Oh how I despise disarray. It keeps me up at night, it makes me cry and it makes it very difficult to enjoy happy company with me. For the sake my our relationship (sarcasm), I asked John if we could get to work on fixing our paint can supply situation.

After putting the last swipe/roll of paint on the walls in our recently finished master bathroom overhaul, I brought my supplies down to the top of the basement stairs and then promptly lived with them sitting there for the next week. I knew what I would find when I took everything downstairs to our then-current paint can storage area and it wasn’t perty.

Essentially when John bought the house the summer of 2010, he inherited a bunch of paint cans. And when we rekindled our friendship and subsequently found a romance (read up on that whole turn of events here), he then inherited a partner who LOVES to paint. Add  on the three or four cans (plus an array of tiny sample cans) that I brought into the mix and we were left with quite a collection. And of course with paint comes piles of supplies too – i.e. paint rollers, paint trays, drop cloths, extension rods, etc.

I had kind of been dreading this particular organization project because I didn’t know where on earth we were going to store it. Up until now, the paint and supplies were kept in the water heater/utility closet in the finished half of our basement. One thought was the fancy industrial shelving unit John and I had assembled in the garage, but that was already full of stuff. To begin the project, I figured the best I could do was just go take stock of everything. When I opened the closet doors, I was met with the image shared above. Not good. Not good at all. Enough to make the tears well up in my eyes (slight sarcasm this time).

Deciding to go ahead and inventory everything, I got down on my hands and knees and then happened to look to the left. (sorry for the fuzzy pics – I was using my point-and-shoot as I was too lazy to trek upstairs for the SLR)

A whole square foot of out-of-the-way storage space that was just begging to be utilized! After I asked John to toss out the handful of plastic drywall corner protectors leaning up in the corner, which I didn’t see us using, I started to shift all the cans over to the empty space. In no time, the cans were rangled, subdued and sturdily nested in each other’s rims – I know they look a bit precarious, but that handy nesting capability keeps my paint can skyscrapers from swaying.

Being a couple of extra inches away from the water heater is also probably a big upgrade in terms of safety when you compare it to their original lean right up against the utilities.

The paint supplies ended up in an empty blue bucket (which I didn’t even know we owned) and the oh-so-scary organization project I had been dreading was DONE!

Is it super sad that that clear area up front makes me smile like a clown with giddiness (creepy image b-t-dubbs, I apologize)? But I know some of you out there can relate to this feeling…And I am beyond relieved that the project ended up being far less tedious then expected. Hooray for making the most of EVERY square inch!