Hall Closet

The dreaded hall closet.  Or perhaps linen closet is a more accurate description.  It houses things like our towels, first aid stuff, make up, lotion, etc.  But no matter the nomenclature it. was. ugly.  We have lived in this house for almost four years, and at least 50% of the stuff in here was stuff we just bagged up from our old apartment and threw in here.  Why?  Why did we do that?  Probably because while moving we didn't have time to actually go through the stuff we didn't even use there!  I just can't believe we took the effort to move bags of old make up and lotion to our new house so it could sit unused for four years.  Oh well, we live, we learn, we purge.   I also remember that feeling when we first moved here from a small apartment, before kids, and had entire unused rooms and thought, oh my gosh, how will we ever fill all this space?  Ha ha ha.  Anyway, it was a balancing act of a closet, anytime I wanted to throw in a new bottle of ibuprofen it would literally fall off a shelf.  I had the opportunity to do this closet this week thanks to several factors.... school vacation (my mother in law was home....) and low census call day at work (I didn't have to go in....) so, I had a whole morning with no children, one with my mother in law and one with my mom.  It was great.  Not only did I do this closet, I did other spring cleaning!  It was amazing.  This project consisted mostly of tossing old, half used, some unused bathing/bath/makeup products which are brands I don't use.  It was interesting to see how much some things in my life have changed (like, remember when I used to get every Clinique give away that existed?)  Needless to say, there was a lot of unused wrinkle cream and Clinique Happy perfume samples.   (I love that I thought I needed wrinkle cream when I was twenty-six!)
I tried to recycle all the containers I could and not just toss things right in the trash, but my compromise was with the old nail polish.  I tried to empty the actual nail polish in the trash and recycle the bottle but I seriously thought I was going to poison myself with fumes the smell was so strong and toxic!  I had to open all the windows for like two hours, I was glad the kids weren't home.  Any suggestions for disposing of old beauty/bath products in an environmentally friendly way?  I hate just tossing things in the trash I feel so wasteful. 

Now as for the after I know what you're thinking 'It doesn't actually look that clean or organized?" (It's also a terrible dark picture, but oh well)   because that's what I'm thinking when I look at this picture.  What can I say, organization has never been my thing.  I'm still toying with the idea of buying small sorting bins/baskets for some stuff, but I have a strong history of buying organizational 'things' and making clutter out of them somehow.   I am just happy there is so much free space on the shelves!