It's a Wrap

About a year ago when I made a major change in my laundry room, I also made a minor change.

(click here for full scoop on that project),

I know that the cosmetic change is so great that no one will guess the functional one- so I will just spill the beans. Prior to the makeover, the washer and dryer were roughly centered in the space- with a small amount of space on either side of each machine. All of this space was pretty much un-usable because we're talking a few inches here, and a few more inches over there. I was attempting to store things like wrapping paper, mops, and brooms in those meager inches- but it wasn't really working out.

Well, math wizards, it turns out that if I added up all of the unused space and put it together in ONE place, it was a decent enough chunk of space that I could actually use it. So I slid the washer and dryer as far as they would go to the left and pushed them close enough together that hopefully I could no longer lose baby socks in between them.

So why am I telling you this now, a year later?

Because over the course of the last year- my neat little area to the side of the dryer turned into a place to stash all of this:

To be fair, this junk was housed in a box, and this is the picture that I took after I dumped out the box. When it was inside the closet, the box itself looked more like this:

 But since the box was such a mess, I pretty much had to empty the entire thing every time that I needed a gift bag or some wrapping paper.

Like many things, I tend to hoard collect gift bags. I mean, a nice gift bag is $4 or $5, so why buy one when you can re-use one? I definitely was taking things too far though- because when I emptied out the box I found ripped bags from my first baby shower...about 6 years ago.

Anyway, I can spare you all the step by step details, because basically I just sorted through them, tossing out the ones that weren't in good enough shape to re gift in the first place. Then I made a "bag full of bags" for Christmas, and a separate one for Birthdays.

 The end result:

An organized wrapping box that fits nicely between my dryer and the wall- and doesn't require me to unearth the entire collection every time that I need something.

It's the little things like this that make me so happy.