Maximizing Closet Space

It should come as no surprise that I have a lot of clothes and shoes, and my closet is always overflowing…always.  My husband and I share a somewhat small walk-in closet, so it is a challenge trying to keep everything organized.  I actually have my clothes split up in two closets – I keep whatever is out of season in a closet in a guest room, and the in-season clothes in my actual closet.  My husband keeps telling me to turn our guest bedroom into a closet room, and while I love that idea, I’m just not sold on it yet (too many other projects I’d rather tackle first!).  For the past few weeks, I’ve been working on ways to maximize the space that I do have, and I am pretty pleased with the end result!  I’ve shared more details in my Instagram stories, but thought I’d write a blog post to show the before & after pictures and also share all of the sources for where I found all of my organization solutions!

I only took one before photo, but it’s enough to show you how cluttered the closet was!  The before picture is on the left, after is on the right.  I have the right side of the closet.  You’ll see straight in the back, we have shelves that previously housed a hodgepodge of things.  I also kept all of my shoes in their original boxes, and kept them stacked on top of each other across the entire shelf to the right, and I had my handbags and hats thrown in the corner of that shelf.  I also had shoeboxes stacked on the floor under my clothes, too.

Here is a quick rundown of the biggest changes:

• I cleaned out the shelves at the back, and used them to display my shoes.  I have more shoes than shelf space, so I added these shoe cubbies and placed them on the shelf above my clothes to store all of the rest.  I bought two sets of cubbies – each one holds 12 pairs of shoes, and you can double up if they are flats/sandals.  I do still have my tall boots stored on the floor under my shoes.  I LOVE being able to actually see all of my shoes now, instead of ugly shoe boxes all over the place!  You’ll also see in the photo below that I folded some of my bulkier sweaters/sweatshirts and stored them on the shelf instead of hanging them to save on space.

• I bought these hanging shelves, and used them to store items that were previously on the shelves at the back of my closet, as well as some clothing items that I previously had hanging.  For example, I had always hung all of my denim on clothes hangers, which took up a lot of space.  Now I have all of my denim folded and in these shelves.  I also had room to add my every day leggings, some lightweight sweaters/cardigans, ball caps, scarves, gloves, tennis shoes, etc.  At the bottom of the hanging shelves are pull-out drawers, and I stored all of my swimsuits in both of those.  I was very happy to have somewhere to store all of my swimsuits because prior to this, they were literally in a large paper shopping bag!

• You can’t see it very well in these photos, but to the far right of the shoe cubbies, I added two bins to store all of my handbags in one place.  I feel like this is a much better solution than throwing them in a corner and having them all stacked on top of each other!  I also found the cutest Kate Spade nesting boxes at my local Marshall’s – I have them on top of the shelves at the back of the closet, and use them to store things that I don’t need everyday.  I also added this cute little stool that I found on clearance at Hobby Lobby to help me reach the top shelves of the cubbies and the boxes!

• The last change that I have made gradually over the last several months is changing out all of my clothes hangers.  I had previously used white plastic hangers, but started switching them out for these velvet hangers.  They help save on space so you have room to hang more clothes, but another big benefit is that the clothes actually stay on the hangers and don’t slide around or fall off.  You can usually find these hangers at a great price at Marshall’s and TJ Maxx – I bought several from there, but I also purchased some from Amazon, too!

I know this isn’t a Pinterest-worthy space, but hopefully it will help give you some ideas on how you can organize your closet!  Thanks for reading!  XOXO

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