In this new (old) house of ours we have a phenomenal amount of closets. For such an old house the storage space overall is amazing. Our bedroom closet is a decent sized reach-in closet, but the space was not being used in the most effective way. And while we could have just hung our clothes and added two dressers to the bedroom I really didn’t want to clutter the room like that. So for $80 I was able to customize the closet to ensure we’re maximizing all the space.
The closet had two hanging bars on each side and two small shelves above each bar, but there was a ton of unused space. I picked up one shoe shelf, and two drawer units from Target. I added the drawer units to the left side of the closet and we hang shorter clothes, tops, blazers, etc. above the stacked drawers. Just like that I added four drawers to what was otherwise completely unused space.
On the right side of the closet is where we hang longer clothes – pants, dress shirts, dresses, etc., and underneath those I added a shoe shelf. Most of our shoes live in our entryway closet (another post on that coming) but we keep the less worn shoes in the bedroom closet (hiking boots, tennis sneakers, etc).
For the shelves, I knew that we were losing good storage space by only having those two tiny shelves. So, we took those shelves and connected them with a piece of scrap wood and some brackets to make the shelf wrap around 3 sides of the closet. We gained an extra three feet of overhead storage for bags, bulky sweaters, and more.
To make the shelves look less unfinished I wrapped the whole piece with leftover contact paper I had on hand.
Lastly, there are two hooks under the shelf to hang our robes on (and our mini ironing board, which I’m not sure why I have that living in our bedroom closet). I may end up adding a few hooks to the inside of the door, if we’re finding that we need them.
For a total of $80 we were able to customize this reach-in closet, maximize clothing storage and eliminate clutter in our bedroom. Sometimes you just have to think creatively about your space to find the best end result. I’m hoping to add a small rug and get some shelf dividers so we can stack sweaters too. I’m psyched about the difference and already it’s proved to be very effective.
Leave a Reply