Sorry to everyone who wondered where our regular post was yesterday! This post was scheduled, but somehow errored and didn’t send, and I didn’t realize until the evening. I even took a picture to prove it. So weird!
Anyway, here is your usual insightful, helpful, and relevant content!
Since finishing the dining room and setting up the basement workshop, I’ve been without a project. In my 2017 goals I planned to do a half-makeover of my bathroom next but I am just not feeling it.
Half-makeovers served me well when we first moved into the house and everything was ugly. It was really satisfying and necessary to go for some quick fixes, like in the kitchen, to create a decent environment to live in while we took on projects. But now that things are looking better, I’m ready for more permanent solutions. I don’t want to waste my limited time on projects that will only last a year or two.
So I am leaving the bathroom alone until we do a real renovation on it. But what to work on next? The next big project is a true renovation in the kitchen, but I am just not ready to cause that sort of long-term mayhem in my home.
Instead, I am taking on a smaller and more limited project: the front closet.
Closet Problems
This is the closet that is right at the front of our main hallway, central to the kitchen, living room, and dining room.
We use it to store shoes, coats, hats/gloves… and board games. It isn’t working very well.
There are several problems with it:
It’s all the way across the room from the front door. This problem isn’t going to be fixed, and is why we have some storage by the entryway for the stuff that we use all the time – a few shoes, jackets, and my purse and work bag. It is simply true that we won’t actually go all the way to the closet every time to put things away.
It’s “deep” on the sides. There is a good amount of space in the closet, but the storage extends past the door frame on either side (and particularly on the right side). This makes for the worst kind of storage: hard to access, hard to see, easy to forget about what you have crammed in there.
It’s not organized, and there isn’t a way to organize it. There aren’t a lot of different spots to put things. We added a hanging shelf and a few baskets, but overall we’ve just got a lot of stuff piled in there. With so little structure, even if we did use these storage spots for what we intended them, it would still overall be messy.
It’s filled with stuff. We have never cleaned this out… just moved all our stuff in there and kept adding more. We use probably 5% of the stuff in here on a regular basis, and another 10% seasonally. Not good stats for one of the most accessible and central storage spots in our house!
Closet Solutions
I can’t fix everything about this closet. I obviously can’t knock it down and move it across the room… not without destroying the beautiful dining room that I just finished. However, I can fix most of the rest.
Here is my tentative plan:
The main goal here is to build out more divided storage. The shelf along the top is working about as well as it can be, but we need another place to store board games since it’s really inconvenient to keep them up there. For the rest, we need a lot more storage options.
I plan to add a shelf along the bottom so we can have two levels of shoe storage… hopefully leading to rows of shoes rather than piles. On the deepest side, I plan to build out the space with a series of cubbies, including a few drawers or wire baskets, for things like hats, gloves, and fancy shoes that should be kept separate. Finally, for these cubbies to be accessible, we can’t have the hanging coats pressing up against them, so I plan to replace the full coat rack for one that ends partway across and is supported by a bracket.
However, before starting any of this, we have to deal with the ridiculous amount of stuff we had crammed in here…
Progress Step #1 – Clean Out
… so we did a quick clean out. It was pretty painless, we just took everything out, and IDed things to keep, things to give away, a few more decrepit things to throw away, and a few things to move to storage in the basement.
While I found it painless, Brad isn’t a fan of getting rid of stuff…
We then moved everything back in (since I’m not actually starting building this right away and don’t want to have coats and shoes all over the place in the meantime).
I think the after photo makes the case even stronger than the before photos that this closet really needs some work, since this is about as pretty and organized as it can get. Now I’m really excited to do the project!
But before I do, any suggestions that I haven’t thought of for closet storage? What do you think of the plan? What works for you?
BAHAHAH I’m sorry but Brad’s face is every guy’s face ever when dealing with this. Why do they hate it so much! haha
XO Ellen from Ask Away
http://www.askawayblog.com
If you don’t have one, I’d recommend installing some kind of light. We had the same issues in our front hall closet, and even if it’s organized, being so dark made it hard to find what you are looking for. We installed a battery-powered light on a sensor that turns on only when you open the door. Also, don’t forget about the back of the door for storage! We use a hanging plastic shoe sorter for winter gloves, hats, etc.
Would love to know the exact light/sensor you purchased! I’ve bought a couple different ones thinking they’d work, but no go.
Come do our living room closet next?
I’m throwing this out there, not necessarily as a fix for your closet, but just to turn storage ideas on their heads for a moment. We have a small closet in our foyer. And by small, I mean two feet and a bit wide by two feet deep. I kept trying to cram jackets and hats and gloves and shoes and other assorted crap in there. The thing is….we live in an area that doesn’t have a long spell of cold weather. So I was taking up prime real estate with stuff we only used a couple of months out of the year. Yet I was doing acrobatics every time I needed to use the printer and the paper shredder keep getting moved around from pillar to post and the mail and bills ended up on the table…..and then I had an epiphany! Move the majority of the jackets and stuff out of that closet and move the printer and shredder in! I put in a shelf to sit the printer on with another shelf under that for extra paper and a basket for mail and placed the shredder under that shelf. There’s a hanging rod three feet above the printer for a couple of jackets and rain jackets. On the inside of the door, I hung a shoe pocket caddy and some hooks for hats, purse, hiking backpacks, leashes for the dog and sunglasses. There’s a shelf above the hanging rod for totes. I donated some of the excess cold weather stuff and put the rest in our closet. Now I can deal with mail related stuff as soon as I come in the door so it never makes it further into the house, my table and foyer stay neat, we have the stuff we use year around hanging in that closet and can see what we have or need to grab because it’s not all jammed together! The husband was dubious at first but admits now that this is a much better use of that closet!
I see only 1 long coat hanging so you could potentially hang it elsewhere, on a hook on the door if this is the best location for it, and then add more shelves in the bottom half of the closet, where those games would be more accessible.
I’m super late to this post because life is busy BUT….some years ago in between career-type jobs I was a closet designer (actually closets, garages, and desk/workspace). If you get stuck, I would be more than happy to help you design something that both works for your storage needs now and will be flexible enough to morph with any future needs without having to make a major investment. It seems closet storage designing is my super-power, I help friends and neighbors out ALL the time, so really just ask!