Saying Goodbye to Dysfunction…

This is what our bedroom has looked like for the past week.  Shoes, clothing and completely random junk {do you spy the curling bar?} everywhere. I’m being completely selfish here by only showing you the Hubby’s side of the room.  I was, however, kind enough to vacuum before I took this picture, because I thought it would make it look less crazy?

This is all being done in an effort to end what has been nine years of dysfunction. We have a walk in closet that has been the biggest waste of space and organization, resulting in the Hubby and I storing some of our clothes in our kids closets and under our bed while our closet door remained shut to hide the mess.

I’m a bad blogger, and forgot to take a before shot of the closet.  I think shame may have played a factor in that decision. There was just no way to have the closet clean before. Here is the closet after we gutted it for the contractor. I’ve indicated what was there before:

The closet is a medium sized rectangle.  The existing wire hanging shelf occupied two walls in the shape of an ‘L’. This picture is looking at the short side of the L, with the rest of the shelving going along the wall that is behind the door.  The third wall has a window in the middle of it, so there is no usable space for hanging {but lots of natural light}.  The fourth wall is the door.

The frustrations of the former layout were easy to see. First, the dead space above the shelving unit had to be addressed.  It was useful for nothing.  If we tried to fold clothing to put up there, it would just fall over and off the shelves.  There needed to be some kind of dividing system to keep the folded clothing in its place.

Next, it was crazy to have only one rod for hanging clothes.  With all that extra room up top, we felt like there should be two levels of hanging space.

We were also very bugged that all of our shoes {trust me, it’s a lot of shoes} were strewn all over the floor.

Our goal had been defined:  create a closet that has divided space up top, two rows of hanging for our clothes and an organized system for storing shoes.  We also wanted to use the window wall to our advantage for more storage, although it wouldn’t be hanging space.

I’ll show you how it turned out next week. I need to make a quick trip to Ikea for my favorite wood hangers and then we’ll be done!