WANT TO KNOW HOW IT ALL STARTED?
Restoring order to my kids’ craft closet at home
At the end of 2022, I began to crave neatly organized spaces after going through my kids’ craft closet.
One morning, while both of my kids were in school, I was cleaning my house as I normally do and found an unsightly surprise in their craft closet. When I opened up the door, I saw construction paper flipped in all directions, playdough stencils still with playdough bits that were hardened, and random packages of Christmas crafts that were half-opened.
There were random crafting supplies thrown in without order. It was up to me to get in there and straighten things out.
The corner of avoidance
The “corner of avoidance” is simply my humorous way of talking about a neglected part of the craft closet that my kids knew was there and didn’t want to touch.
I never really considered the corner of avoidance because it had not happened to us before, but as the kids have gotten older, we have accumulated more stuff, so messiness was bound to happen.
My kids had used puzzles or certain arts and crafts supplies and put them away with no rhyme or reason. This turned into a corner of avoidance because it was a very easy thing to hide the mess behind a closed door.
Initially, I was surprised to see so much clutter hiding behind the door, but after I got past the initial shock, it took me a quick moment to come up with a good plan.
I decided to buy some simple white organizational baskets from Dollar Tree and start the process by separating the craft supplies by category. 
Of course, the orderly baskets helped me easily weed out any broken, ripped, damaged, or dirty craft supplies.
Marker missing a cap? Construction paper bent and smudged? I removed the items that were no longer useful and placed them in a separate pile for the recycling bin.
As soon as I removed everything that was unusable, the artsy things that remained looked much better.
At the end, I saw how easy it was to make big improvements in organization by using simple organizational tools such as baskets. I was very happy that the end result of my kids’ craft closet turned out great!
I was very happy to take this opportunity to reorganize the kids’ crafts.
Any lessons learned?
This was a simple experience, but one that got me to think.
I was certain my kids appreciated their mom coming in to fix the problem, but at the same time, I felt fulfilled restoring order to cluttered areas.
This got me thinking …
What if I organized spaces for others?
"Can you
help out ?"
-- neighbor to Ayleen
–Ayleen agrees immediately
Suggestion from a neighbor: Help them out - they are downsizing
Almost as soon as I asked myself the question of whether I should start organizing spaces for others, the answer came to me quickly.
I talked to some neighbors informally about my accomplishments with my home organization. One of them told me about a different neighbor who was moving to Costa Rica. They wanted to downsize their personal belongings and asked me to help. I learned that this neighbor had physical limitations and really needed help sorting through her items and making decisions on what to keep and what to get rid of.
This was a big project to help my neighbor downsize, but it was well worth it. It felt good to be able to help others. I was inspired to keep the momentum going and began posting pictures and information about my organizing work through local social media channels including NextDoor. Little by little, clients began trickling in.
With the support of my loving family, I made things official in October 2023 by creating Clear Spaces Organizing, LLC.
