Loftee Ideas: Master Closet ~ Day 19

I will again tell you how we don't have any closets. At all. It was all part of the plan. Sometimes I question the plan.

To give you an idea about the layout of the loft here is a floor plan:

A close up of the bedroom:

When we planned the loft, we intended on getting some IKEA PAX wardrobe units to go along the bottom wall, from the corner to almost the door. Then perpendicular to that, an IKEA Expedit shelf to separate the bedroom from the rest of the apartment, about where the current armoirs are now. Money changed the plans a bit. The armoirs we have are actually book cases, with the shelves removed and tension shower rods in for hanging clothes. It works pretty well actually.

This challenge was easy peasy, because I purged some clothes before I moved in with Mikey about a year ago. I purged again when we moved in. Also, we really don't have more clothes than we need. Mikey is a bigger guy, so its expensive to buy clothes for him, and I just don't have the desire to own more clothes than I can wear. Having a minimalist attitude toward clothes helps me avoid hugemungous piles of dirty laundry, I HAVE to do laundry weekly, or we both run out, it works very well. It also helps that any clothes that don't fit my pregnant belly are packed in the attic.

BEFORE: I put away a load of laundry between the before and after, I purged a t-shirt that had some stubborn stains and didn't fit well anyway. I straighted up some Roy G Biv errors and moved empty hangers to the end of the rod. White Grey Black Brown came before Red in the rainbow.

Years and years ago, Oprah had some organizing pro on her show and she mentioned a really simple/big impact thing one can do in their closet to visually declutter, is to have all matching hangers. I think this is so very true. not wanting to spend any money on hangers at the time, I traded hangers with my roommate, who didn't care about visual clutter. I had started with more white green and black hangers than any others. At that time, my clothes went on black, my boyfriend's were on white and rarely worn clothes were on green. They were separated in the closet which made it really easy to see where my clothes ended and his began, and at the most buried corner, the rarely worn clothes. Since then, we broke up, he got the green and white and I bought a few more packages of black hangers.

When I moved in with my now husband, his hangers were all mismatched too, but there were bunches of white, so we traded with his parents so we could have all black and white, I liked how we could separate them in our big closet. The clothes are still on different colored hangers even though we have our own cabinets for them. I do have a few of those huggable hangers, (at the end of the rod on the right) leftover from my personalised monogrammed wedding party hangers project. I accidentally packed away too many black plastic ones when I packed away my summer/non maternity clothes, so they are being used until I get that box out.

And AFTER: Under my clothes I have a few shelves, which I quite prefer over drawers.

BEFORE and AFTER: I moved a few things around, stretchy pants were stacked with warm-up pants and sweat pants. I needed another stack for pj pants (Im pregnant, remember). I really only have 2 pair of jeans that fit(currently), one is maternity, they other is just a baggy, low-cut pair. (the rest are packed away for now) I simply take the jeans off when I am home and they drape over a laundry basket or hang in the bathroom to air out a bit, and after a few times wearing them, I do laundry. T-Shirts for around the house are on the shelf, and a sweater that I love but dont want to hang is there too. (The rest of my hoodies hang in my "coat closet") My more commonly worn shoes live on the bottom shelf. I have an under bed shoe organizer under my bed for out of season/rarely worn shoes also. I sadly had to purge about 10 pairs of heels when the Dr said I had permanent damage to my ankle and prescribed physical therapy last year. I couldnt risk messing it up worse, so now, Im stuck with flats and very low heels, wedges.

In case youre curious, the back of the "armouirs" is covered to make it more pleasant for the living room side. You can kind of see it in this old picture from my fall decor post The book cases were slightly different heights, I took the shelves and made them seem the same height from the living room side. The blue fabric is a flat sheet that used to be a curtain in a previous life. I used a command hook and leftover chain from our hanging potrack to hang a daisy poster (I got at a yardsale for free) I fully intended on this being a temporary set up, but we have realised we can live with this for as long as we need to in order to pay down debt before making the big IKEA purchases.