Seven Tricks to Cheat Space out of your Closet

Seven tricks to "cheat" more space out of your closet.

Here in southeast Florida where the square footages of the "great" room spaces are what sell a home, and whatever is left over for closets is "what you get", the cheating of every bit of space out of a closet is key!

Some of these closet organizing tricks go against your "natural instinct", but if you give them a try, I promise that you will find the extra space worth the change in habit.

1.  Reverse your pants with your shirts in your double hang sections and add a shelf.  Hanging pants/shorts/skirts on the upper rod gives the closet a more roomy, spacious feel. Those items hang much shallower than shirts. Hanging them at shoulder/eye level opens the closet up. It also allows for better visibility of both upper and lower hanging sections, and it brings the extra space at the floor to a more functional/usable height.  You gain an extra shelf below the hanging pants.  It is easier to reach up high with a hanger in one hand than to hold something with both hands and try to place it on a shelf up high. Place upper hanging rods up high and the upper shelf, instead, between the upper and lower hanging for easier access.

2.  Nest your shoes - one front facing and one rear facing to cheat one more pair to a shelf, or to make full pairs of shoes fit on a shelf not optimized for shoe widths.

(Women's shoes are generally 6-1/2" to 7-1/5" wide. An 8" design space per pair is the optimal. 24" widths accommodating 3 pairs each shelf is common. This also allows for baskets, roll-out shoe shelves or other industry standard components to be easily added within the same shelving tower.  Men's shoes are generally 8-1/2" to 9-1/5" wide. A 10" design space per pair is the standard. 30" widths accommodating 3 pairs each shelf is the most common. This is also a great width for a His-Her shared closet as 30" widths accommodate 4 pairs of women's or 3 pair of men's shoes each shelf, while still allowing industry standard components to be added.)

3.  In a narrow walk-in closet, keep the hanging to one side and on the back wall.  A walk-in closet needs to have a back wall width of at least 75" to accommodate hanging clothes on both side walls. This allows for a minimal 24" wide walk space down the center of the closet. If your closet is narrow, or feels crowded, have  only shelving and/or drawers on one side.

4.  Use acrylic dividers to keep pocket books straight up and organized.  Purses and pocket books can be a mess in your closet, taking up valuable space with their disorganized mess.  Keep them neat tidy and taking up less space by using acrylic dividers.  They also work great for tall boots that like to fall over.

5.  Consider baskets or cubbies for flip-flops, beach, or yard shoes.  Have a lot of shoes?  Instead of taking up valuable shelf space, consider placing your ultra casual (not worried about scuffing) shoes in a pull-out basket or bin, or in cubbies.  In the same 24" or 30" wide x 6" tall shelf space that you would fit 3 or 4 pairs of shoes, you could fit one basket that would hold 6-10 pairs of shoes.  This works great in kids' closets, too!

6. If you can't build out, build up!  Many luxury homes, as I spoke of above, are left with pitifully small closets in comparison to their living spaces.  One nice aspect of luxury homes is their tall ceilings.  If you have a standard 96" height closet system and as little as 11' ceilings, consider adding an additional 36" height (or more, if possible) closet system above.  You would have additional shelving storage, and even with 11' ceilings and a 96" height system, if you removed the very top shelf of a standard double hang section to utilize the additional shelf space, you could have triple hang.  Add a wardrobe pull-down (need to have 45" of clearance in front of the section) for easier access.

7.   MAWA® Super Grippy Ultra-Thin Hangers.  These hangers are very thin and have a really short neck for increased storage capacity.  More clothes in less space.  They make triple hang in a 96" height system possible.

There you have it, seven quick cheats to more space in your closet.  Some may take some getting used to, but in the end if you can walk into your closet and say "Ahh" and not EEK!, isn't it all worth it?!

Happy Organizing!