Closet Organizing Ideas – Lessons Learned

Sometimes my clients get hung up on what to use a particular closet for, pun intended! They might think that because the closet is located by the bathroom that they must use it as a linen closet, for example.  (Lesson #1 – What should go in a closet is only dictated by what you need to store there.) Let me share some excellent closet organizing ideas and lessons I have learned along the way.

I recently worked with a client on organizing a closet located right by the front door.  It was intended for coats when the house was built.  But now everyone in the family comes in the back door and they store their coats in the closet closest to that door.

My client really wanted the hall closet to have half the space available for guest coats and use the rest to store table linens and gift wrapping supplies.  Basically, we needed to empty half the closet!  No problem…

We sorted through everything to organize the closet and found a couple of bags of clothes that were ready to donate quite some time ago but never made it out of the house.  (Lesson #2 – Donate items as soon as you have collected them up so they don’t work their way back into your life.  Lesson #3 – The difference between a messy home and a tidy home is the amount of time between task identification and task completion.)  After sorting and purging the rest, we were able to easily leave half the hanging bar empty for guest coats!

Swing arm pants hanger works well for table linens

In order to free up some hanging space, we used swing arm pants hangers to store the table linens and we put all the cloth napkins in a drawer by the dining room table.  (Lesson #4 – You can use organization products in whatever way works for you! This item is easy to use because the arms swing out for easy access.) We had a few categories of items that needed to be containerized so we purchased a couple of baskets to go on the shelves.  Closet organized! (See below for the after photos.)

My client’s goal of an organized closet with space for guest coats was reached in about 1.5 hours time.  What closet in your home could be utilized in a non-traditional way?  What’s your most disorganized closet?