Closet Makeover: Bedroom Without Dresser Storage

I’m sharing a little closet makeover and also talking about our bedroom without dresser storage!  Pretty much all of our clothes live in this closet.  Outerwear lives in a front hall closet by the front door.  I keep my shoes in the guest room closet because it’s just sort of icky to keep them here, lol.  And the guest room closet also houses Hubby’s suit, my wedding dress – random things we don’t wear daily.  Here is our closet today, after installing a wood-look closet organizing system that we thought matched our new maple DIY hardwood floors pretty well!

Our Small Bedroom – No Room for Dressers!

Because we use the primary bedroom for guests, our bedroom is pretty small – especially since we have a King sized bed!  It actually doesn’t leave any room for dressers.  I just have one tiny jewelry armoire that I also use to store scarves and some other accessories.

The jewelry armoire was a gift from my granda!

How We Decluttered to Fit Everything in Our Closet!

Living without dressers and fitting all of our clothes into one closet took some decluttering.  We also have to make sure we don’t buy more than we can fit moving forwards.  Here are my tips for downsizing clothes.  We had just moved, so it was a great time to do this because I had to confront every single item.

• Take every item of clothing and put it on the bed.
• Try on every single thing!
• Make a pile for KEEP, DONATE/SELL, MEND
• If money has you stuck, consider consigning your nicer clothes
• You can often sell bags of clothes in a lot locally
• Consider donating – it will feel good too!

How to Design a Close That Works for You (Small Budgets!):

Throw away closet rules and make your own – a system only works if it’s catered to how you live!  But here are some tips that helped us.

1. Take inventory of your clothing and sketch out a closet plan that works for you.
2. Install a combination of shelves, drawers and rods to suit your storage needs & maximize use of space.
3. Make use of the height of your closet with bins on upper shelves.
4. Opt for a built-in laundry hamper (the wire bin) that saves spaces because it fits perfectly.
5. Consider storage bins for below – we use our floral bin for clothes that are neither freshly laundered nor laundry bound.
6. Buy a set of THIN hangers that will hang neatly together, using less space than wooden hangers or a jumbled mess.
7. Don’t worry about “rules” regarding what gets folded and what gets hung up.  Go with what works for you.
8. Same goes for grouping stuff – my yoga pants are front & centre (not shoved in the back) because I use them so often (for sitting around, not actually doing yoga).

Built in laundry hamper and bins meet our needs.

Here’s a closer look at our closet organization and how we store our clothes:

Same size hangers maximize hanging space.

Adding solid drawers to our closet system replaced a dresser for us – and shelves were key for wool sweaters (never hang wool sweaters).  But you’ll see, above, I DO hang t-shirts because I just find this easier for putting clothes away and getting dressed.  I don’t love folding!  And I wanted a system that was built for how I live and what tasks I will avoid, lol.

A mix of shelves and drawers to meet our storage needs.

Bins are great for things like socks:

Bins for added convenience.

Closet Makeover BEFORE

What did this space look like before, you ask?  Well, I forgot to take a photo of our bedroom closet before, but here’s one from the other bedroom  (now the Silhouette Wall in the office).  All closet fittings in the townhouse were identical, so this gives you a good idea of what it looked like.

A sorta “Before”

After tearing out the old closet organizing system, we had this great blanket space!

Crappy closet fittings, no more.

It was a bit of a process getting organized, but you can see from this photo a better look at the closet storage system we got:

Before I got it all neat & tidy.

And here it is now!

Today!