Helping you celebrate every day colorfully. My mission? To make party-throwing a piece of cake!
Published on February 2, 2018 | Last Updated on January 18, 2022
I’m not an organized person by nature but during my pregnancy I was nesting like crazy! Our remodel project ended when I was six months along and when it was time to put everything back in our kitchen, closets and bathrooms I was making multiple trips to The Container Store a week. I was determined to take full advantage of my new found love for organizing drawers! Shortly after we moved back in, I started working on the nursery and quickly realized I needed to find a way to maximize storage. We live in a 1950’s ranch style house and unfortunately all of the closets are really small. We expanded the master closets during our remodel but the other two rooms including the nursery have limited closet storage. For as tiny as babies are, they have SO much stuff!
I knew once Piper arrived life would become chaotic so I needed to figure out a system that would help someone disorganized like me keep things tidy. Insert elfa from The Container Store! I’ve included a few iPhone photos of how the closet looked before the makeover so you can get an idea of what we were working with. Which honestly wasn’t much. I promise I didn’t intentionally take bad before photos for it to look even worse like they do in infomercials, haha! I never planned to post them but I do think a lot of people with small closets face the same storage issue we did. I hope seeing how we utilized every inch of the closet will inspire others to do the same!
I was able to work with an elfa designer to create a closet that maximized storage as well as made our lives easier. She asked me questions about how I planned to use the space, my organization style and how many hanging clothes versus folded I would have. We were able to utilize a lot of horizontal storage by adding in second shelf, a half bar and four small shelves on either side of the closet.
The elfa installer showed up, removed the existing shelf and bar then built out the closet in just a few hours and most of the pieces were custom cut to perfectly fit the closet. I added grey bins on the side shelves to hide the not to cute items like extra crib sheets, diapers, wipes, toys, etc. I know what I store in the bins will change as she grows so I decided not to personalize them. But I did personalize the acrylic drawers I have sitting on the middle shelf. I filled these with small things she’ll still have a few years from now like bows, hats, socks and shoes. I talked about the faux calligraphy on Instagram Stories when I was working on the project and a handful of people had questions about it so I included the details below!
Even in the crazy newborn stage we’re currently in, I’ve managed to keep everything in the closet organized. I absolutely love how it turned out! If you’re inspired by Piper’s closet, The Container Store is offering 30% off all elfa products and installation until 2/28. You can get started here.
Step 1. First you’ll choose your font and measure how long you want each sign to be. I used the Ambrosia Script font but you can use any font you like that looks similar to calligraphy. I typed out what I wanted each label to say in Word and adjusted the fonts so the longer words were smaller than the shorter words to mimic how someone would write it.
Step 2. Then I printed out the words and cut them into strips. For the clear drawers I taped the piece of paper to the inside and traced it with a paint pen. Some of the letters might take a couple coats but you should let it dry before going back over it to avoid streaks.
Step 3. For the mesh drawer labels I placed the clear plastic sheet over the paper and traced the words with the paint pen. Once they dried I cut out the signs leaving about an inch on either side of the word. I used a very small hole punch to put the hole for the brad but a push pin would work too. Add the brads then push them through the center of the mesh drawers and separate the tails to secure the sign to the drawer. There you have it, easy calligraphy signs that look like they were hand lettered by a pro! 🙂
Photos by Ailee Petrovic. Thanks to The Container Store for partnering with me on this post. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
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