Spacesaving Gift Wrap Station
Part of the fun that's gone along with prepping for Baby H has been reorganizing every other single thing in my home. I've totally become one of those people who has to have everything in every aspect of my life in order before I can possibly bring my baby home. It's nesting on a whole new level.
When we started cleaning out our den/office/storage room/crapatorium, we had a long journey ahead of us. Not only was the room serving as a dumping ground for anything and everything, but our ginormous closet in that room was also not being used to its full potential. (And as an aside, this is also half of where Baby H's closet will reside and I'll be sharing that fun update later this week!).
One of my biggest organizational issues has been how to store all of my gift wrap goodies. I love paper, gift tags, boxes, bags...you name it. I started with an overflowing open basket of random crap stuff and towering rolls of wrapping paper that fell everytime I tried to get into the closet and after seeing this tutorial transformed it into this little gem of a gift wrap station.
We started by hanging a commercial door hook (we have large, thick doors) and adding the longest track they had. In fact, on a normal sized door, you would also use the bottom hook that is provided to secure the whole thing in place, but since the track didn't make it to the bottom of the door, Shaun simply added a few screws along the track to secure it.
I realized that we have super tall doors, the insides of which were completely untouched. Talk about finding space where you least expect it! When I saw that this could all be done so simply with the elfa system from the Container Store, it was a no brainer. (Oh and as a bonus, the system parts are all 30% off right now!)
After hanging the track, I used a deep basket with a media organizer to hold all of my wrapping paper in place. Can you tell that I love Christmas paper? Thicker rolls in the front, skinny rolls in the back with plenty of space to add to my collection.
In a shallow basket, I set up some little gift boxes that I like to keep on hand, along with notecards (somehow those end up all over my apartment and I can never find them when I need them!), and some leftover giant rolls of holiday ribbon.
In another deep basket, I folded up all of my holiday tissue paper (I got a huge box of it from BJ's this season, the likes of which will surely last through next Christmas and possibly beyond!). Behind the tissue paper are a few flattened shirt boxes and more large spools of holiday ribbon in the front. Oh and some everyday tissue paper also made its way into the right side.
In yet another shallow basket went all of my leftover bows, twine and paper ribbon. I love having these little things on hand to really dress up a gift!
And finally on the top, I used one more deep basket for a little Ikea planter filled with gift tags (again, mostly holiday-themed...gotta love BJ's!) and a large gift bag filled with other gift bags inside.
So there you have it.
The elfa system doesn't come cheap, but I am so in love with the look and functionality of this that now I'm on the hunt to transform every door in my home to one of these systems! No more baskets of random wrapping stuff, no more searching to see if we have tissue paper hidden somewhere, no more 10 rolls of wrapping paper falling over in the closet at any given moment.
I've never felt so accomplished! Oh and yes, I'll even go in there from time to time to gaze lovingly at it!
Happy Monday friends!
What's the last organizational project you instituted?
Do you have a magic gift wrap storage solution?
9 Comments | January 6, 2013 | Share Article | Email Article | tagged DIY, organization | in At Home Print Article | Permalink
Reader Comments (9)
Oh i need to get organized like that. I believe all my gift wrap is still in target bags with yarn and ribbon everywhere! LOL! Thanks so much for your sweet comment on my blog this morning. It really meant alot to me! Your a sweet friend!
Jessica
ob.sessed. with this.
Hello Nesting Mama! I remember nesting like crazy during the last trimester. I was totally in the zone and it paid off because it made everything so much easier when Baby came. This is a great idea and spacesaver! Kudos, it looks great! The last project I did was probably my new shelf for my cookbook collection.
This is the most ingenius thing ever! I'm going to see if my fiancé will build this for me one of these weekends haha :)
I need this in my life!
This looks amazing!! I really really want to do something like this with my wrapping stuff in the future.
Hi there,
Great job - looks wonderful :)
I have a thick doors too and the hooks provided by Elfa don't quite fit over my doors.
You mentioned using a commercial door hook... Could you please help me with how you attached the track to your door hook and what kind of door hook you used?
I'm really hoping to find a solution and would love to use this in my home... Thanks for your help :)
With our thick doors, we used the elfa commercial door hook, found here:
http://www.containerstore.com/shop/elfa/components/elfaDoorWallRackSystems?productId=10009293
This worked great! Our doors are also very tall, so the track didn't fit to the bottom of the door. Instead, we just used a few screws on the track to hold it in place and provide support (the tracks have spaces for screws). Just be sure to use screws that won't go all the way through your door ;)
Hope that helps!
Laughing out loud that someone else will stare into a closet just to see how orderly it is. I am an organizing addict. with so many of us in such a tiny space and so many little guys in and out of drawers and closets it seems nothing stays orderly for long. But when it is I will just walk into a room or closet or peek in a drawer to let out a big old sigh of organized relief. I find my grown daughters doing this now, too. Must be catching.