Sample of before and after for a closet in a spare bedroom

Project: This closet was in Diane’s* adult daughter’s old room. The daughter no longer lived at home, but used the closet for some of her clothes. Diane used the rest for miscellaneous household storage, including a stack of folded spare blankets on the closet floor. Diane wanted to be able to consolidate all of her unused blankets for storage in one place during the warmer months, and make room in the closet for overnight house guests to hang their clothes.

Process: After inspecting the space with Diane, I noticed that there was a lot of unused room at the top of the closet. I asked Diane if she had any extra boxes, wire shelving, or crates we could use to help maximize the closet’s top shelf. She had some unused crates, which we placed across the shelf to create storage cubbies. This let Diane sort and store the miscellaneous items by category. It also gave her a whole new level of storage above the crates, which we used for the blankets. We used the freed space at the bottom of the closet for some of Diane’s husband’s shoes, which had been jumbled together in the master bedroom because there wasn’t enough room for his shoe racks there.

We also took the opportunity to move unused hangers to the center of the closet so house guests could use them as needed. The daughter’s clothing was consolidated on appropriate hangers, thus creating more space in the closet. The clothes were arranged in groups to make it easier for the daughter to go through them, i.e. all slacks next to each other, then shirts, then dresses and so forth.

Result: Once everything was organized, Diane was easily able to see all of her blankets in one place, above the crates. Her husband was happy that he now had space to fit a shoe rack for his shoes and, now that his shoes were visible, was easily able to identify pairs he no longer wanted to keep. The next time the daughter comes home, she will be able to see review her items and decide what she wants to keep and what can be given away.

Expenses: No additional items were purchased to achieve the results shown in the after photo.

closet as before organizing
Stuff on the floor, lot of open space on top shelf, bags everywhere
afterward organized closet with clean floor and extra spaces in closet to hang clothings
Organized closet

*Name has been changed for privacy.