The Problem
We moved into this home in February, and from the beginning the closet has been a pain to use. Luke and I share the closet space and most of the large closet space is at the sides behind a wall. Anything stored that deep into the closet would be hard to reach and forgotten. We would always push each other’s’ clothes back and forth on the rod to get a better look at our own set of clothes. It was a bad system, but I thought we were kind of just stuck with it.
That’s when I watched The Home Edit on Netflix, and it changed my whole mindset. The biggest lesson that stuck with me is that when they organize a space, every inch has a purpose and there is no wasted space.
With this in mind, I looked at my closet and knew we were missing out on a ton of functional space. Then I headed to Pinterest to find a solution to my closet problem.
The Research
Finding inspiration ended up being much harder than I thought it would be. The most common results I was getting were how people were organizing their huge walk-in closets or hacks for hanging as much stuff in a small space as possible. Neither of these options were the goal for my closet.
I needed to find a way to best use those deep spacious sides in our closet. After testing out different search terms, I found which terms were getting me closer to what I was looking for. I started seeing closets with similar layouts to mine being used in an organized and functional way. I ended up searching “shallow and wide closet”, and finally found what I was looking for from Meg Biram.
The Inspiration
I think I actually gasped when I saw these images on Pinterest. It was an idea I had never thought of, but worked perfectly for my shape of closet. I didn’t use this layout exactly, but it inspired the biggest update to our closet.
Switching out the closet rod from the length of the closet to two smaller rods in each deep side cubby was the perfect solution. It would use the unused space, and give us space to both be in the closet to pick out our clothes. Our closet opening is not as wide as Meg’s so I wasn’t able to fit the shelf in the center, but that bit also inspired our closet.
The Finished Closet
I am really happy with how this turned out. With this new closet layout it is easy for me and Luke to see all of our clothes. Like I mentioned, I was also inspired by the shelf in the center of Meg’s closet so I decided to add two small shelves for Luke and I that fit right under our clothing rods. These are perfect for us because our closet is so shallow that only super narrow shelves would fit into the small 2ft space. Luke is storing his shoes while I decided to store sweaters.
We also kept the existing shelf above our clothing rods for clothing items that we don’t need to reach daily. Behind my little sweater shelf, I have seasonal clothing stored, and some clothes that I want to sell on Poshmark.
After all was said and done, the total cost of this DIY was under $100 and the bulk of that cost is from the shelves.
Future Updates
Even though we love our closet there are still little things we might do to make it even better. We eventually want to fill all the holes (left by the previous owners), and give it a coat of paint.
We also might add a few Command hooks on to the open wall. This would be for the coat Luke is currently wearing or my current handbag. For now, we are living with our update to see how we can best use the remaining space.
What We Used For Our DIY
- 1 wood closet rod
- 2 sets of rod holders
- 2 wood 2×4 to support the rod holders. If you are starting from scratch you may need a support on both the front and back walls. In this case, you would need 3 pieces of wood.
- 2 shoe racks
I hope you guys enjoyed this post! Let me know if you would want to see more home décor posts like this in the comments down below. I really enjoyed writing this one!
The last home related post was all about my top secondhand home decor purchases!