items they no longer want.) I designated a canvas bin for dry cleaning and pushed his laundry hamper back under the hanging clothes to give more floor space.

Next I added a large command hook on the back of the door for Nick's bathrobe. I also added several smaller command hooks along one wall so that Nick could hang his belts and his travel toiletries case.

On the opposite wall I hung a coat rack and organized his ties by color (no more excuses for non-matching shirts and ties!).

Tada!

And then................ I tackled the dresser. Here's the pile of unmatched socks lurking in the drawers:

preeeetty scary..... 

I  organized the drawers, devoting each drawer to a specific type of clothing (rather than the mismatched clothes in every drawer). I also started a bag of donation items  (including shirts and pants from high school, and things I didn't really like...).

Don't worry,  I'm not a mean wife who donates all her husband's favorite clothes while he's away. I put his requisite-man-T-shirt-collection (including sentimental T-shirts from forever ago that he'll never wear but could never get rid of) into an under-bed storage container, so they aren't taking up valuable drawer space.

Needless to say, Nick was very surprised and excited when he discovered this new-found clothing organization! Before you nominate me for wife of the year, I have to tell you that this little project helps me too. No longer will I be forced to spend my mornings finding matching socks, belts, shoes, or matching ties. With all this free time, maybe I'll get to sleep in a little during the week.... or not!