Big Changes, Little Changes

I’m assuming every blog post that goes up today will say something like “I can’t believe September is over!” As much as I hate to be derivative, seriously you guys, I can’t believe September is over. I’m happy though, since I love fall — it’s the best season for running in my opinion, and consequently has become my favorite season. Fall running = fast running. Let’s hope that bears out this Sunday at the half marathon I’m running on the Cape!

As Naomi mentioned in her post on Friday about the skirt that my party destroyed and then she rescued, I recently started a new job and so that has been a big part of the month just flying by. I started on September 1, and it’s been an awesome whirlwind of settling into my new role and new organization. Of course, the major drawback is that I no longer work with Naomi, and that totally sucks to be honest. But we still text/email many many times a day and hang out in person as much as possible — we have many important blog things to do, after all!

We don’t really talk much about our day jobs on the blog, but just in case you’re curious what I do all day to pay for my DIY addiction: I’m in non-profit operations. My new job is as Director of Operations at an awesome education non-profit, and my work essentially involves the business side of running a non-profit — HR, facilities, IT, legal/compliance/risk management, and finances. Really, non-profits are businesses like any other, they just have a different tax status. I love operations work because it’s so action-oriented and involves doing so many different things, but it’s also 100% about the people and the mission — in everything I do, I’m asking myself: what’s the infrastructure I need to create so that our staff can do their work as effectively as possible and advance our mission to the best of their abilities?

ANYWAY, that’s just a little personal tidbit in case you were curious. But I promise today’s post isn’t all just personal blather, I also have some DIY for you. Specifically, some hooks that I retrofitted for my closet. Thrilling, I know.

The long story is that I decided to do Apartment Therapy’s “Closet Cure” this month, where AT gave daily instructions for 10 days to help readers sort through and cut down their wardrobes. I think if I hear someone say “konmari” one more time I might scream so I refuse to make any “The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up” references (besides the one I just made…), but I thought the Closet Cure was very helpful for forcing me to trim down my clothing in a contained amount of time. I had tried to do it myself just a month earlier, and yet when I did it again in September I ended up cutting out all this additional stuff:

These are IKEA bags mind you, the massive kind that I think I could fit in myself and I’m not even that flexible.

It’s been such a relief getting rid of all that — my dresser drawers actually shut, I know that anything in my closet is something I would want to wear, and our shoe collection is a little more under control. We’re not obsessed with shoes or anything, but we had still ended up with this by the front door:

By throwing away some old sneakers (I alone was hoarding 5 pairs of running shoes), putting our boots away until winter, and making more organized use of the shoe storage space we already have, we were able to get things much more under control by the door:

Anyway, one thing I wanted to do to complement the clean-out was get a few organizing accessories for my closet, which I was able to do on a Friday night when Sam and I went on a date at a restaurant near a Home Goods. I think you know what that means.

I picked up two colorful cloth baskets for $7.99 each for the top shelf of the closet:

To be honest, I’m not really sure how best to use these because I like to have things visible or I won’t use them. But aren’t they pretty? Right now I have some off-season shoes (and two pairs of old sneakers I couldn’t part with) in one, and a bag of “maybe” clothes in the other which was a part of the “Closet Cure” (we put things in a “maybe” bag throughout, and then at the end AT told us to seal up the bag and put it away and see if we ended up missing anything in there).

I also got the afore-pictured hooks. But actually when I got them, they were over-door hooks and they were comically high on the door:

I cannot reach that.

So using my newfound metal-working confidence from building the coffee table frame, I decided to cut off the “over door” part and drill holes to screw mount the hooks lower down on the door.

First, I clamped the rack to a table in my basement. One look made me realize that the jigsaw I was planning to use to cut the door hooks off was not going to work — the body of the saw would be obstructed from moving forward by the body of the rack. Instead, I decided to use a metal-cutting attachment (affiliate link, read our policies) with my dremel.

It threw off a lot of sparks, but I was able to get it to the point where I could then bend and break off the excess:

Then I used the grinding attachment on my dremel to smooth the ends I’d just cut.

(My dremel is awesome, for more about it check out this post on some of our favorite, non-obvious homeowner tools.)

Lastly, I drilled screw holes using a black oxide drillbit and the same technique I used when building the coffee table frame (be sure to check that post out for all my metal-drilling tips):

All told it took me about 30 minutes to alter it, and it felt so good to take something that wasn’t quite right and make it into exactly what I needed with a little elbow grease (and a few power tools…). I mounted the hooks at a much more reasonable height, and am now using them to hang my scarves:

As I said earlier, for me to wear things I really need to have them visible — so having this spot for my scarves means I’m more likely to grab one as an accessory when I’m getting dressed, instead of having to hunt for them where they used to be on some hooks at the back of my closet.

So those are some little changes to go along with my bigger life changes. I do have some big projects I’ve been working on the last few days that I can’t wait to share with you next week, but sometimes the little things are pretty darn satisfying too (especially when they still involve a little power tool action)!