The closet in and of itself is unfortunate with its lack of lighting and sliding double doors that only allow you to see half of the closet at a time. I guess that's a 1940's house for you.
But despite its inadequacies on the outside, the inside was all together tragic.
Like I said, this had always been Mr. Spouse's space - a spot for him to dump all of his bike gear behind closed doors and forget about it. I was totally fine with this arrangement as I rarely enter said guest room and even more rarely open the closet doors. That is, until the Mrs. decided to play copycat and take up cycling herself! After a few months of trying to live with the closet in its current state, I could take it no more!
We did have some sense of organization in the closet, though, see? We had a shelf for water bottles and a tub for all of the tiny accessories that could get lost in the general debris.
There was a shelf for socks and nutritional products used during rides:
Each of us had a shelf for our cycling shoes and helmets:
All of our spare tire tubes were in the same general area:
And any spare, rarely-used gear was discreetly stored on the top shelf!
Ideal, right? Perfectly user-friendly, no? Truly...organizers everywhere should marvel in the beauty of that cycling closet!
Sarcasm aside, it didn't take long for both of us to realize that with two people trying to use the cycling closet, we had to rethink its organization. Hallelujah, praise the Lord!
Working with the Mr., we started by making a categorized list (is there anything sweeter?) of everything that was in the closet: water bottles, lighting equipment, nutritional items, triathlon gear, etc. and decided that everything inside the closet fell into nine categories. Therefore, I went to Target searching for nine gender-neutral bins (for the Mr.'s sake) and two larger bins that could store both of our everyday cycling items.
I snatched up nine of these...
...and used two of these that were leftover from my linen closet project.
Now, it was time to sort! I laid out all of the navy bins on our guest bed...
...and after only a few minutes of sorting, everything was transferred from the closet into a bin!
Everything was finally contained! We had a box full of organized nutritional products...
...and spare tire parts.
Never have I ever been so excited to fold up tire tubes!
I then created a label for each bin:
All of the bins were loaded back onto the top shelf of the closet! I did my best to photograph these results, but with no lighting in the closet, it was a bit tricky...
As for the green, Y-Weave bins, I used these to store items the Mr. and I use every time we ride (helmets, sunglasses, Road ID's, headphones, etc.).
So now, each of us can just go in, grab our bin and shoes, and get ready for a ride!
Now, when we slide those glorious 1940's doors open, we see this!
The Mr.'s side:
The Mrs.'s side:
Quite a bit better than where we started, huh?
Now that we've done this small update, we REALLY want to install some lighting in the closet (shocking, I know) and figure out a new door situation. This closet is just too big to be cut in half by sliding doors. Can I get an amen?!
Happy cycling, patriots!
Please, could you ship that closet to South Africa for my husband's tri-gear? We have a racing bike, mountain bike, tri-bag, helmets, wetsuits and all the paraphernalia all over the pace.
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