by Dee Brun

This past year I was so blessed to have moved into my dream home. She is an amazing 1932 beauty, full of character – gourmet kitchen, beautiful grounds… What more could a girl want?

She could want her closet back, that’s what she could want!

You see I moved from a fairly new home, 5,000 square feet with more closet space than Lindsay Lohan has arrests. I had so many closets in my old home, most of the shelves in them were empty.

However with finding and old character home in the perfect neighborhood comes sacrifice. A sacrifice of SPACE… We still have the same amount of living space, however my closet space has been drastically reduced to say the least.

Now that it is a New Year I feel the need to declutter and get re-organized for the year ahead. So I took a shot of tequila and decided to tackle the closet.

This was the space I had in my old closet…

And…this is the space I now have…

Can you say… “Shrinkage Factor?”

When we came to see the house for the showing, the lovely woman who lived here before had one of the bedrooms turned into a divine changing room. Rows and rows of clothes, shelf upon shelf of shoes, it was FABOOSH.

However since I need all the bedrooms for my four children and leaving one behind was not an option… it was a brief thought…but never an option. I had to make do with what I had…and what I had was a HUGE space, basically entirely unused in the form of a wine cellar in my basement.

It was time to think outside the bottle.  Here I had all this space that I barely used. It did store some of my extra booze and glassware but was quickly becoming a place to store, well, crap. In a house without a closet space, every corner must be used to its full potential.

So with a hammer, some nails and a wee bit of demolition…

I ended up with a truly useful space and made myself a ton of new closet room!

By just getting the handbags out of my bedroom closet, I feel like I have so much more space. This is turn means I just may need to go shopping!

Amazing what a few nails and a hammer can do, a place for everything and everything in its place.

I also still have tons of space for my wine, booze and glassware.

I am sure the lovely man who paid a small fortune to have this wine cellar installed may not approve of my D.I.Y. But a girls gotta do what a girl’s gotta do!

Now I know not everyone has an extra wine cellar just lying empty in their basement.

The whole point of this D.I.Y was to get you to look at your home and its spaces in a different way. Just because the extra space that you may have is not in the bedroom, it doesn’t mean it can’t be used as extra closet space. Your shoes and handbags deserve a nice home…with room to grow of course.

Cheers!

D.I.Y Daiquiri

2 ounces Vodka

2 ounces orange juice pulp free

1 ounce Mango juice

1 ounce pineapple juice

1 cup ice

Coarse sugar

Add all ingredients to a blender with ice and blend until smooth. Served in a glass rimmed with sugar and garnish with fresh fruit.

 

 

Dee Brun aka CocktailDeeva is the author Libations of Life, A Girls Guide to Life One Cocktail at a Time, resident Cocktail’ista on CBC’s The Steven and Chris Show; home entertaining columnist at Toronto Star Yourhome.ca; Home Entertaining Guru, writer, humorist, wife, mother of 4, TV Junkie, shoe-aholic and borderline George Clooney stalker.