How to create extra closet space: Organizing your wardrobe, Part 2

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How to create extra closet space: Organizing your wardrobe, Part 2

By Meg in Florida 1 November 2007 2 Comments

An empty closet, ready to get organized Spacious closets are a major selling point for houses. What woman wouldn’t want a beautiful walk in closet with plenty of room for all her clothing?

However, size isn’t everything. Even small closets often have wasted space, and large closets can easily succumb to chaos.

When my husband and I remodeled our closet, I learned a lot about creating and maintaining a functional closet — and discovered that size truly doesn’t matter! If you want, you can see the results on my personal blog.

Here’s how you can make the most of your closet space.

Start by hanging it all up

The prime real estate of the closet is its hanging space, because hanging items are the easiest to find and retrieve. Hanging clothes also reduces wrinkles and lets them air out.

Although just about everything can be hung up in some way, it’s important to choose what to hang carefully since space is limited.

What to hang in your closet

The first items that you should hang are those clothes that you wear regularly, that are hard to fold or wrinkle easily. For example:

dresses
blouses
skirts
tailored pants
jackets

If you have any space left over after those are hung, fill it with other clothes that you wear regularly; followed by any accessories you might want to hang; and finally, clothes that you don’t wear regularly.

Items like belts and scarves can be hung on specially designed hangers, and flat bags can be hung behind clothes on hooks if there is room. You can even hang jewelry in hanging jewelry pouches if you want.

What not to hang, ever!

Please don’t hang any delicate knit items that might stretch out on a hanger. Fold them up and put them somewhere safer!

Organize your hanging clothes

Ideally, we’d hang all our clothes on beautiful padded hangers that keep our clothes’ shape perfectly. Unfortunately they’re pricey and take up a lot of space, so save them for your suit jackets and ultra-delicate items.

That doesn’t mean that you should leave the rest of your clothes on those cheap plastic hangers that they came on or, gasp, on those wire hangers the cleaners sent your clothes back on.

My choice for hangers are stackable friction hangers. While they are more expensive than your average hanger, they’re worth every penny since the friction surface keeps your collars from stretching out, while the stacking hooks give you more closet space and allow you more organization options.

For example, using these hangers you can organize your clothes by type horizontally, putting short sleeve blouses on one end and skirts on the other; then organize by color vertically, hanging all purple short sleeve blouses from the same top hanger.

Consider raising the hanging pole in your closet to give you even more room to stack clothes vertically.

Just a word of caution, though, don’t get hanger ‘trees’ that look like several hangers put together but that don’t separate. I’ve learned from personal experience that they are a hassle to use.

Organize your shoes

There are many ways to store shoes: on racks, in hanging pouches, on revolving shoe trees, in their original box with a photo of the shoes on the outside, piled in a corner. I use none of these methods to organize my sizable shoe collection.

I simply store each pair in a clear plastic bin that I get at Big Lots for about a buck a piece, and then stack those bins in the bottom of my closet. It’s cheap and easy. If you can’t find them cheap locally, you can also buy them online here .

I also try to include a silica packet or two in each box to wick away moisture. Those are the packets that come with so many shipped items that say “Do Not Eat”.

Not all my shoes go into the clear plastic boxes. My boots don’t fit, so they stand between the boxes, while my sneakers are tucked under my dresser.

Finally, being the Florida girl that I am, I have quite a few flip flops. I stash mine, long-ways up, in bins under the bottom shelf. Such bins could also be used for knit items and accessories.

Make use of extra closet space

If you’re blessed with extra closet space, you can convert parts of your closet by adding pull out shelves and sliding wire baskets.

Baskets store knits, lingerie, bags, gym clothes…

Sliding wire baskets are a great place to store knits and lingerie, if you prefer to keep them in the closet rather than in a dresser.

In my closet, I have two baskets for lingerie and another one for small hang bags. In the fourth basket I let my gym and around-the-house clothes air out after light use.

To keep small items from falling through wire baskets, simply layer to bottom with a place mat or even just some paper. Keep delicate or easy to loose items like panty hose or extra bra straps in small Ziploc bags.

You can even add drawer dividers to keep everything neatly organized!

Shelves make more space, above and below

One of the things that I appreciate about the sliding baskets I have is that the tops form shelves that give me extra space to put bags and pants. Shelves are also great for those hard to reach places where baskets would be inconvenient.

Like most closets, mine has a shelf along the top. When we remodeled our closet, we raised the top shelf since before there was a lot of wasted space above it. Since the shelf is so high, I use it for storing seasonal clothes, sentimental items, and costumes in boxes or extra large Ziploc bags.

On my husband’s side of the closet, there are actually two shelves on top since he didn’t need the vertical hanging space that I do. That way, he has more room for his jeans.

I also have a shelf that goes along the bottom of our closet until the last few feet, where we left it open to store items like are luggage. Having the shelf along the bottom allows me to stack shoe boxes and bins both above and below the shelf without having the worry about five box tall stacks falling over.

Plan for your own needs

I hope I’ve given you some ideas on new ways that you can use your closet space. There isn’t one single plan that works for everyone, though.

Before you remodel your own closet or invest in closet accessories, take a look at sites like Rubbermaid.com to get a better idea about what is out there. And don’t forget to ask your friends and family members about what works for them.

Next time, I’ll share ways that you can find more space outside of your closet. And don’t forget to check out Part 1 of this series, “How to weed your closet“, for advice on how to clear out those clothes you can do without.