Unpack to Organize - The Cluttered Closet

While moving into a new home can be an exciting prospect, moving all of your belongings into your new home and organizing them into the different areas in your home can be a very daunting and stressful process – but it doesn’t have to be!

Calm Order’s Unpack to Organizer service will unpack and organize all of your items – right down to the books on your nightstand – so your new home is move-in ready. Our professional organizing team will unpack all your boxes and determine where they need to be stored in a way that works with you and/or your family’s lifestyle.

We are going to talk about the process of unpacking and organizing a master bedroom closet.

First, the team establishes a foundation which the organizational process will build upon: how big the closet is, whether or not it’s a his and hers and who has which side, what items are being stored in it, how to maximize the space, what is the best way to use the space?

We ask ourselves questions such as should clothes should be hung or folded? Will we be adding accessories, hanging belts, rolling belts, will we need shallow or deep baskets? How are the shoes to be stored? Do we have enough space?

Although space planning a master closet organization may seems like a daunting task, it is important to ask the key questions to set you up for organizing success. 

Can Hangers really make a difference? What may seem like an inconsequential factor, the whole organization of a closet can be greatly impacted in how the clothes are folded, or what type of hangers are used. When folding clothes for a closet there are popular methods. But how does each method work with your lifestyle, your drawer, shelf or bin. Is it even necessary to fold?

Calm Order swapped out metal and plastic hangers from a master bedroom closet to a slim line felt hanger adding space and eye appealing uniformity.

As for hangers, having the right tools, or hangers, makes all the difference! The classic tubular plastic hangers take up a lot of unnecessary space, and clothes tend to slide off the hangers, which only adds more clutter to the closet. We recommend using thin, non-slip, huggable hangers to maximize storage space, (usually with a velvety finish, so the clothes stay on!) and natural wood hangers with a rounded base for weighted items such as jackets to prevent pointy shoulder marks. For pants, a hanger with a rolled or rounded rod helps to lessen a crease or hanger mark on your pants.

Calm Order recommends these hangers to maximize space and prevent clothes from falling off.

These hangers are perfect for pants and jackets.

When it displaying the look the clothing itself, we transition different clothes through colour. For working professionals, clothes will be separated by formal attire and casual weekend attire. Often using a separate bar or space. 

Once categorized into work and casual wear, we like to see a transition through use of colours into the next colour, Keeping black and navy blue clearly separated. Often Closets don’t have adequate lighting and it is hard to distinguish navy from black when your sleepy eyed and trying to get ready for work.

An example of colour transition may be placing shirts in the following order: black shirts, black and white shirts, - white shirts - red and white shirts - red shirts,  red and navy,  navy,  - navy and green - green and so on.

Take a look at this before an after of closet that Calm Order organized using this transitional method:

A master bedroom closet before Calm Order...

The closet after Calm Order using colour transition!

Learn more about Calm Order’s Unpack to Organize service here, and stay tuned to the blog for more examples of how we can help you unpack to an organized home! 

Preparing to move into a new home? We can help you get started!

You’ve recently put your home on the market, purchased a new home, and now you’re ready to move. But where do you start?

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First things first: packing up all of your belongings is a great excuse to go through everything that you own and purge all the unnecessary items that you have collected in your soon-to-be former home.

When moving into a new home or downsizing, often your new place is smaller or a completely different layout than what you had before, so it can be helpful not having to drag all the extra items that you have. These items, more often than not, stay in the moving box and end up in a closet somewhere, taking up valuable space collecting dust when it could have been put to better use or donated/sold to someone else who could actually use it.

The less items you have to box up, organize, store, transport, unpack, and find a new home for, the better! Not only will your new space feel more clean, organized, and collected, but YOU will feel this way too. Moving doesn’t have to be hard; in fact, in can be the opposite: an opportunity for you to bring order to your life and start fresh in your new home.

De-cluttering your home is not only beneficial to you going forward, but can make a world of a difference when it comes to staging your home for buyers. There’s often no need to hire a staging company or designer and renting items to enhance the features of your home. Simply rearranging furniture, taking some items out, or showcasing collectibles you may have hidden away can work like a charm – and it’s something that Calm Order can help with!

Calm Order can be a great help for people who are feeling stressed and anxious about their move – our Moving Coordination services offer a personal contact that will be there every step of the way, from packing and loading to unloading. We also offer an Unpacked to Organized service (more on that in our next post!) to help you get settled and organized in your new home.

What exactly can Calm Order help with?

·       We assist with de-cluttering, downsizing, packing, organizing and furniture placement to enhance your home’s best features.

·       Organized priority boxes and a first night kit. It's stressful having a mobile phone with a low or dead battery and having no idea where your charger or power adapter is hiding in the mountains of boxes.

·       Planning/ packing your first night survival kit – pj's, toothbrush, toiletries, bed linen, pet needs, clothing, foods, favorite toys and kitchen items such as your morning coffee!

·       Obtain quotes: Moving company/packers, storage units/containers

And many more! Check out our website for more information on our moving and organized to sell services, and our next blog post when we talk all about the actual moving, packing and unpacking process.

Reusing and Repurposing

Why spend the money and clutter your space with new items when you have everything you need?

Calm Order recently worked on a professional organizing job for a client preparing a home for sale.  Instead of buying new items for staging, Calm Order de-cluttered the space and used items the homeowner already had in the house to decorate.

“ I was getting a clients home ready to sell. We were de-cluttering and refreshing some spaces. ” explains Karen Allbright. 

“We ‘shopped’ her home for complimentary decor and de-cluttered.”

When faced with redecorating or staging a space for sale or just for a change, think about what you can do and use that you already have available. Decorative items from one area of your home and be moved and used in a different way in another room. Excess items and objects that are unwanted can be donated and removed to give a room a completely new feel.

For this particular client, Allbright says that one room that stood out for her was the office. She ‘shopped’ for vases from this client by using ones that she already had. To add a unique design to the office that complimented the slope of the window, Albright stood some vases upright, some on their sides, and some upside down. 

She also de-cluttered and donated the unneeded and extra books to the Calgary Public Library, which cleared up the desk and shelving space, which makes the space seem bigger and more appealing to potential home buyers.

“It’s all about repurposing things and not buying more if you can find something in the house you already have,” says Allbright. [TWEET THAT!]

Instead of always buying and bringing in more clutter to your home, downsize and work with what you already have. A simple switch of decorations or pictures from one room to another can make a big difference – and a good clean and reorganization really helps too!

Here are two example pictures from the client’s office that show what the room looked like before, and what it now looks like after being organized and refreshed with vases the client already owned:

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This is what the client's office looked like before Calm Order came in.

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The client's office after Karen and her team reorganized and repurposed the space.