Closet Project

This is the tale of two closets.
One of the only improvements we made in our last house in Florida,
was installing closet systems.
It's unbelievable how much more you can fit in the same space
by installing these.

It's one of the first tasks we completed here in our new home.

C's closet is a bit deeper than a standard sized closet,

but he had a ton of stuff to fit in there.

We got to work on his closet right away.

We found the closet system we've used before at a big box store.

A drill and a screwdriver are all that are needed to put this together.

We assembled the drawers first.

They are sold separately,

as the closet can be customized to fit your needs.

The drawers glide smoothly

thanks to the provided hardware.

We used two towers in C's closet,

one tall unit in the center,

and another that we divided into two pieces on each side.

The directions are fairly straight-forward

and it doesn't take much time to put it all together.

The bottom part of the center tower was placed first.
We added 4 drawers so that C could fit most of his clothes in it.
He doesn't have any dress clothes, or many things that need to be hung,
so the majority of his clothing fits right in these drawers.

Here it is while he was sifting through his items
to figure out what he wanted to keep
and what he could do without.
Many things remained in boxes
while he went through this process.

We decided to use 1 rod on the left for the few things he needs to hang,
and added the hardware for a rod on the right,
in case he should need it in the future.
For now though, 
open shelving works best for him.
He has a large fire alarm collection,
as well as many electronic components that he can easily access.

It may not be the conventional closet,
but it works for him.
That's one of the things we love about these systems,
you can configure them to suit you needs.
Along with paring down many of the things he had
(he's selling a lot of things on Craig's List),
he organized his leftover items in bins,
labeling each one for easy identification.
That's my boy!

Here's the closet in my room after we painted.
It's a unique shape,
but we had no trouble working around the obstacle in place.

The doors were removed to give me more space in the room.
This is the smallest room in the house,
and I decided to make a curtain for the closet to save space
(I'll show that when it is completed).

The middle tower is the foundation of our build.
It is two pieces that are stacked on top of each other
to form one tall piece.

 

Here it is with the second section added on top.

 A second, smaller tower was added to one side
to efficiently use the space that was left.
The towers can be fitted with doors or drawers,
or simply left as open shelving.
I only needed a few drawers to house my everyday clothing.

We chose to use two towers next to each other,
since we had to work around the A/C filter box (on the lower left),
with one rod across for hanging items.
All of my dressier shirts, dresses and pants can easily fit here.

These angled pieces are secured to the side of the cabinet
as well as to the back wall.
This ensures that the piece will stay put.

The closet contains:
1.  hanging clothes
2.  sewing machine and sewing toolbox
3.  clean feed sacks ready for sewing
4.  completed daisy totes
5.  folded clothes (shorts, shirts, pjs and unmentionables)
6.  shoes
7.  scrap feed sack pieces (for other projects)
8. supply box
9.  fabric scraps
10.  upper storage shelf

You may notice there is still more space underneath the bottom shelves,
but I prefer to keep things off the floor,
so it will not be used for storage.

It's so fabulous to be able to fit not only all of my clothing in this standard-sized closet,
but also all of my crafting items.
There is still room on the top shelves for more storage that is not being used right now.
(Maybe that'll be a great place to hide Christmas presents!)
This closet might not work as well for someone who has a large wardrobe,
but since we've decided to simplify and keep only what we truly love,
it does the job just fine.

This job took us a couple of hours and cost around $350,
which is much less than what it would cost using an installer.
The system that we use gives us about 3 times the storage space
in the same sized closet.

It's well worth the time and expense if you plan to stay in your house a while.
Another project we can cross off of our list!


New House series:
The New Homestead
Moving Toward Bliss
Organized Downsizing 
Fan-tastic! 
A Fresh Look 
Under the Spell of IKEA