The Issue of Closets

Closets present two problems: either there are never enough or they are over stuffed.  Our last house had amazing closet space with built-ins.  There was a tremendous amount of storage space tucked in areas that would otherwise be wasted space.  The previous owner was a hoarder, exactly like what you see on television so when they bought the house about twenty years before we bought it, she had all of these closets custom made.  She likely was not near the hoarder back then.  Anyway, I'm missing my closets!  In perspective though, closets cost both time and money.  They take up valuable real estate that you pay for through mortgage payments and property taxes.  The cost in terms of valuable time especially when they are not organized.  In general, it really is best to reduce the amount of closet space in your home while increasing the functionality.

I grew up in a small house with virtually no closets.  My Mom hung a metal pole between the two walls at the top of the stairs where our good clothes hung and those were put into storage according to the season.  We had a cedar chest in each bedroom for blankets and dressers for clothes.  That's it.  Our second house was a Victorian.  We never knew exactly how old it was as it was built before the town was established but it came on their books in 1904.  Originally there were no closets but a previous owner had created on over the top of the stairs when they converted that space from the landing sitting area to a bedroom.  We had dressers and clothes chests including an old restored trunk.  I stored things like mops and brooms much the same as my Mom did, behind a door.

This house has closets but considering the size of the house I'm surprised at the lack of closet space.  Each bedroom has a closet, there is a very small linen closet, a small closet on the entrance landing, larger closet in the master bedroom and a larger storage closet in the utility room.  I'm back to getting creative at finding closet space.  Surprising the closet I miss the most from our old house is the broom closet. 

Less closet space is not a bad thing so I'm using it to my advantage.  We have more actual living space with less dedicated to storage.  It is helping me on my quest of decluttering while curbing accumulating unnecessary items.  My Mom used to rotate clothing twice a year, spring and fall so I have gone back to that method.  I used it for years but with the last house didn't need to.  Our clothes are stored based on the season with heavy winter coats and sweaters out now but in the spring all but a few sweaters will go into storage as the summer clothes come out of storage.  The same goes for shoes and boots.  This really a more practical way of dealing with clothes anyway and it gives the opportunity to do a bit of decluttering each time. 

Garden Gnome
©2006-2011

Custom Closet Built-ins In Soon to be Craft Room

A few days ago I posted about our renovation plans to change a bedroom that had become storage since moving into a craft room. At the end of day one the room was empty ready to determine what needed to be done. Before I go further into the details of the renovation that will be covered over several posts from start to finish, I thought I would show you the custom built-ins in the existing closet. Every closet in this house has custom built-ins to maximize the storage space. In addition to that any small nook and cranny has also been turned into custom storage. So we are quite lucky in this respect.

Tall Built-in

The closet is 2'11" D x 7'4" W at the maximal points. A 1'3" shelf spans the entire width of the closet 17" from the ceiling. A heavy duty metal pole is mounted on the bottom of this shelf and spans 5'6". We have decided to leave the existing closet as is with the exception of removing the carpeting and baseboard. That may change as we may put a fresh coat of paint on the walls just so the closet matches the room when the door is open. The walls and ceiling are in good condition.

Pictured is the short end wall of the closet that goes between that closet and a cedar lined linen closet. I'll write more on the cedar closet later when we get to doing the hallway. The folding closet doors fold towards the entrance to the room. The function of built-in storage unit is a bit of a mystery. It is 6' tall, 13" wide and has 11 deep slots. There are no bottoms on the slots so it could not be used for magazines as they will fall through. I am sure I will be able to come up with a way to use this built-in. The metal bar will remain since it is ideal for hanging homemade candles and even fabric waiting to be turned into the next project. We will likely add some type of storage along the back wall of the closet to take advantage of that space as well.

Custom Shelving

The opposite end of the closet is on an outside wall. Pictured is the custom shelving that was added. On the long end of the closet tucked in the corner are 3 24" deep shelves. The long top shelf continues over this right to the end wall. Once organized these shelves will provide an incredible amount of storage. Just inside the door is custom shelving using that is 11" deep at the widest point. There are 6 shelves spanning from just above the floor to just below the ceiling. Again this smaller unit will provide a great storage area for many craft items.

The wallpapered portion (flowers) is not a wall even though it has been made to look like one. It is a concrete chimney rising up from the furnace room, going through this closet on its way outside. The gas water heater vents through this chimney and while there is the possibility of updating the water heater run which we may do anyway when the new on demand water heater goes in, we would gain little in doing this. The chimney is in very good condition and is capped to prevent precipitation and critters from getting in so now we are leaving the chimney as is since the closet will provide plenty of storage in this room especially when combined with the new storage that will be going into the room.

Garden Gnome
©2006-2010

Closet Decluttering

We bought this house based on it's unique character and location. This is the first home we've owned that has an abundance of storage! In addition to the generous closets there are custom built-ins and nooks for more storage. Each of the closets have been customized and the linen closet is cedar tongue and groove lined.

We have been decorating one room at a time so this past week we tackled the master bedroom closet as part of the preparation for re-doing our room after the holidays. This will be a DIY project. Our large master bedroom is on the lower level. The ceiling is two levels with the entrance half of the room about a foot higher than the sleeping half of the room. Adjacent to end of the closet (right of picture) there is the door to a large, unfinished storage room about 8' x 8' that will be insulated and finished during the make-over. We are planning on replacing the carpeting with hard flooring. One of our kids will be painting the ceilings and walls that will consist of 3 possibly 4 colours similar to how we used shades of complementary colours to tie the upper rooms together with the entrance and lower level. I'll be using colours complementary to the two Behr swatches I've been working with.

Like the rest of the house there is custom woodwork.
The master bedroom closet spans floor to ceiling with an opening 5'10" W x 6'6.5" H covered with double shutter style folding wood doors. The inside measurements are 7'11" W, 6'6.6" H, 28" D on each end and 31'5" D across the opening. The closet has a light with a 2' fluorescent tube.

We we moved in it was more of a concern getting rooms functional. All of the bedroom closets became semi-organized slowly being organized know they would have to be completely re-organized at some point. One of the bedrooms is being turned into a craft room which is another planned winter DIY project. The other bedroom will be redone as well for a guest room. We plan to remove the carpeting from these rooms as well.

It is surprising how re-organizing and de-cluttering a closet of any kind can be so disruptive. The work is not difficult at all but everything that was in the closet ends up being spread everywhere as the only way to do this effectively is to completely empty the entire closet. Once the closet was completely empty my husband washed the ceiling and walls with a 1:1 vinegar solution. We removed any scuff marks with a Mr. Clean® Magic Eraser®. We washed the wood shelving and baseboards with Murphy Oil Soap solution.

We used the 3 pile method of toss, donate and keep. This is really quite easy as long as you don't let emotion get in the way. The difficult part is trying on all your clothes to de-clutter all clothes that no longer fit or haven't been worn in the past year. This is time consuming. It's a bit depressing too when you realize it's your body that has changed not the clothes. In my case it was a bit worse because I had to go through over 40 pairs of shoes many in plastic lidded shoe boxes. I will admit to bending the worn in the past year rule when it came to my shoe collection but I did manage to relinquish 8 pairs. In the end 2 large bags of clothes and a bag of hangers were donated, 1 large bag of clothes went to one of our kids and a box of shoes/clothes went to another one of our kids so we cleared out a lot but that included the dressers as well as the closet.

All of the closets have some type of customized shelving to maximize storage. The closet in the soon to be craft room has some rather impressive customization that I will show in greater detail when we get to that room. The master bedroom closet has 3 wood shelves on each end of the closet to make use of space that would normally be wasted. It is surprising how much extra storage space this adds in the closet.

On my end pictured, I have shoes in plastic shoe boxes neatly stacked 3 wide 6 high (18 pr). The bottom two shelves hold shoes that won't fit in shoe boxes and purses. The top shelf holds my doggie slippers and a couple of additional accessories. My husband uses his shelves for sports wear.

After using the closet for awhile I decided that bins spanning the width of the long top shelf would be quite helpful to keep things organized. I picked up 5 plastic bins at the dollar store. They are a nice taupe colour so will fit in with the colour scheme. There is room for 3 more so I'll pick those up the next shopping trip. I'll post more pictures of the finished results in another post.

Garden Gnome
©2006-2009