How We...Reorganized Our Closet!

Remember when I said back in January that I wanted to clean out our closet? Though we are known to be neat and organized people, every house has a junk drawer...and "the closet." In our house, the dreaded closet was our master, and it had become the catch-all where we tossed things we didn't have time to deal with in the moment. From the looks of it, we just have had more than our fair share of moments. It was annoying. We tripped over things and couldn't find items we needed...so it was time.

We had grand plans. To be fair, we still have grand plans. One of these days, we'd love to get a closet system from IKEA (most affordable for us) and make that little nook appear custom-built. We even had a plan to go to IKEA last Saturday, if not to actually purchase, to at least make final plans.

But then...virus-ville. And panic. And people. It seemed like an unwise move to drop several hundred dollars on a closet system that only we would ever see when we weren't sure of the future of our jobs, our paychecks, or the cost of food.

Sometimes you just have to make grown-up decisions, even when they're not the fun decisions. And this one has been one of ours in the past week.

Despite our disappointment over a day of lost shopping, of Chick-fil-A for a meal, and for a beautiful, magazine-worthy closet, we decided to go forward with cleaning out, organizing, and using what we had right here in our home (and a minor dollar store trip) to make a clean, organized, pretty space. And we happen to love it, by the way. Even in all its mismatched imperfection.

Since I know some of you are experiencing unexpected vacations or work-from-home days right now, maybe it might not be a bad idea to tackle your closet, too! Here's what we did.

It's kind of embarrassing to show before pictures, but I will.

Stuff stacked everywhere on shelves, shoes overflowing our side-by-side shoe rack, dumbbells in the corner...for starters.

Couldn't access half the dresser because of hanging clothes. (The scarf hanger had actually already been redone by the time I took this picture. It used to be in a different spot in the closet, but I just stuck it here for the picture. It was a new hanger I'd gotten at IKEA a few weeks ago and it is WONDERFUL. My old scarf hanger had very tiny holes and didn't work well. This one is plenty big enough and I can actually get TO the scarves.)

And while I realize it doesn't look horrible, it was just blah in the back.

So here's what we did.

* We took EVERYTHING out of the closet. Oh what a disaster our bedroom was for most of that day! We sorted through every single piece of clothing, threw away things that were ripped, stained, or otherwise not worth keeping. We put aside everything we no longer needed/wanted/could wear so that we can (hypothetically someday) have a garage sale.

* We also cleared out the stuff in there, finding new homes for things that just didn't belong in this closet and making piles of things that could live in there again, but probably should be grouped together and easy to find.

* We thoroughly cleaned the closet itself while we had everything out. Vaccumed (WITH attachments), dusted, wiped down walls, and made it much better than it had been.

* We took out the lower shelf in the last photo there to create more usable space, as you'll see in a moment.

* We also took the door off its hinges, which actually made the closet seem so much bigger. (Our one splurge for the moment is to put a barn door on that opening so we don't have a door swinging into that little room or out into our bedroom.)

We decided to keep the dresser in the above photo (which was mine circa junior high) and decided to add into the closet the buffet we used to have as our coffee bar in the kitchen. We took it out of the kitchen several months ago and replaced it with a smaller and more space-effective piece that we love. We didn't want to get rid of the buffet, because it belonged to my grandmother, so we decided to repurpose it as a second dresser AND clothes-folding table!

The only other things we purchased for inside the closet were seven small storage tubs at the dollar store, and a full length mirror that we found on sale for $15.00. I've never owned a full length mirror, and while I'm also not one to often be eager to look in one, it will be nice for seeing my entire outfit at once BEFORE I get to work!

Ready to see the after look?

We took down all those hanging clothes that had been here, removed the shoes (those on the racks and those overflowing) and added the buffet. It's full of folded clothing now, and we organized all the storage above. My earring holder is there, as well as my oils stash, and then the pillow made from Ryan's mom's shirt. I have already been folding clothes in this space, and I LOVE IT!!

I moved all my hanging clothes to this space - and my remaining folding ones are on the shelves above. I put the hampers on top of the dresser to buy some floor space, and we reorganized all the folding in these dresser drawers.

Ryan attached our previously side-by-side shoe racks so they're one tall piece now, and yes, most of the shoes are mine. I'm such a girl. You can see our storage tubs above. (Some are still empty - we just bought some to grow in sow they'd match.) I added our wedding canvas that had not been on any wall for a while, and the sign above it was one I got for Christmas that says, "I remember the days when I prayed for the things I have now.)

And here's the new mirror!

We love it that we can find everything and it's all tidy now, even if it's not 100% pretty as a picture. A good use of our Saturday, for sure!

Anyone else cleaning closets these days?