Organizing a Catch-All Closet

In order to make life a little easier on myself, a big goal I have for this year is to organize. I’m talking all aspects of my life – scheduling, planning, physical spaces, and so on. I had a small victory over the weekend when I took on a project that’s been on my list for months – organizing our catch-all closet.

This closet used to be a coat closet, but the previous owners of our house expanded it and added shelves. The closet is located over the basement stairs, so the bottom of it is shaped differently and cuts into the closet.

It houses the dog food, cleaning tools like brooms and mops, our last box from moving, some bulk items from Costco, bags, and a bunch of other odds and ends. Catch-all closets are awesome storage spaces, but it’s so easy to overflow them and have no method to the madness. Here are some tips on how to organize a catch-all closet.

Set a Goal

Before getting started, decide how you want to use the space. My goal was to still have this be a catch-all closet, just give everything a proper place. I wanted to fit more bulk items like extra paper towels and tissue boxes here instead of the basement. Our house isn’t very large, so figuring out what we use daily and having those extra items close by is very helpful.

Empty and Clean

After you figure out how you want to use the space, the next step is to take everything out. This is how our closet looked when I got started:

Once I emptied the closet, I wiped down all the shelves and vacuumed all the nooks out. I was left with a blank canvas.

Sort and Evaluate

After you have everything out, the next step is to sort through it all. Group like things together, throw away garbage and have a donate pile. Once you go through everything, evaluate what you have left and determine how much space you will need for it.

Figure out if some of the things you have in there really need to be in there. For example, we used to keep extra toilet paper in here, but it definitely makes more sense to store that in the bathroom.

I don’t know about you, but when I do something like this, I usually make a bigger mess 😬

Start Organizing

Now comes the fun part! Using bins, containers and drawers, start organizing all of your things. Keep groups together as your place them on the shelves.

I added plastic Sterilite drawers to the shelves that were slanted in the back, and then used extra bins and containers that I had around the house.

Paper products, like paper towels, napkins and tissues, are on one shelf. Extra food and cleaning supplies are on another shelf. I have a drawer for all of our dog’s supplies – tick medicine, extra treats, clippers, etc. Lightbulbs, extension cords and batteries are in other drawers.

Eventually, I want to pretty it up a bit – maybe paint inside, add some pretty shelf liner and labels. I also want to create a place in our garage for our cleaning tools to hang. That will get them out of the way in here, but for now, it works! This was meant to be a quick overhaul and it was definitely a step in the right direction.

I was blown away at how much extra space I had leftover. I need to make a Costco run soon, and it’s nice knowing I’ll have a place for everything when I get home.