It's a mess!

In my desire to strike while the iron is hot I'm planning the organization and design of my office/craft room. I'm contemplating showing you a photo but I'll have to get my courage up before I commit to showing you the gigantic mess that exists at the moment.

First, I'm thinking about the closet. It is crammed, in a somewhat organized fashion, with sewing stuff, paper art stuff, and gift wrap stuff. Oh, lots of old frames and some of my husband's old law school text books take up space in there, too. Have you ever had a custom closet company come to your home and do one of your closets? I have. A couple of times. It is heavenly. Seriously. It costs some bucks but each time, once it's finished, my husband and I have loved the end product. When we lived in our first home in Connecticut, our master bedroom was huge, with odd angles. It had two closets. One giant closet with just two long shelves on each side. We could have had an amazing walk in closet in there if we'd had the closet company customize something. Instead, I, eventually, made that my baby's nursery. I can't find photos of the closet/nursery. I wish I could show you. It was great! Since we needed a clothes closet in there the other closet was transformed, magically, by a custom closet design. They worked an incredibly usable design into the most oddly angled space. I was skeptical but they totally knew what they were doing! Again, I apologize for not having a photo. It was fantastic!

I had a client that wanted a new sewing room organized from her less-than-organized existing sewing room. The closet company redid the entire 10 x 10 room into this drool inducing, completely organized sewing palace. It cost $6,000. Pricey. My client did not like that price tag at all! When it was finished? She said it was worth every penny and, seeing the outcome, would have spent more!

Share with me your experiences with big organization projects...closets and otherwise. I'd love to know what you've done. What you recommend. What you'd like to do. I'm looking at this to try out some ideas. I'm planning a trip to IKEA to carry out a lot of this...something I both look forward to and dread. Do you feel that same way about IKEA? Thank goodness for Smaland.