Closet mess

So I consider myself to be an organized person. However, life happens, and even the best organization can turn into a mess. I set goals around the house of things to be re-organized, cleaned out, etc. when I decided to stay home full time with Santi. I figured I could tackle things while he napped. My main goals were two closets - one was our guest room closet which had been used as a real closet for my father in law when he was staying with us for 6 months and my mother in law when she was here for two months. One half was also used as my craft closet, but since I couldn't get into the room to "craft" it became a "throw it in there and I'll deal with it later closet."

The other closet was our bedroom closet. When we lived in our old place we actually had a hallway that led to the master bathroom that had one full sized closet on each side of the hall. I loved it. But when we moved here, we realized we had to share one closet along one wall. And the water heater was in the closet as well, cutting out some space we could have used for hanging. So I took one side and my husband took the other.

And after awhile, this is what it looked like (embarrassingly enough!):

My side


Husband's side:

So it's not as bad as it could be but it made me dread opening the closet doors. So I was on a mission to make us more organized. And to do it on the cheap (i.e. using as much of what we might already have in the house without buying more "organizing" tools.) So I scavenged the house and found a few bins and a rolling plastic dresser thing, and then made a trip to Storables and Target and picked up two more bins and two hanging dividers.I also went to Marshall's and got two pants hangers and two hangers for button down shirts, as well as two tie/belt hangers. I spent about $40 total.


I set aside one morning after I'd put Santi down for his morning nap. I pulled everything out of the closet and laid it on on the bed and floor near it in piles. Mostly shoes, then my clothes and my husbands clothes. We are limited on storage space so the closet, which is very tall, is also used for some miscellaneous storage such as old Halloween costumes, our wedding cake topper (definitely "miscellaneous!" my high school year books and high school diploma and our college diplomas. I pulled it all out and made another pile.

Then I started taking my husband's button down shirts and putting them on the hangers (they are one hanger wide but hold 5 shirts each. I decided to switch his side and my side since one side is all for shirts and dresses to hang and the other side has a shelf in the middle for more storage. I'd originally had the side where everything only hangs, but the water heater is on that side so it was really cramped.

Before putting things back into the closet, I took the opportunity to go through everything and pulled out anything that was too small (my husband had a number of shirts that were too small!) or we just didn't wear anymore. I made piles of donate and consign.

I then put everything back in his closet, and organized his things by type (button downs/dress shirts in one area, dress pants in another, t-shirts in another, etc.) I had room to put his jackets in there as well since we don't have a hall closet for coats. I also took his shoes and switched the shoe racks I'd had and gave him one with more room. I still had to put some shoes on the floor but there was so much more breathing room.

I was even able to add in all of his jackets, and also things like my wedding dresses that were being stored in another closet where there was really no room.

I then tackled my side, and arranged all of the items by type and then by color (I was organized just by color before and often was digging through for certain things.) So I have all sweaters by color in one part, then dress shirts by color in another, then casual shirts in another, and then dresses by color on the far right since I don't wear dresses everyday.

I had space on the bottom row as well so I put all of my jackets, dress pants, skirts and then tank tops down there. And I had enough room to put my two shoe racks in the closet and get all of my shoes and boots in there.

I was also able to maximize the top shelves for sweaters and maternity clothing. And have space below for extra hangers as well. Again, this is not my ideal closet, but it's definitely a lot better than it was!

I was able to only use one of the hanging organizers (sweaters and ski pants are stored in here) and took the other one back to Target. I also didn't use the rolling storage at all, since there was no floor space for it, and it didn't make sense in the closet. So I reused it and it's now in my son's closet and holds his extra diapers when we make big purchases at Costco. It'll eventually be used in his room for either clothing storage or toy storage.

So all in all, a great improvement for my husband and I when it comes to finding things. And I'm also happy to say that three weeks later, the closet still looks like that!