asgoodasafire Asks:
unfuckyourhabitat Said:
Use vertical storage if you can. Get some stackable shelves you can use in there to double or triple your usable surface area, and maybe designate the worst of the two cabinets for stuff you rarely use and reclaim another area for your pans and such.
tiffanny-pack Asks:
unfuckyourhabitat Said:
You may need to get creative with your storage. Are you using all of your underbed space? how about your vertical space? Behind stuff, in other stuff; find every available square inch and figure out a way to use it. Closets almost always have a ton of wasted vertical space. See if you can do something like that.
Otherwise, we’re looking at more stuff than storage, and if the answer isn’t more storage, it’s less stuff.
emmaxgudith Asks:
unfuckyourhabitat Said:
Move the sweatshirts to the hanging organizer (they take up a lot of drawer space), and see if there are baskets that fit into the hanging organizers that you can put the socks into. The hanging organizers are also really good for things like jeans, too.
reichenbachtorwho asked you:
Do you have any general tips on unfucking a dorm room? A lot of the tips for cleaning a house don’t apply.
(Making this answerable/rebloggable)
The same general principles (20/10s, put stuff away rather than down, make sure you don’t have more stuff than storage) applies no matter what your living situation. With a dorm room, you’re dealing with extremely limited space and possibly another person, so every little bit of mess is magnified and seems so much bigger. Make sure you have a good system for your clothes. Having clothes strewn about is probably the most common dorm room problem. Make the most of whatever drawers and desk space you have. Create extra storage if you need it. Use the space under your bed. Use vertical space. Get creative.
Team UfYH, what suggestions do you have for dorm rooms?
It’s my birthday yesterday! (It’s nearing 1am here, but my birthday is August 17.)
I had a great time: going out for sushi; playing a party game mashup of: pictionary, charades, name that tune!, taboo, and other such things; eating lots of tasty snacks and popsicles. My friends are the best of all possible friends.
I’m also super proud of what we (A. and I) did before the fun and games began: cleaning our vestibule.
Witness our vestibule, a (often very dark) narrow strip of room that was this morning filthy as all get out:
Closeup of the shelves:
Magic: the Gathering cards, water bottles, dirt, shoes underfoot, the perpetual tangle of scarves, more filth… we’d basically ignored the vestibule for months hoping it would go away.
Then we decided that damnit, we were going to clean the darn thing!
Out went the shoes! Not pictured: the cobwebs and one live spider inside the boots. (I got A. to clean those; I’m not ok with spiders.)
I swept the better part of a year’s worth of grime, washed and vacuumed and even wiped down the shelves, which had all of their contents removed and reorganized.
And then, finally, an hour and a half later: BAM!
Oh yeah. Look at that.
Shoes neatly organized.
Our fedoras and sunhat in a row. (There’s a ballcap and beret hiding under the sunhat.)
And the star of our vestibule, the scarf organizer!
That’s a tension rod over which I threaded all of our scarves—and colour coded them! Gloves and additional scarves that didn’t fit are hiding, neatly laid/folded, underneath. I got the tension rod idea from StorageGeek. SO GOOD.
The board games are there because, uh, we lack storage so we make do with where we can put things. But don’t let the Battlestar Galactica box fool you: all the expansions come in the same size box, and we only use one for the actual game. We play BSG (which takes on average 3 hours) at least once a week.
That wood thing on the right in the main shots? That’s a wood coat hanger that looks like this:
We love our Nerf swords! (And the suitcase in some of the previous shots holds A.’s ten Nerf laser tag guns. Yeah, that’s right.)
We also did some other stuff: A. did a bunch of reorganizing in the living room, swept the bathroom floor, I vacuumed—but our basement suite is TINY so none of that took a long time. And I think we followed UFYH’s principles fairly well, even though this was more marathon-y than I’d like: we took breaks. And thanks to UFYH, the kitchen didn’t need any tidying at all, because we’ve been keeping up with it! Ditto on most of the bathroom!
Best part? We both had a lot of fun! We even argued over who got to vacuum, because we both enjoy it so much.
tallandignorantservants asked you:
I know you’ve posted about makeup before, but do you have any hints for storing/organising bottles of nail polish? That’s probably my biggest makeup indulgence and right now they’re just all jumbled in a box. I can’t see what colours are there, and any time I want to use one, I risk the structural integrity of the whole mess. Please tell me there’s a secret-women’s-business solution that I’m just not seeing.
I went to the beauty supply and bought a nail polish rack like they have in stores or salons. That may not be the best solution for everyone, though. So let’s hear it, people, what are your suggestions for nail polish storage?
Happened to check UFYH during the 10 of my first 20/10 for the evening, and lo, someone is in need of purse storage suggestion. And I just figured out a way to store them nicely just the other day! So I thought I would post it to see if anyone found it useful. ;)
Command Hooks. They are my storage friends. I was already using them to hold my oven mitts and for a key holder right inside my front door (WHICH HAS SAVED MY LIFE I SWEAR; I cannot tell you how many hours I wasted searching for lost keys before that). Then a commercial for them came on the other day and showed someone storing their purses. And I was inspired to do this!
I’d previously bought a purse organizer that slipped over one’s door, in theory - unfortunately, my doors are about half an inch taller than it was made to accommodate. Waste of money. Command Hooks wound up being much more economical, and putting them behind my bedroom door means they’re not out on display at all times. I’ve found them near desk supplies in my grocery store and Target.
miscellanii asked you:
Hi! I’m almost finished unfucking my closet (which was quite the project), and I was wondering if you have any clever way to store duffel bags/messenger bags/suitcases/etc (that isn’t just throwing them on the floor of the closet again!)?
Greetings! I am currenly in the middle of unfucking…*dramatic music* under my bed! Egads! No thanks to you I have battled hoards of rabid dust bunnies, conquered and reclaimed the Land of the Missing Socks, and slayed the monster of lost parts. However, the Bins of Crap await me after the valley of the Fabled Floor. I have two bins FULL of purses and bags (which I use regularly, for shopping and accessorizing) but they all just sit in giant tubs..taunting me about how I’m not taking proper care of them as I just shove them into bins. Is there a clever or good way to organize a LOT of purses/satchels/backpacks/bags? Rather than just cramming them into a bin I shove under my bed? -oldling
So, who has good ideas for bag storage?
I make jewelry, so I need lots of storage/display for it.
Ply wood covered on one side with 1/2” thick cork tiles then covered in stretch velvet stapled on the back. Little nails just push into the cork so you can move them as needed.
artbeautyfun Asks:
unfuckyourhabitat Said:
I had to Google this, and apparently lever arch files are 3-ring binders. I can work with this.
You say you are “ex-students.” So, are these binders something you need to access on a regular basis, or are they holdovers from school days? If you find you need to access them, say, no more than once every few weeks or so, I’d say get them off of display and into storage. Arrange them in alternating stacks (so they lay flat) in some underbed storage, and stash them.
Alternatively, if you never need them? May be time to unfuck them permanently.
thecuntosaurus Asks:
unfuckyourhabitat Said:
I’m a huge fan of hanging storage like this, which creates “shelves” (and drawers, if you use the inserts) with only hanging space. Don’t neglect your inside-of-the-closet-door space either; there are over-the-door hangers for everything. Utilize your underbed space for less-used items, and you should be able to banish the floordrobe.
I wish I had these really spectacular before and after pics, but probably out of embarrassment, I usually forget to take proper pics of my mess, so all I can offer are these little snapshots.
Behold, this is just a small glimpse into the horror:
My mum helped me a lot; we moved the desk and the containers around, and the trash I sorted out, filled eight (!) large bin bags.
One of the things that helped contain the mess was a metal pegboard:
It’s not only for tools, it’s also great for organizing crafting and sewing supplies!
Aaaand… tada!!
So a few days ago I found Unfuck Your Habitat here on Tumblr through a friends post and have been following them since. I’ve been inspired to unfuck my habitat due to this. And have now spent 1 1/2 hours to do exactly that!
This is my desk/vanity before:
This is my night stand before unfucking:
My EMPTY closet!:
A overview of how that corner of my bedroom looked. As you can see almost all of my clothes (among some other stuff) were all stuffed in my basket chair:
My desk after unfucking:
I even used some of the stuff I bought in IKEA that I showed you. The white flower pot now holds jewelry (rings and bracelets), and the smaller star can now has my brushes in it, and the bigger one has my hair straightener and curling iron. You can also see the beginning of my wall of stuff there. Where there will mostly be make up inspiring things. Amongst some colorful stuff. Like the blue, yellow/red squares are actually the box from a perfume. I just like the design:
My now FULL closet. Well there isn’t a whole lot in it but at least all my clothes are in it now:
An overview of the other corner of the room. You can see the organised night stand, made bed, and in the mirror you can see the now empty basket chair. Which I am actually enjoying being able to sit in now!:
So unfucking somewhat finished. All the visible stuff has been taken care of. I still have to go through the upper shelves of my closet and putting the anti sliding stuff in the drawers of my vanity, and re-organising that. As I like to have my vanity pretty well organised.
I consider this a night well spent!
Thank you UfYH for inspiring me to do this! Now let’s keep it this way!! That’s the hard part.
