My Dream Closet

For anyone, the closet is an important spot in your daily routine.  It’s where you begin, and end your day.  An organized closet means you can get the day started off easily, without stress, and feeling great.  When we first moved, I was living out of boxes and a suitcase.  I was trying to set my closet up the right way, the first time.  I will admit, I was a little stumped at the amount of space, and because it was MY space, I was over thinking.

I’ve designed hundreds of closets for my clients.  However, this was my own personal closet and I was putting some pressure on myself to make it JUST right.  Well, I guess I had to step over the boxes one too many times, because I finally decided to sit down and get it done.

Starting (Not Quite) Over

The previous owners had a closet system in the space.  I COULD have left this.  However, I was planning on keeping more than just hanging clothes in the space and therefore I needed some shelves and drawers.  I also had an Elfa system from a long time ago and a galaxy far, far away that I wanted to repurpose.  My husband was a huge component of this project as I’m not able to lift, climb and install like I can without baby on board.

Use What You Have

I decided that for simplicity sake, I would keep my current Elfa system together in one piece.  Then, I’d build around it. By using my Elfa system in one corner of the space, I still had a lot of room to work with.  I took down all of the shelves that were in the closet and I reconfigured them so that I’d have two areas of “short hanging” space and one area of “long hanging” space.  Now, when you are designing a closet, it’s important that you evaluate what you own and wear.  For me, most of my clothes are foldable, or short hanging.  I have very few long items so I didn’t need to leave a lot of space for them.

Shoe Storage

This shoe rack is something that was already in the closet and I decided to keep it.  I don’t love it, but for now, it works well.  (I fear that it is going to become less functional for winter shoes.)  It’s a little messy right now, but I didn’t make it look perfect for these photos.  I just took a photo of how it actually looks.

My out of season shoes are on a shelf close to the top of the closet.  I need to get a stool to reach it, but I’ll only need to do that once a year.

The closet also had this belt organizer in it.  I’ll be honest, I have about five belts and had no need for this.  I was about to take it down and I started to thinking about how I could use it.  I thought back to one of my biggest organizational issues…my workout tanks.  They are not a standard shape and made of hard to fold technical fabrics.  So, I moved the belt organizer to an easy to use location in the closet and hung my tank on the belt hooks.  It works amazingly, and putting my tanks away is now the fastest part of doing my laundry.

Empty Space

There was an area of empty space left in the closet.  I was unsure as to what to do with it….I weighed my options of a seat, leaving it empty, and so on and so on.  I spent some time putting my things away into the spaces I’d already created and I realized I could use some more drawer space for pajamas, sports bras, tanks, etc.  I did some research online for free standing sets of drawers and I didn’t find much that wasn’t cost prohibitive.  The next day I was doing my grocery shopping at Costco and came across a set of drawers (four drawers), for under $40.  I really liked the counter like top to the unit as well.  It did need to be assembled, but it was fairly easy and fast.  Costco doesn’t have them online, but they were still selling them as I’m writing this.

Stay Tuned

Part two of my dream closet blog post is coming soon!