Earlier this week, I set out to find a new home for my growing collection of purses. I've been splurging on Kate Spade lately and hanging my purses in the mud room among book bags and jackets was dealing them -- and me -- crushing blows (emotional in my case).
That's no way to treat a splurge. I needed something that not only gave my new acquisitions the respect they deserved, but made sure the time they'd last justified the numbers on the price tags I'd just removed. In addition, I wanted to keep them accessible. There's no point in owning something you don't use because it's too hard to get to.
I started out by browsing on Pinterest and I got lucky, moving from idea to implementation in one day. Here's how.
Once you've identified the problem:
Identify your styles. This will ensure that you work toward a solution that works for you, not someone else's pretty proposition. Believe me, it's easy to convince yourself that the right tool will solve the problem all by itself. If that tool doesn't also match your styles, that is never the case.
Brainstorm & browse. I love using Pinterest for this purpose because it makes browsing (getting ideas) and brainstorming (adapting them to fit my space and styles) a two-way street. If I have no ideas of my own, I simply type what I'm trying to organize into the search bar. In this case, it was "purse organization." If I know what I'm looking for (purse hooks, for example), I can get more specific.
Make a match and try it out. Because I've been organizing by STYLE for quite some time, I quickly zoomed in on style-specific ideas. From there, the next question was whether or not I had the space to implement them. Once I decided on an idea and a location, I looked around for things I already had that would give me a rough idea of whether or not the idea would work.
I got lucky, finding and implementing a Phase One fix all in the same day. Why a "Phase One" fix? Repurposing something I had works, but I think something else (something I don't already have) might work better, especially since the tool I used was doing another job somewhere else, leading me to have to do a little re-vamping there as well. I ordered something else I want to try from a store I'm familiar with (and whose return policy ensures I'm not stuck with it if it doesn't work). Once it arrives, we'll see if Phase One is a keeper, or if Phase Two works better.
Meanwhile, I've had a couple of days to live with the new solution and, you know what? I love it. If the new hooks don't work in the space, I can stick with this imperfect solution until a better one comes along. If the new acquisition is even better, I can return my placeholder to its rightful place.
As with all organizing, it's a process. Sometimes the first idea works; other times, it leads us to something that does. Either way, we get closer to easy upkeep, one step at a time.
