Musical Closets

Cue the music, 'cause there's a game of musical closets going on up in here!

As soon as I saw this photo from the House of Smiths, I knew I would totally love something like this in our entryway.

I mean, what's not to love here?!  I adore everything from the hooks for coats and bags and the bench for removing shoes to the bins for hiding winter weather gear and the baskets for staying organized.  And the opportunity for some fun paint and fabrics is just icing on the cake!

And, since we already have an appropriately sized coat closet right next to our front door, that means that the demo would be minimal, and the job would mainly consist of building out a bench and some shelves.

Now, being the realist that I am, I knew from the beginning that we could not both 1- use such a space as storage for all of our winter paraphernalia AND 2- keep it as lovely as it looks in the picture above.  So, I started brainstorming about how to store most of our bulky coats and gear elsewhere, and use the entryway as a place to hang our most commonly used jacket, my purse and Colin's bookbag.

Enter the office/craft room:

This is the smallest of our 3 upstairs bedrooms and is just around the corner from the front door.  This is where I do my sewing, some crafting and office-y tasks.  I use much of this room often, but there was one part of the room that I've been avoiding for quite some time.  In fact, this room holds a deep, dark secret.  I wouldn't share this secret with just anyone, but I do feel like I can trust you guys.  This is what was lurking behind those nicely painted, crisp closet doors:

An ill-fitted, all-wrong-for-my-needs closet.  Is it just me, or does anyone else think the basic single bar with high shelf basic builder way of finishing out a closet is totally dumb?  I don't understand why this is the standard, because really it leaves so much wasted space.  So, from the beginning, the set-up was never going to meet my needs.  I tried to fix the situation with a too small bookcase, but that hardly helped.  I had way too much junk and too few containers.

I didn't even have a place for my printer, which I had to sit on the floor to use.  And, then there was the pillow hoarding problem.  Seriously, how many pillows does one homeowner need?!

It was bad.  Really bad.

But, after reassessing what I wanted to use this closet for and declaring that it would become our major coat storage, I had a plan.  I needed both shelving for my office supplies AND hanging space for our winter gear.

So, I picked up a Closetmaid organizer from my local home improvement store, which my dad expertly installed for me.  (After finishing out my 2 master bedroom closets, Colin's extra-wide closet, and several of my sister's closets all with these super cost effective organization systems, he really and truly is an expert at it!)  The result is a well organized and fully functioning closet of which we are using every square inch!

Let's have a closer look, shall we?

The right hand side is devoted to winter gear.  The top rod holds all of my vests, jackets and coats.  And, the bottom rod is for Colin's.

 And, the left hand side is full of hidden storage for office supplies.

 

 And, my printer has a nice, new home up off the floor, which makes printing much easier!

And, after looking at the number of pillow forms that I owned and the number of pillows that I would ever use at any given time, I realized that I had way, way too many extra pillows.  I kept all of my pillow covers and only the number of forms to outfit each of the pieces of furniture that would ever have pillows.  After assessing my needs, I kept only 2 extra forms.  The others went to my sister and/or Goodwill.  How liberating!

And, because I love them so much, here's a side by side:

It's really not right how much I love our revamped and functional closet.  I've even been leaving the doors open sometimes so I can glance into the office on my way down the hall and admire the organization.  Call me crazy.

But, the most exciting part is that moving our coat storage into the office closet means that we're one step closer to a transformation like this this being a reality in our house.

And, that- my dear readers- is what [my] dreams are made of!

xo,

Emily