If you have small children, you have small accessories.  A LOT of them.  Depending on where you live, that can include mittens, beanies, scarves, umbrellas, sunglasses, hats to protect from the sun, flip-flops – you name it.  If you’re lucky, like me, you live somewhere that gets seasonable weather and calls for both cold and warm-weather accessories – double the “stuff.”

I think it was somewhere between the arrival of Kid #2 and Kid #3, that I had finally had enough of trying to keep track of all of those teeny, tiny things.  (You can only deal with so many meltdowns as a result of your three-year old not finding his absolute-favorite-can’t-live-without-it pair of sunglasses.)  I needed to figure out some sort of easy closet organization system.  We didn’t have any place for one of those cute, locker room-style mud rooms that have become so popular.  I was stuck trying to make the most of a standard coat closet.

Enter…the humble, over-the-door shoe organizer:

While the name implies that it is merely for shoes, this hanging wall of pockets can be used for SO much more!  Imagine, a pocket for each of those accessories.  Better yet, many of these shoe organizers hang low enough that even fairly young kiddos can retrieve and put away their own items.

In the winter, this is perfect for hats, mittens, and umbrellas.  Come summer time, simply switch out your cold-weather accessories and then you have room for sunglasses, flip-flops and sunscreen.

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I dressed up a simple, canvas shoe organizer  by adding the first initial of each family member’s name with a Sharpie marker – “C” for Chris, “D” for Diana, etc – to each person’s row.  I made my stencils using my Cricut Explore Air 2 and some contact paper left over from a class Halloween project.  (If you don’t have a paper-cutting machine, never fear!  You can make your own stencil using a Word document – simply print out the letter, cut it out, and then trace around the letter with a Sharpie.  That was my go-to method before I got my Cricut!)

To help contain the odds and ends on the upper shelf, I added a couple of coordinating canvas bins.  The bins keep things looking much more tidy, and they help prevent smaller items from getting lost at the back of the shelf.

This easy, DIY closet organizer was featured on Fox40’s morning show.  You can watch it HERE.

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