Walk On In!

When JEGs and I first looked at this house, we knew right off the bat that closet space was going to be an issue, especially in the master bedroom.  We were going from this:

to this...

Laughable, right?    Not only is the closet small, but it is also located right above the steps to the first floor so we have this little gem

..which I could probably add some shelving and make it work, however directly above it is this:

...the stairs to the attic, rendering it completely useless.  Rock and roll.

Now, before I go any further, I have to say that this was 110% all JEGs idea.  I take absolutely no credit for any of this at all. 

After hemming and hawing about how to remedy this situation, we decided that instead of using the third bedroom as an office-- which we didn't really need because neither of us work from home and we both have laptops-- we would use that teeny room as a walk-in closet.

Originally we had thought about getting some Closet Maid and creating an arrangement similar to this Elfa System, but after some thought, we didn't want to do anything too permanent.  Ideally we would like to extend the closet in the master and turn this back into a bedroom/office/whatever, so the idea of purchasing all that shelving and then taking it all down in maybe a year just seemed silly to us.

So we went cheap-- IKEA.

JEGs' best buddy, Mike, actually suggested using portable clothing racks.  We searched around and found the RIGGA from IKEA to be the best match-- and at $19.99 each, we couldn't beat that with a stick.

I should probably mention that it took me about an hour to put my RIGGA together.  JEGs, on the other hand, had his together in 15 minutes, and without instructions.  Show off ;)

We weren't sure what to do about our shoes, until we realized the racks below were perfect for hanging my heels from

I like shoes.  A LOT.

and perfect for him to rest his shoes across:


sometimes it pays to have a size 13

In the apartment, I had a shoe rack in the closed that hid my massive collection of housed my shoes JEGs had the idea to secure the two RIGGA together with shoe string and then hang the rack from the end of the two bars

We moved the bigger dresser and I am currently using it to keep all my underoos, socks, jammies, t-shirt etc, and JEGs has the smaller dresser in the bedroom.  The Tupperware containers have my purses and off season clothes.

Now, there was an existing closet in this room, however it was teeny tiny, and only had shelving.  It actually works perfectly for a linen closet (since we have no other place to store our linens)

So what about the original closet?  It isn't going completely unused.  We hung our "fancy smancy clothes" in there-  all my cocktail dresses and JEGs' suits and ties. 

We aren't finished in the closet yet.  Somethings I would like to do still:

*add a rug.  That hardwood floor is cold on my tootsies in the morning

* have a full length mirror somewhere

*raise the curtain rod

*hang my jewelry board

*add some fun wall art

*repaint.  Although the color photographs as a pretty slate blue, it's actually really, really dark.  Also, I think the previous owners didn't know know about Frog tape:

So yeah.. one room down.  Five more to go!

Always & Forever,

  ME