Small Closet Upgarde

So many details in my house just seem wrong.  I'm not going to go into the long list of little jobs that were not completed very well, but lets just say that I am still fixing things when this house was only renovated five years ago.

One detail has been bothering me since the day I moved in: the closet in my bedroom.  First, it is tiny, but that is not anyone's fault, there just is not a lot of room in that room for a closet (it was kind of an afterthought).

But the part that kills me is that the rod for my clothes was installed from the front to the back of the closet instead of across the width.  This gave me about two-thirds less space to hang my clothes in an already small closet.  You can tell in the shot above that there is no rod or shelf across the top. The rod and shelf is off to the left just behind that wall with the heart.

The closet was also never primed or painted.  For a long time I had dreams of installing a pink damask pattern in that little closet and I know it would have looked fabulous, but after years of searching it is just not that easy to find wallpaper that is both nice and not too expensive.  If anyone has any ideas as to where I can find some nice wallpaper remnants I'm all ears.

In the end, I just painted the closet with some "oops" paint I had in the basement from my days of buying "oops" paint (the hubby discourages me from buying it anymore because we have so much paint in our basement and we need to control the clutter).  My "oops" paint was a blue exterior paint with a primer right in it. I figured that would do.  My mother-in-law, who actually did the painting because I'm pregnant and not supposed to inhale the fumes, kept asking me if the color was alright.  It's a closet.  We both figured it does not really matter because no one sees it but me (and my readers, hehe).

So we (really she) painted,  the hubby and I installed the new rod, cut to fit the right way, and we even got a nice shelf up to hold all my purses.  (It's a good thing I'm not really a huge purse and shoe person, because any more stuff would not fit.

Here is my after.  Everything is off the floor.  Clothes hanging the right way.  Even our little shelf.  I decided not to go crazy organizing the shelf.  It is just a pile of bags in bags (to protect them).

Now, a couple of tricks I have learned along the way.

1) Use all the same coat hangers!  My wonderful God mother taught me this one.  Boy was she right!  When you use all the same coat hangers, your clothes look better, the closet looks better, and life is better.  You will thank me later.  (We have been watching a lot of Monk, an old T.V. show, and he Monk, says that all the time.)

By mistake when we bought these coat hangers, which are supposed to take up less space, we got both gold and silver ones.  I try to keep the silver ones in here only, but sometimes a gold one slips in.  I love the way this looks.  My clothes may not all match like some Ikea commercial (BTW, have you seen the one where the whole closet is full of yellow clothes?  How could someone live like that?  Yellow?), but my closet does look better for a real person who wears all sorts of different clothes.

2) Hang a tie rack behind your clothes for belts and scarves.

Ok, I totally read that tip in a magazine somewhere, but they were right.  It is a brilliant way to store your unused items waiting for just the right outfit.  I'm not a huge user of accessories, but I always want to be.  So I have a pretty large selection of belts that needed a home.  I also hang my little party purse here for special occasions.

I do not hang my scarves there for the simple reason that I have too many.  After living in India for so long, I have a huge collection, and I prefer to put them where I can see them and use them a little more often.  In my baskets.  You can real all about my basket and old closet reorganization on the post Cleaning Out the Closet.

The new configuration of my little closet is so much better.  Once I'm back to a normal size I can't wait to have all my favorite dresses in there to look at and admire (if not wear, because I will have a baby).