seeing the before photos totally boggles my mind. how did i ever get to anything in that chaos?

here we are at the empty stage…

and everything taking respite in our office…

yup – there was a lot of stuff crammed in there!

my sweet dad making the first drill hole into the wall….so exciting!…

with The Container Store elfa shelving, the most important component is this horizontal piece. this piece is what holds up your vertical bars and all of the shelving you choose to hang from it. it’s crucial to get this piece hung correctly AND straight across. we spent a lot of time double checking with a level…

once that horizontal bar was in place, we added the vertical bars and the top shelf…

next up was adding this great little feature, which as a matter of fact, i knew nothing about when i placed the shelving order. as i was going through the shelving pieces, i noticed these long 2′ bendable plastic strips. not having a clue what they were for, i read the instruction sheet and learned they are for covering the screws on that long horizontal bar. if you look at the photo above and then the photo below, you will understand what i’m talking about…

doesn’t it make the bar look cleaner? i love that feature of this shelving!!

after the full top shelf was in, we got the full bottom shelf installed too…

top and bottom shelves in…

now it’s time to fill in the blanks….which was super easy!…

it only took my dad and me a little under 90 minutes to install this system. once we got the hang of clicking the shelves into place on the vertical bars, we sped through the rest of the process. and we couldn’t have been happier with the results!

once the install was done, i spent the next several days figuring out how i wanted everything placed back into the closet. first up, my eBay shelf. i tried it this direction…

and this direction….

i decided to keep the black shelf facing the elfa shelving because it looked better to my eyes that way…and i would still have access to the small window.

then, i returned my small folding work table…

(notice the big empty wall above my work table? i’m on the lookout for a great vision board possibility. share if you have any ideas or suggestions for me!)

still have plenty of walking space in there…

next, i brought in a small folding chair and 2 rolling carts and placed those under my work table. those had been there before the closet re-org. since i already had everything organized inside each of those rolling carts (pens, scissors, envelopes, glue, etc) and would have everything at my fingertips while sitting, i figured it was easy enough to put them back where we started.

then i added all of my eBay items to its own shelf….along with all of my shipping supplies on the bottom shelves. SO happy to have one shelf in my closet dedicated to my eBay business. i am going to be even more efficient with this shelf in place!…

did you notice the 2 small black hanging baskets on the front of the eBay shelf? one of them holds tape and packing tape. the one above it holds our school box top paperwork…

finally it was time to put everything else back in. this took me a few days because i put things away and then sat on it for a day to see how it felt to me. a few times i went into the closet and realized the item i needed was up too high. or something i didn’t need was right in front of me – that got moved up to the top. and i needed more room on the bottom of the shelving for some bigger bins, so i (very easily) adjusted the bottom shelves up a few notches….

hey! i thought i was putting stuff away! why does my office look worse? haha!