I have another cleaning, organizing, purging project finished! Since yesterday was a holiday, I decided to have a very easy and restful morning. I slept in a bit, but then just lounged around, scrolled Instagram, finished up a podcast I had started (Murder In Apt. 12), started a new podcast (Serial Season 4), and then finally went to Sonic to get some lunch around 11:30. Even though I wasn’t really in a “get stuff done” kind of mood after we finished lunch, I knew I couldn’t go the rest of the day being unproductive. But I also didn’t want to work on my studio at all. What I really wanted to do was tackle the organization of my other closet in the bedroom — the closet that holds my clothes.
About two weeks ago, I tackled the other closet. I turned that very underutilized closet into my shoe closet, and I have absolutely loved having that organized closet, and not having my shoes in a heap on the floor. I am diligent to put my shoes away now every time I take my shoes off. As I’ve said many times before, I’m not a naturally neat and organized type of person, but once I have an organizational system in place, I’m pretty good at using it.
So now that my shoes were out of the way, I needed to tackle my clothes closet. Ever since we moved into this bedroom, I have only had one 40-inch hanging bar for clothes. Imagine that. There’s no way to fit all of my clothes onto one 40-inch hanging bar, so that means that some of my clothes have been in the bedroom closet, while the rest has been folded or hanging in the sunroom (where the washer and dryer are), while other clothing has been draped over the desk in the bedroom.
So yesterday morning, before I decided to tackle this project, this is what my closet looked like.
I had a shelf at the top that I never used because I made it too deep to be practical. I had one 40-inch hanging bar with mostly shirts, but about four or five lucky pairs of paints and jeans that made it into the closet. And I had the four-tier shoe rack at the bottom, which was now empty as of two weeks ago when I turned the other closet into my shoe closet.
Because there was no more hanging space in the closet, that led to this mess on the desk between the closets. Most of my pants lived here. After the laundry was done, they started out in a nice, neatly folded stack. But over time, that neat stack devolved into this messy pile as I would rummage through to find what I wanted to wear each day.
Obviously, this system I was living with as untenable, so yesterday afternoon, I emptied out this closet and removed the shelf so that I was starting with an empty box.
And then I went to Lowe’s and purchased everything I needed from their Closetmaid closet organization line, including the rails, brackets, three shelves, two pairs of the clothing rod holders, and two rods. Since I was screwing the rails into plywood, this was so quick and easy. Here are two of the rails installed, but I ended up needing three rails, with one in the middle. So they were spaced about 20 inches apart.
And then up went the brackets (which just slip very easily into the slotted rails), and the shelves. And then the rod hangers attach very easily to the shelves, and the rods snap into the rod hangers. The whole system is so quick and easy. And then I got to the fun part — loading in all of my clothes and getting everything organized.
Since we’re heading into summer, I put all of my sweaters on the two top shelves…
On the top hanging bar, I hung all of my pants and jeans. I think I might need one more bar support in the middle since it looks like that bar might be bowing under the weight just a little bit.
I even got so into this whole organizing thing that I bought some hanging tags that say “cropped” and “long” so that I can keep my pants and jeans organized by length.
In hindsight, I wish I would have bought colorful tags so that they’d show up better. And I can’t believe I didn’t think to use my label maker instead of hand writing on the tags! I have extras, so I’ll probably make new ones using my label maker. 😀
Here’s the other side where you can see my “long” tag. The tag in the middle says “cropped” on one side and “long” on the other. And of course, “long” is relative since I’m only five feet tall. 😀
And then I put the shirts and tops on the bottom. I decided to put pants on top and shirts on the bottom because shirts take up more space from front to back than pants and jeans do, so with shirts on the top bar, I’d have to be looking under and slightly back behind the shirts to see the pants. This way, everything is easier to see.
And now, not only is my tiny closet a very efficient work horse for me, but I also have my desk back!! I’m so excited about this. I love to sit here and read, and I haven’t been able to do that in a very long time. I used to sit here every night and read out loud to Matt, so hopefully we can start doing that again.
So that is how I spent my holiday, and once again, I am so excited to have another organization project done! Every time I do an organization project, it’s like a weight is lifted off of my shoulders. And it feels so good to have two very efficiently organized closets in this room now. Here’s a look at both of them, although I’ve added two more shelves to the shoe closet since I took the picture below, so I really need to take a new picture.
By the way, I only own five dresses and zero skirts. For now, and as long as we’re in this bedroom, those dresses will still have to live in the sunroom. I’m okay with that, though. I can’t even remember the last time I actually wore a dress. I’d love to buy more dresses and skirts and actually wear dresses and skirts more often, but I’ll have to get way further along on my health journey before that happens. I don’t like how dresses and skirts look on me right now, but maybe in a few months that will change!
Addicted 2 Decorating is where I share my DIY and decorating journey as I remodel and decorate the 1948 fixer upper that my husband, Matt, and I bought in 2013. Matt has M.S. and is unable to do physical work, so I do the majority of the work on the house by myself. You can learn more about me here.
