Maximizing a small reach-in closet where every inch counts

Feb 10

When my client-friend said she needed help with her closet I was surprised. She is super organized by nature and loves everything in its place.

Soon after she showed me the space, I realized that we had more of a structural issue than an organization problem. It was going to take creativity and planning for every inch of this small space in order to make this closet work better for her.

As always, you can shop anything you see by clicking on an image.

Here is where we started:

As you can see from the picture above, the closet is tight. Two short hanging sections over two short hanging sections. What you may not be able to tell, is that the shelf above is very high and really not suitable for anything you’d want to reach on a regular basis.

My client mentioned she liked her grab and go jeans storage, she maybe wanted some baskets and was intersted in a jewelry solution. But most of all, it was just clunky to get dressed and was there anything we could do to help make it easier.

We started by removing the lower short hanging on the left side of the closet, lowering the upper closet rod to accomodate a shelf. From there, I’d planned every inch of this closet so we were able to quickly and efficiently exceute the plan.

Jeans were stacked neatly on the new shelf to create a denim bar situation where client could continue to grab-n-go style get dressed. We used the very tall shelf for lesser used bags (and even left room to spare). With the adjustment of the hanging, its also a lot easier to reach that very high shelf which was an added bonus.

We used closet rod labels to make sense of all the hanging clothes and kept categories tailored to our client. As I mentioned she is very organized at baseline so this part came very easily as she already had a system in place. We did restructure her categories so that all of the tops were over the pants where possible (just like how we wear our clothes). For example, blouses are on teh top short hanging shelf and the pants and trousers are below. This makes logical sense in our mind when looking in our closet for what to wear and is easier to process.

With limited space and more tops than bottoms, we did sneak in a few of the casual tshirts and athletic shirts next to the bottoms.

The other big addition to this space is the drawer base. This part of the project came down to math and left a mere 1/8” for the drawers to slide open completely through the door frame. I love this piece for my client because she rotates out her seasonal clothing. We were able to create a spot for her accessories and undergarments which previously where in a bag on the floor.

We also have two transitional drawers including seasonal items and out of rotation denim. This will make it easy to swap out when seasons change. For example, right now the seasonal drawer has winter hats and ponchos but when summer comes she can easily swap for swimsuits and cover-ups.