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How Our Closet Looks Now
Travis and I first started realizing that our closet was not fitting all of our items when we began moving in. The closet is roughly 10’-0” x 4’-8” so not small my any means, but it is not maximizing it's space potential. The ceilings are 9’-0” tall inside the closet so although we may not have a lot of room width wise to maneuver, we do have the height to play with. Currently there is a single rod and shelf that extends around three sides of the closet for hanging clothes and the wall that houses the door is clear to be able to maneuver. When adding it up, we have a little over 15 linear feet of hanging space right now, which fills up surprisingly fast.
Our closet right when we moved in
Above is what our closet looked like right when we were moving in. Let's just say the clothes and shoes have doubled. The entire clothing rack is now full of clothes and we do not have space to add too many more. Maybe Travis does on his side, but my side is pretty much full. We have tried our best to split the closet space evenly with each of us having the same amount of hanging room, but my clothes have seemed to meander on Travis’ side a bit. Maybe I need to purge some clothes and shoes to make room, but that isn’t the point of this post. It comes down to the fact that we need more room in our closet. Now the next step is what is the best option for what closet company and storage solution to use.
Starting with IKEA
You have probably seen all over Instagram where people are doing amazing things by making the IKEA Pax closet sets look like built ins. What’s great about the Pax units is that they are very customizable. You can add shelves, drawers, rods, whatever you want to make them customizable. We considered this option after having some of our close friends use them in their closet. And they turned out amazing. We went over what the Pax units would entail and why the Pax units may not work for us is that…
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We do not have all the power tools needed to make these look truly built-in which means we would either need to buy or rent tools. All the tools needed would cost a pretty penny to complete this job.
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I’m unsure if my woodworking skills are to the point where I could successfully do this project.
Some of our close friends have used the IKEA Pax units in their closet and they did a great job and look amazing! We aren't against them, we are just trying to figure out how much work and effort we want to put into our closet. If you have no idea on what I'm talking about on how to make the IKEA Pax units look built-in, check out Chris Loves Julia's post about how they transformed their closet here.
EasyClosets?
EasyClosets is a company I found via an Instagram ad and thought I would play around with our closet design a bit to see how it went. What a rabbit hole that was. I spent an entire lunch break at work designing our entire closet and figuring out what storage elements would go best and where. What I loved about designing with EasyClosets was how intuitive it was. You take your measurements of your existing closet, and begin by laying out the elements you want and where. There is even a design specialist who can assist you if needed. This post is by no means sponsored in anyway by EasyClosets, I just thoroughly enjoyed the design process on their website. The website allows you to see your closet in 3D or by each elevation. They allow you to choose the color of your cabinets as well and makes it completely customizable for your needs.
For us, I need more hanging rod space & shoe space (shocker) and Travis needs more open shelving and drawers. Being able to customize our closet through EasyClosets helped us figure out how many shoes could fit on a certain shelf or length of hanging clothes space we were actually gaining. We are not ready to pull the trigger on our closet, but EasyClosets allows you to save your design and come back to it when you're ready to either order or edit it further. See the slideshow below for the graphics from the EasyClosets website
When to Re-do
The closet is not a huge priority for us to re-do at the moment, but every day I get ready for work, I realize more and more how cramped our closet is becoming. This may be a project for next year due to financials and need. When the time comes to re-do our closet, we plan on sitting down, comparing apples-to-apples across all the different companies and options and see what will work best for us. Stay tuned for what is to come.
