Major Closet Overhaul

As I’d mentioned in my first blog posts for Closet Factory, my husband and I were in need of a major closet overhaul. For the first four years of our life together, we’d kept separate closets — my clothes were in our bedroom, while his were in the guest bedroom closet. After we had our first child, the guest bedroom became our son’s playroom, though my husband’s clothes still maintained residency in that room’s closet. As our son grew from an infant to a toddler, we realized that we would soon need to make the potentially painful transition from a single occupancy to a shared closet in the bedroom. When you marry, you take each other for better and for worse, and that goes for better-or-worse closets as well.

Luckily, we were able to take advantage of a Closet Factory closet installation that turned our terrible closet into something quite desirable. Without a new closet system, there would have been no way that we could have fit both of our wardrobes into the slim closet space in our bedroom. As you can see in the before photo, the closet was bursting at the seams with my clothes alone. To add insult to injury, the closet system that I’d inherited from the prior homeowners was in sorry shape, with the wire baskets falling off of their rollers and the hanging space poorly designed at best.

We started with a sketch of the closet, which would use a shelving system that allowed for the far right side of the closet to be utilized for my clothing on two separate racks. My husband and I would share the shelves for folded clothes, and his suits, dress shirts, and other hanging clothes would go in the main (ahem, larger) dual hanging area.

On the scheduled day of installation, the Closet Factory installers showed up right on time. After a quick consult with me they quickly disassembled and hauled out the old, broken closet system, before getting to work installing our new custom closet. After several hours of hard work, the closet was finished.

Amazingly, all of my clothes fit perfectly in the new closet, even with the smaller space limitations. The dual hanging racks are great for dresses, blazers, and dress shirts, while the shelves easily hold more casual tops, denim and trousers, skirts, and breezier weekend dresses. Above, I have enough room to tuck away purses, belts, and bags.

Since my husband still hadn’t migrated his clothing over when I took the photos, I’ll wait to reveal his side of the closet for another post. But suffice it to say, after he finally did move his clothes over, he was pleasantly shocked to see that his clothes fit easily into the space as well.

His only complaint? No room for shoe storage. This was something I’d discussed with our Closet Factory representative prior to the installation, and I’d told him that we’d take advantage of storage space under the bed. I’m not a huge fan of storing all manner of shoes and boots next to clothes anyway — and with the extra room we have under the bed, it seemed like a smart decision.

Next time, I’ll share some options for additional shoe storage, and I’ll let you know what I (and my husband the shoe fiend, seriously, he has so many shoes!) decided on for storing our own shoes and boots.