Coat Closet Makeover: Messy No More

Coat closets. I'll bet it's fair to say that most of us have a love/hate relationship with them. Probably because we need them to do so much more than just hold coats.

. . .

Like the ubiquitous "junk drawer", a coat closet is handy to have but can rapidly become unruly. Well-intentioned organization gives way, under the weight of our busy lives, to "out of sight, out of mind". You open the door or drawer and whatever you have in your hand—coat, umbrella, take-out menu or rubber band—gets added to the mix and closed away (quickly, before you notice what a mess it is in there!) where you don't have to deal with it. Until you do. Until you find yourself asking, for the millionth time "Has anyone seen my hat?", "Where did I put that tall vase?", "Why aren't my boots in here?!".

Prompted by Lauren's post wherein she challenged her readers to clean up their coat closets, I finally tackled mine. Knowing full well what I was getting myself into.

See how tiny and dark? But it doesn't look so bad from back here, does it? If you don't look too long at that sad, saggy ironing board cover. (please don't - it doesn't represent me well) There's a new one, still in its package, shoved into that black hole somewhere. Here's a closer look, below. Don't be fooled by all that light you see. There's an industrial task light switched on in all of these "before" photos (and a couple of the afters too—dark closet + dark end of the hallway = hard to photograph).

That was the top of the closet, now here's the bottom, below. Most of the stuff on the floor is shoved back into the corners to make room for the vacuum (that shouldn't be there) and the beach bag (that somehow never found a better home).

Neither the beach bag nor the black and white check bag hanging behind the ironing board made it onto the handwritten list you're about to see. I'm sure I missed a few other things too. I was kind of overwhelmed by the sheer number of things that kept coming out. And out. And out. Just for fun—or posterity, or as a future "what was I thinking?" note to self—I wrote it all down:


Yikes! Seventeen (17!) coats and jackets. The letter notations next to each are for myself "T", my husband "D" or my daughter "K", not "toss", "donate" or "keep"—I didn't want you to think this is such a brutal makeover that we ended up with just one jacket between us! There were, however, several jackets and plenty of other things that needed to be moved out and on to a new location or a new life away from this house. To be relocated: a vacuum cleaner that is rarely used (no, not because I don't clean!... but because we have another one that I prefer... and it lives in the garage); shutters I can't seem to part with but don't know what to do with; upholstery foam left over from a project; decorative pillows that should have been put into "pillow storage" in another room, etc. What wasn't kept, relocated or tossed will be donated to an upcoming yard sale or Goodwill. Altogether, just over 100 items came out of that closet—if you count the 12 light bulbs individually.

Are you ready for the "after" now? Me too. But first, let's take a moment to admire the simple beauty of empty space. Aaahh. . . all that potential. . .


My handy husband installed and painted the shelf near the floor. It's 12" above the floor, to allow ample space for things placed both under and on top of it. It's also 4" shorter than the depth of the closet. I'll show you why a few pics down.


If you have any orphaned shoe stackers hanging around your house, using one or more as a shelf-on-a-shelf is a great way to get more storage for small things in an area that otherwise might not function to its full potential. I had been using one already, but I saw that two would fit, one on top of the other. I realized, however, after huffing and puffing the second one up there, that I needed the height on top of the single stacker for my taller candle hurricanes. So down the second one came.

You've already seen the new closet light (if you read my last post), but here it is again, above. I installed that all by myself, I'll have you know. And now. . .

Ta da! The finished, filled up closet. At this angle, it's hard to tell what exactly has changed. . . unless you look closely. The new tan ticking cover made it onto the ironing board and the cluttery stuff hanging behind it is gone. The feather duster's still there—tucked up under the iron rack and hung on a cup hook to keep it securely in place and always ready for action. If you look very closely, to the right of the duster, you'll see one of the best solutions I came up with while restocking the closet. . .

The lint roller that lives in this closet found a new, smarter home. Before the makeover, that roller either stood on end or lay on a shelf where it quite often stuck to whatever was next to it. So when I reached for the lint roller I might sometimes get the spray starch too. Grrr. A magnetic hook hung from the underside of the box that houses our security system's "brain" solved the problem. Simple fixes like this make me really happy!

Here's another look at the first pic on this post, but with notations. . .

. . . so you can "see" what's in those baskets and boxes. The basket on the top shelf is new. I rounded up all the smaller hurricanes and other candle holders, added a few small vases from a cupboard in the kitchen and tucked them into this easy-to-retrieve basket that has handles on its sides. Onto the newly available shelf space, I added two new boxes. I wrapped hard-sided, Christmas-patterned gift boxes in kraft paper to "neutralize" them and added labels to identify the contents: "pillar candles" and "tea lights, tapers, votives". Moving all the candles into this closet freed up even more kitchen cupboard space. Don't you love it when organizing one space, leads to more space in another?!

Now, here's an "after" shot of the floor area, above. So. Much. Better. The basket on the floor used to sit by our front door when my daughter was young. She used it to unload soccer and volleyball gear on her way into the house after practice or games. We still occasionally use it as a stopover spot for wet shoes coming in from the rain or garden. But I much prefer it here, out of sight now, in the closet. To the right of the shoe basket, you can see my red sweeper peeking out. That the sweeper and swiffer both live in this closet is the reason I asked for the shelf to be cut the way it is. . .

The 4" space allows room for the handles of these tools that live in this closet because A) we don't have a broom closet or adequate pantry area in our kitchen, and B) they're much handier here near the rooms they're used in than they would be if they lived in the garage. And look. . . there's that stripedy beach bag again. Given an important new job as the tote for totes. Besides the black and white check one that was already in here, I found a couple of others wandering around the house. As I come across more—and I know that I will—I'll relocate them to the "tote tote" too. Next to the totes, on the new shelf, is a picnic basket. Let's look inside. . .

Oh no! It's a shark! Sorry, didn't mean to scare you. It's our portable Shark vacuum that comes in handy for cleaning up little messes. I purchased the picnic basket just for this job back when we first got the shark, but the vacuum hasn't always lived in it. Here in the cleaned-up coat closet, I'm happy to see the two reunited. And much more conveniently located. Two pics up, you can see that, next to the shark basket, I placed a metal locker basket filled with toys and coloring books for our smaller visitors. And that's it! Nothing in here that doesn't belong and more than there was before. Really, there's more. I counted.

Thanks for stopping by to have a look. This has been a long post—almost as long as it took to fix that closet!—so I'll recap the organizational ideas used in a future post where I'll include some other ideas you might be able to use too.

Closet Envy

You know things have gotten pretty bad when you envy the closet of an imaginary character. Make that the doll version of an imaginary character. Sharpay of High School Musical fame has a prettier, more well-organized closet than I have had in years. And I'm a bit envious of her ruffly handbag and pink "leather" ottoman too. And, yes, I can see she only has one dress (or is it two?) hanging in her curvy closet/wardrobe—which makes it so much easier to be organized—but that's not my point. My point is that her closet looks like that and mine looks pretty much like this:

Multiply this pic by four or five, and you'll have some idea of the state of the master closet my husband and I share: nearly fourteen linear feet of reach in space with an old-school single rod, single shelf set up. I'm embarrassed to admit how many years it's been this way. Not always so messy and crowded but always so inefficient and uninspiring. And always near the bottom of the home improvements priority list. Until a few days ago. When it fell down. Yes, that's what I said. Fell. Down. Finally succumbing to the weight of too many unnecessary things, the shelf and rod as one unit pulled from the wall and crashed to the floor. Inside the closed closet, the contents were squashed to a 30" high heap. Pushing the doors open against the pressure of all that stuff proved daunting enough. The excavation process was just ridiculous. That was a fun day.

Over the next few days though, we did have some fun and our closet is shaping up nicely into something along the lines of this, above. Towers and double rods and a shelf up high for long-term storage in plastic boxes and bins. Or maybe I should shop around for a vintage suitcase or two. That's pretty cute. It needs a bit of fine-tuning and a few organizer-type accessories, but it's already so much better than it was, I'm actually grateful that gravity forced our hand.

One of the details that drove the design of our new and improved closet system is the fact that we have sliding doors—two sets—on this closet. I'd love to have bi-folds like in the photo above, so I could whip them open and view my entire wardrobe at once, but that's just not practical for our space. I'll show you our fancied-up sliders when this little project is complete.


In a previous home, I hung double swing-out doors on my 6' wide reach-in closet (after installing a very efficient system similar to the one above). Not only was I able to view and access the entire contents at once, but I had the backs of the doors available for goodies like hooks and shoes racks as in the photo below.


And once, in a very tiny apartment, I had a surprisingly decent walk-in closet. Because it was a temporary rental, I didn't think to decorate it with pretty things hung on the wall or throw down a runner, but I did hang a mirror on the back of the door. A classic choice.


For a brief moment after our closet crash, we entertained the idea of breaking through the wall to the newly empty bedroom next door and converting it into a closet/dressing room/bathroom space. (Sorry, K, I know you've been gone only a few months!) That moment passed, however, when the dollar signs started ca-ching-ching-chinging in our heads. If I did have the luxury of an entire room, I imagine my closet might look something like this:

I don't know exactly what's going on with those slide-out baskets, but I sure like the way they—and the glass doors above them—look in this sunny yellow room. And then there's this wallpapered, chandeliered beauty, below. But I don't believe for a moment that the girl who owns this closet has so few items of clothing. Or only three pairs of shoes.

If I was forced to used dark wood, I'd most definitely accessorize with brightly colored storage boxes and use lots of glass and white paint like in the closet below. But I would never buy a yellow hat. Not even as a prop.

My inner control freak really likes the idea of coordinating my wardrobe with my closet system and room decor, but I simply couldn't live with myself if I let things go this far:

What I could live with, given the luxury of space (and dollars) with which to create the closet of my dreams, is something like this:


Click on the pic above to see the entire post Joni wrote about the home wrapped around this perfect, girly dressing room. As you might imagine, it's quite a house.

Those of you who appreciate a sleeker, more contemporary aesthetic, might prefer this look, below. And while I would like to be able to see the entire contents of my closet all at once, I think this is taking things a bit too far. Only the super-freakiest control freaks among us could keep this always-on-view closet in order. Though I suppose my well-trained staff could take care of it. (These are fantasy closets, remember? I can have fantasy staff if I need them.)


And speaking of freaky—or at least outlandishly lavish—check out these closets I found at Exotic Interiors.




Holy cow, right? And did you notice that they all have seating? Do you think that's simply because they have the space and so they can? Or do you think, just maybe, having all that stuff can be a bit overwhelming and that it would be necessary to take a break now and then from the pure sensory overload of it all. Probably though, if you're in a closet this big, it's just too darn far to go back out into the bedroom to find a place to sit down and put your shoes on. So that green velvet dentist's chair is absolutely practical.

Let's get back to reality now, shall we? Since I don't have this many shoes. . .

. . . or a wardrobe the size of Ms. Bradshaw's (I mean, Mrs. Preston's), I don't really require an entire room.

However, I do have sufficient closet space so as not to require doing this to my bathroom (but wait, there's not enough room in my bathroom for my bathroom so I guess this was never going to happen anyway).

What I really need is stuff like this

and this


to make the most of the space I do have. I thought about adding some bag hangers like these, below, but they take up too much prime clothes-hanging real estate. I will add one or two of those shoe stacker thingies though. And my handbags will live quite happily in the cubbies we've installed.

All of this introspective thinking about my closet and its lack of efficiency (crashed to the floor being at the extreme end of impractical), got me wondering about the rest of you...

What are the best and worst things about your own closet?

What would you change today? (given the time and the cash)

What does your dream closet look like? Go ahead, be a diva.

If you find yourself, as I did, "closet challenged", here are a few links to help you out:

Closet Organizing Checklist at Real Simple

31 Ways to Make Over Your Closet at Real Simple

Top 10 Organizing Tips for Closets at BH&G


And if you have a moment to read what two other bloggers have to say about their closets...

Tracey at Notes from a Cottage Industry wrote here about how much she loves her closet... and its contents. But she's moved recently so I hope she'll love her new closet just as much. And show us the crazy-creative things she does to spiff it up. Hand her a paint brush and she could work wonders giving Sharpay's curvy wardrobe the vintage cottage look she loves.

Janet at The Gardeners Cottage showed us her closet here. And while I may not envy its tiny dimensions, I do love her beautiful home and her attitude about living well and within your means and without so much "stuff". She would never in a million years have a green velvet dentist's chair in her closet.

See, There is a Chair Under There!

Dear Readers:
To all of you who left a comment on my last post about cluttery piles of random stuff,
thank you so much!

My fluffy little post about the chair I removed from my master bedroom generated an unexpected number of honest confessions! And funny stories. Even a couple of vows to act on the inspiration I provided to do something about the piles. Now that's pretty funny!... that I could provide inspiration to anyone in the area of clutter removal!! You should see the mess in my office where I'm sitting right now... it's enough to make a professional organizer cry.

Confirmed by your response to that post is that we all, even us perfection-seeking designer types, need a spot (or a few) in our homes where clutter can accumulate. We're busy people, most of us juggling many balls at once while wearing several hats. So while we might strive to keep our beautiful homes free of the un-beautiful detritus of life, we need to remember that it's not entirely possible. Not if you're living a real life... a full life. My best suggestion for achieving at least the appearance of order comes from a dear friend who, in an email response to my post, wrote of the spare bedroom she uses as her closet/office/storeroom: "everyone needs a room like I have to be free to drape, pile, throw, stack, hide, collect, clutter and putter, hang, heap, trash and generally live in. No one has to see it or have any comment about it...that room (is) a necessity and essential to my mental health." I couldn't agree more or say it better.

Those of you who don't have the luxury of an entire room in which to hide your clutter, don't fret and don't feel guilty. (And don't hate my friend! She knows how obnoxiously lucky she is!) Do whatever you do to preserve your mental health. Use a chair, a table, a closet, a cupboard, a drawer, the floor, whatever's handy. Leave your piles and live your life. As long as you can clean it up quickly or close it behind a door when your mother's on her way over, you're good!

With gratitude for your participation and best wishes that your clutter remains manageable while your lives remain full,
Tracy

PS: Just so you know, while there may be a considerable mess in my office, here's proof that my one and only bedroom chair has remained pile-free... that slightly out-of-focus pic up there was taken this morning. Yay me!

PPS: Thanks,"Friend"! XO (Look! You're a blogger!)

Bad Habits and my Hilarious Husband

This comic showed up on my desk a few days ago. The morning after we had a conversation about a chair in our bedroom. Correction: make that a chair that used to be in our bedroom. I moved it to another room a week or so ago. To make way for step stool and tools and the mess of wallpaper removal. (I know. Ick.) Husband had asked "Where are you going to put your piles?", referring of course to the odds and ends, bits and pieces of wardrobe and handbag contents and shopping bags and folded-but-not-yet-put-away laundry that inevitably found a temporary home on that particular chair. All the time. To his smarty-pants question, I replied "Nowhere, I guess" realizing that I hadn't left a "pile" of anything in the bedroom since moving that chair. There is another chair in the room but we use it as a chair should be used, for reading and shoe-tying and the like, so it has never been a way station. Always a chair. I never developed the habit of dropping things there. So I'm thinking now, if the only real "purpose" the currently absent chair ever had was to attract piles, and if I'm not making piles since it's been gone, shouldn't it just stay gone? I think so.

Is there anything in your home that has proved more useful as a developer of bad habits than for its intended purpose? A convenient table or chair that makes it too easy to simply drop things and leave them for later, but later never comes? A basket meant to be a transition spot for shoes or newspapers that rarely gets emptied? A home office "in" box that's become a "leave it here forever" box? I'll bet there is. And, honestly, I think we all have a spot like that. Maybe a few. But I'll tell you, getting rid of that chair, which inadvertently helped me kick a bad habit, is feeling pretty good right now. So I'm going to take a look around the house, as I prepare for fall maintenance and repairs and nesting, to see if I can find any other "bad habit makers" to get rid of.

Tell me about your "bad habit makers". Or the one you had that you removed and kicked. I'd really like to know that I'm not the only one with this "problem". And as the husband reads the blog, you'd be doing me a big favor if he could see it's not just me! Oh, and tell me too if you think he's as hilarious as he thinks he is for having clipped this comic, leaving it "anonymously" for me to find. He's a regular laugh riot, that one.


I'll confess that I did enjoy the cartoon enough to add it to my growing "gallery of chairs" on the right sidebar. Scroll down, down, down, a little bit further, there it is! If I can't fill my house with great chairs, I'll just have to collect them here.