Make it Monday – Closet Dividers

Every new mom is inundated with a list of things she and her baby absolutely positively cannot live without. And similarly with a list of things that are a complete waste of money. Do not listen to any of these people!

For example, everyone told me that I will desperately need a bottle warmer and I never needed one, never got one (nor a wipes warmer). In fact, since Emily really never took a bottle, that would have been a serious waste of money! Everyone also said the changing table was a waste of money and we still (after 4 years) use it every single day. I am not a fan of changing a baby on the floor, on the bed, or any of the other places that people told me to use instead of the changing table. (we went with a tall dresser on purpose because we liked it better and it fit the room better, so a longer dresser was never an option). And I bought a changing table off Craig’s list for downstairs diaper changes. See, better for me, better for baby, better for the environment, and better for the people who no longer wanted it. Win win all the way around. Pretty good for a “useless” nursery item!

There is another item in nursery world that I would agree is useless – closet dividers. Most of Emily’s clothes were hung – all sizes. One section of her closet was current and one for the future. When we moved, every closet had California Closets (SCORE!) and that was fabulous for my OCD organizational self, and once again, Emily’s clothes were hung and organized. My way. My way that I know and no one else knows. D tries and he is great at hanging up laundry and generally gets things in or near the right sections. But my system really means that I am the best equipped to hang up her clothes. That must stop!

But her clothes are not the issue any more. The twins will be sharing a nursery and a closet (California-ized thank you sellers ) and while I can do his clothes on one bar and hers on another, I want thing to stay organized!! And that means organizing clothes by size in such a way that other people can put away the laundry (hint, if you come over to help with the babies, you can now put away laundry, which will be a big help ). But I am not about to spend money on closet dividers. And really, why would I? Instead I got creative with cereal boxes!

I present DIY closet dividers! Easy, cute, and basically FREE! You cannot do any better than that! There are a ton of tutorials on the web, so I will just give some quick hit highlights here.

First, open a cereal box and eat the cereal.

Then open the box all the way flat. I cut off each main panel to make life easier.

Here you have 2 options and I tried both, but preferred the second one. You can trace and cut out the shape and then glue on the paper. But I preferred to glue down the paper to the cereal box (spray adhesive is your friend!) on both sides, then cut out the template.

Then cut out a hole slightly larger than your closet rod. My mother in law has a handy dandy scrapbook hole cutter and I used that because when I used scissors, it was not a pretty cut. It had to be a pretty cut!

Here is what I had.

I love the way they look – the perfect clean cuts, the nice paper, I am happy! But in order for this to really work, I also wanted a way to label each one. Stickers!

LOVE LOVE LOVE these! And basically, free, which is the best part. The cereal we had anyway, this was just reusing the boxes. The scrapbook paper I had, my mother in law had and I did buy a few sheets (but at half price, $0.29 a piece), the spray adhesive I had, and the stickers I had.

So I still agree that these are completely unnecessary, but they are cute, it was a fun project and I am a sucker for anything that either organizes or creates the illusion of organization. So my official stance is that these are not necessary but there is no way they can HURT, so why not?

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