Posted by Azra Rakovic
After a little over 2 years of dating, I got engaged to my best friend Zach. Now that we are looking at starting a life together, there are organizational things we need to consider when merging our lives and merging our wardrobes.
Luckily, my fiancé already has Closet Works closets installed at his condo. This is a picture from before. The first thing we did was a major purge of his wardrobe. I promise, this wasn't prompted by my need to put my clothes in his closet. Actually, he could hardly wait to get rid of old golf shirts, gym shorts and those a size too small jeans that have been hidden in the back of the closet just creating clutter and I was only happy to help. In order to do the prudent thing, we decided to take the excess clothes to the local Goodwill Store. We took photographs of all 145 items and then proudly drove over to Goodwill. Why photographs, you ask? To claim tax deductions, of course. In order to learn how much to get for each type of item donated, I visited the
Goodwill website.
So now you're probably thinking, "How did you fit 145 items in that closet and is there anything left?" 'Tis the beauty of a
closet organizer. His leftovers still filled most of the closet, loosely. However, we were able to concentrate all of his garments on the right-hand side of the walk in, leaving me with the left side and a bank of drawers. More on those drawers in a future post. When the day finally came for me to move in, I arrived with 2 large suitcases of just my winter clothes. I thought I'd start out slow. I looked at the suitcases and then at the closet and said to myself, "Self, this is never going to fit in just the left side of the closet." Yet I powered through. After only 30 minutes I was all moved in, the suitcases were empty and I couldn't believe my eyes because there was still plenty of room for my summer wardrobe.
Stay tuned to read more about the little things I've learned about custom closet organizers, now that I'm actually using one myself. I am looking forward to you reading about my jewelry organizer, the valet rod that we moved closer to my half of the closet, the adjustable shelves we moved around to accommodate my gym clothes and my #1 wish list item: a lingerie and sock drawer divider. Oh, the simple things that make me happy.
Posted by Azra Rakovic
You’ve likely got all kinds of garments hanging in your closet – some you love – some that don’t fit – some you wish would fit – some you spent way too much money on... And all of them wanting a place to hang out.
One of the easiest ways to double your storage capacity in your closet design is to incorporate “double hang” into your closets. Double Hang is defined as having two rods that accommodate short hanging items (typically one at 40” and one at 80”).
Some options that clients have used for their
custom closet design include:
His and Hers – allocate and divide the space so there’s no co-mingling. For some couples, this is the only way to make things work. His and Her hanging is specifically designated to separate sections.
Pants on Top – If you fold your pants over a hanger to hang them, putting them on the top rod allows you to more easily see what’s on the lower rod because pants don’t hang out as far as jackets and shirts.
This is also a way to accommodate double hang if your ceiling height is less than the normal 84” required to accommodate double hang.
Who’s on Top – the taller of the two people sharing the space can take the top rod and the shorter person can utilize the lower rods – that way everybody’s things are within an easy reach.
Having spent decades in and out of thousands of closets, experienced designers (like my teammates at Closet Works) are worth their weight in gold if you’re trying to maximize space so you can accommodate all the things you own and want to store inside your closets.
