Organized Master Closet

An organized master closet is essential to starting every morning off right!

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What’s the one thing we have to do every single day? If you answered eat, you’d be close and we could totally be BFFs! I was actually talking about wearing clothes. Unless you live in a nudist colony, clothes are a necessity! One of my kids has recently embraced the “shirt is optional” mentality, but I guess that’s less of his shirts to wash! Needless to say, we hold to some fairly modest standards here. Don’t get me started on my thoughts about leggings!

That said, we can all agree that most of us have an overabundance of clothes. We hang onto our clothes for all kinds of reasons – sentimental, the hope of being able to wear them again (after we’ve lost 10 pounds), the amount of money we spent on them, etc. Regardless of how large or small our wardrobes, being able to find what we want to wear efficiently is important and makes the beginnings of our days so much less stressful.

Earlier this year, I started work on my master closet. Some of you read about it here. Since then, my husband moved his stuff back in after being stationed in a different state for a year. Though most of his clothing was still here, he accumulated a few things while away and we had some extra gear that needed homes. Really, not having the closet in its real, full capacity wouldn’t have been a fair depiction of how the room really functions for a married couple.

I also had a crazy idea that I was going to stencil the wall where my full-length mirror would be hung. After getting about 1/3 of the way through the process, I figured out I hadn’t been lining the stencil up properly and that I hated the look of the stenciled wall with the mirror I bought. After a few months in flux and living with a half stenciled wall, I finally just painted it back to white and spray painted the mirror frame.

For those of us blessed with large walk-in closets, we store all kinds of things in our closets, in addition to clothing. My closet is the hiding space for gifts and items I’m trying to sneak out of my kids’ rooms. It’s where I stash random things when guests are on their way and I’m scrambling to make sure they have a place to sit! It’s also the one place in my home where I have room to store decor items that I’m not using at the moment, but don’t want to get rid of quite yet.

Once all the piles of Christmas gifts that had been stashed in the closet were removed, there were no more excuses for not getting this closet whipped into shape. At the beginning of January, I resolved to get this closet finished by the end of the month! Surprisingly, I made it!

Shoe Storage

adult shoes organized using Shoe Slotz organizers

Shoes naturally are housed in a master closet. Our closets have these great shelves for shoe storage. To maximize the space, I purchased Shoe Slotz so that each pair of shoes would take up less space on the shelves. Over time, we have scaled down our shoe collection pretty significantly. In the summer, I wear flip-flops almost every day and in the winter, besides an occasional boot day, I rotate between 3 pairs of shoes! It’s how I roll, or more appropriately, how I sole.

Another little trick I use for boots is cutting a pool noodle into 1-foot sections and placing the cut pieces into boots. This keeps them from flopping all over the place and is much easier to deal with than some of the hanging boot storage options available. If you can’t find pool noodles, your local hardware sells foam pipe insulation pieces that could be used in the same way.

Tall boots standing up with pool noodles

Clothing Storage

The main purpose of any closet attached to a bedroom should be to house the clothing the occupants of that room wear, right? I’m finding that everyone stores clothing differently. We hang most everything except for workout gear, t-shirts, and other things that just aren’t hangable!

Switching out our hangers from mostly plastic to velvet hangers has been a game-changer. It’s an investment for sure, but these hangers prevent slippage and add a little bit of pleasing aesthetic to the closet. If you look closely, you can see that I have some of my hangers turned backward so that I can gauge the items in my closet that I’m not ever reaching for to wear!

I know lots of really organized people ROYGBIV their clothes. I mean if your clothing choices cover the whole rainbow, why not? My wardrobe, on the other hand, is mostly black and grey with some touches of red and green. Instead of color-coding my clothes, I like to group them by type – short sleeves, long sleeves, casual, dressy, jeans, crop pants, skirts, etc. Within those types, I might try to keep them grouped by color, but there’s no guarantee I can keep that up.

Hanger dimples aren’t my friends! To combat hanger dimples in my sweaters, I have opted for keeping them folded in a bin on a shelf. There is a little bit of “out of sight, out of mind” that happens with these. I tried to keep them folded in a drawer of my dresser, but they were getting wood dust on them from the wood drawers rubbing as they were opened and closed, I guess. I’ve got all sorts of issues, but you knew that already!

Miscellaneous Storage

Since we don’t have a huge wardrobe, we have plenty of room for storing other items in this closet. We keep our luggage stored here and other travel necessities. I’ve also made space for home decor items that I don’t use regularly, have phased out for a period of time, or items that I need to frame and place. Instead of having these leaning against the walls or stacked on the floor, I brought in some bins to at least keep them confined to specific spaces.

On the top shelf, I use these great Sterilite bins to store winter gear, army gear and paperwork we rarely access, gifts, gift bags, purses, and vacuum cleaner accessories. I have used these for several years. The size is great and since they’re not clear, they really are good hiding places!

I have made space in this closet to store some of my business supplies, as well. You don’t keep boxes of black trash bags in your closet? When I go to onsite organizing sessions, I take a box with basic supplies and a tool bag. I don’t like to keep it in my car because I tote various combinations of athletes and their gear to and from practice a few times a week. We need all the trunk space we can have for their bags! When I find a great deal on small organizing tools, I will purchase them to have on hand for clients. I keep this stash in bins in the closet, too.

One more little suggestion I have for closet storage is to keep a step stool in the closet for convenient use. The problem with storing items out of reach, up on a top shelf, is the difficulty we have reaching them. Having a step stool in my closet has proven really helpful for accessing the top shelf of the closet. If I had to go to another room every time I wanted something off the top shelf, I either wouldn’t get it down or I wouldn’t put it away. I’m lazy like that!

Parting Thoughts

Taking the time to make this closet function well has been time well spent. However, we all know the key to keep any space from getting out of control is being committed to constant maintenance. I can guarantee there are days when this closet is and will be out of control.

Finally, don’t be discouraged if your closet doesn’t look like the pictures in a magazine. Those pictures are staged! They’re supposed to be pretty. Your closets are supposed to be functional.

Pretty is optional! Function is necessary!