I'm big on everyone, especially service providers as myself, practicing what they preach. This is why my closet is organized by category and color and never has more than one season's worth of clothing in it at one time. Maintaining multiple closets in multiple cities the last few years has created a challenging environment for my usually seamless organization, as has the new maternity wardrobe I've recently acquired.
My first thought upon seeing the "mini" walk-in closet in the master bedroom of our new DC apartment was, "I'm finally getting the closet I deserve." After years of making do with small places in NY, I couldn't believe my luck. But as it filled up over the last two years, the poor design has slowly been revealed.The two long double hung shelves all along the back wall, which seemed to provide so much hanging space, were cut by a third if you actually hung anything on the left and right sides of the closet. And much of the hanging space was made impractical by the constant interruption of the rods by brackets and such. Since nothing slid easily on the hanging rods, keeping my clothes in the right order was a lot of work because every time I moved one hanger, I had to move 5 others by hand. I was turning into one of my clients before they called me, feeling overwhelmed by all my stuff when I opened the closet door every morning and only wearing the accessible parts of my wardrobe. Completely unacceptable!
THE NEW CLOSET- LEFT TO RIGHT AND DETAIL
THE OLD CLOSET
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| Old Back Wall & Left Side View |
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| Old Back & Right Side View |
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| Old Right Side View |
Making the decision to close my NY apartment came with the realization that the double wardrobe I had enjoyed for so long was now going to have to fit into my one impractical closet. Something had to change and it could not involve buying the one bedroom next door to expand my closet! This is when I decided to take my own advice and invest in an Elfa Closet System from the Container Store. The 25% off sale also helped my decision process along! As I tell my clients, the best thing about Elfa is that it is flexible. Once you have the basic components, you can add and take away hanging rods and shelves as your needs change. This also contributes to the resale value of your home as the new owner can do the same thing. See here how I made a client’s existing Elfa System Closet functional for her with the purchase of one hanging rod.
THE NEW CLOSET- LEFT TO RIGHT AND DETAIL
Now I open my closet and feel joy and peace. Elfa’d or not, two wardrobes were not going to fit into one closet and I was forced to do some necessary editing. Take it from me, this is much easier when your entire wardrobe is in one city. I’ve also re-learned from working with a smaller maternity wardrobe something else I tell my clients, which is that sometimes it seems as if you have more clothes when you actually have less, because you wear a bigger percentage of them. With a place for everything and everything in its place (and in one city!), I know exactly how many pairs of black flats I have, which keeps me from buying new ones I don’t need. Of course, there is a chance that my feet could grow a half size from pregnancy and I’ll need to buy a whole new shoe wardrobe anyway...
