DIY Craft Closet Makeover - Dear Lillie Studio

Good morning! I hope you all had a lovely weekend. The weather was absolutely beautiful here (after a TON of rain last week) and the crisp air felt so lovely! Today I am going to share with you a project I did last week. It’s actually one of my favorite projects but it was really hard to photograph and isn’t necessarily that “pretty” of a project but it is something I have been wanting to do for YEARS and I am so glad I finally went ahead and did it! I have had a designated work area in the last three places we lived before this house and although I kept all my arts and craft supplies and wrapping paper, bows and that type of stuff all in a decently organized fashion in boxes and knew where everything was, it still always felt not nearly as functional as it could be.

As soon as we moved into this house I knew that the size of this closet in my office was perfect for being able to really organize and store all of my supplies. Because there was just one metal shelf in here to begin with though I put my filing cabinet in here and stored as much as I could on the one shelf and then put the rest of my supplies in another smaller closet upstairs. We have always done quite a bit of crafting but thanks to COVID we have done a TON of projects over the last few months and we started getting lazier as the months wore on and often wouldn’t carry the boxes that went upstairs to the upstairs closet and would just kind of dump them in here. I knew I wanted to get this organized properly but it wasn’t worth doing that until I had time to pull out the wire shelf and install more wood shelves so that I had enough spots to actually put everything on. Part of why I kept putting it off was because there have been plenty of other bigger projects to tackle first, but the other reason was that I was torn on whether or not to just put shelves on the left which would allow enough space to do a large peg board or if I should put the shelves on the back wall too, which would give me quite a bit more shelf space but eat into the wall space on the right where I wanted to put the peg board. I kept changing my mind and therefore kept putting off starting it.

After going through the stuff in both closets though I realized I would be able to fit everything quite easily onto the shelves even if I only built them on the left wall so I went ahead and did that because I really wanted to do the large peg board. And sure enough once I loaded the shelves up I actually have one empty box and one empty basket so I still have more space to add stuff if needed.

Here’s a before shot:

And here is that corner now:

Another before angle:

And now:

And a straight on before shot:

And now:

Here you can see the peg board I am so excited to finally have. I really love having everything out here in the open – it’s so much more organized and easier to find than digging through my desk drawer or a box! I’ve actually got one more desk drawer to sort through in the next day or two and will add some of those items to the peg board as well.

I can’t reach the top shelf without a stool but the items on the top shelf are things I very rarely use now, like my camera bags and a box full of cards and papers that hold special memories. The second shelf from the top holds things that I use occasionally, but not all that often. And then the bottom two shelves are boxes full of things we use much more regularly! For instance one box is full of all our glues – Elmer’s glue, glue sticks, mod podge, crazy glue, wood glue, you name it and it’s in there! Another box is full of crafting supplies Lola likes to use like crazy eyes, pipe cleaners, popsicle sticks and that sort of stuff. Another one is full of blank note cards, extra birthday cards, thank you cards – anything that we can easily grab any time we need to write a note of some kind. Anyway, you get the point.

I love adding a bit of wallpaper to a closet because it’s such a fun little surprise when you open the door! Plus peel and stick paper is so easy to apply nowadays that I can usually wallpaper in quite a bit less time then I could paint! I had been eyeing several Spoonflower papers, as well as this paper from Etsy, and this one from Carter and Main. However, once I pulled the wire shelving down and patched the walls I was itching to keep going and didn’t want to wait for one of those papers to arrive so I checked out our local Target, Hobby Lobby and Lowe’s to see if they had anything in stock that might work and Lowe’s had three rolls left of this paper so I snatched it up and had it hung a few hours later – haha! For bigger projects I usually plan quite a bit in advance and get my wallpaper ordered in plenty of time (like both Lillie and Lola’s rooms) but with some of these smaller projects lately I have been doing them pretty spur of the moment when I have a window of time where I think I can get them done and therefore just go with whatever is available.

I purchased the wallpaper, a little bit of the wood (I had some of it leftover from my last closet), the peg board and pegboard hooks, as well as the gray baskets but just about everything else – all of the supplies, accessories, tools, ribbon, wrapping paper, baskets, filing boxes, etc. were all just things I already had, most of which I have had for years. It’s funny because I have a handful of supplies from way back long before I had kids or even was married. It’s funny the things that you never get rid of like hole punchers and paper cutters – haha!