Conquered Closet: Meredith's Striped Master

Before we move on to less traditional storage solutions, I just had to pair yesterdays master closet makeover with another beauty. Welcome Meredith Welcome to Heardmont whose master closet I first spotted on pinterest and had to see more of it.

Welcome Brooklyn Limestone readers. Today I'm going to be sharing how my husband and I organized our walk-in closet to make getting ready in the mornings a lot more pleasant. Since I'm an instant gratification kind of person, here's a sneak peek of how it turned out.




Our house was built in 1981, so our closet featured shag carpet, wood trim, and popcorn ceilings when we moved in. Here's a glimpse of the space just three years ago.



Before we could get to the fun part of our closet makeover, we had a lot of prep work to do. An overflowing washing machine on the other side of our closet wall forced us to rip out the carpet within weeks of moving in. We chose to replace the carpet with floor tiles that matched those in our adjoining master bath. It was a messy first experience with tiling, but it turned out great in the end.

We're no strangers to removing popcorn ceilings around here, so when we decided to give the closet a fresh coat of paint, we scraped and smoothed the ceilings as well.



Much better, right?



The next step was taking this mess of mis-matched hangers, clothes that didn't fit anymore, and random items stored on the top shelf and sorting everything into something more manageable.



First we decided on some rules. We chose to only use the closet space for clothes, shoes, items we use in the master bedroom and bathroom (extra pillows, toilet paper, towels), and luggage. All the camping gear and other random junk that had been taking up valuable closet real estate was banished!



Having matching hangers, no matter how inexpensive they are, can make your closet feel instantly more organized. We couldn't justify new wood hangers, so I bought a few more packs of black and white plastic hangers and we donated the rest. We decided to take the visual appeal one step further and organized our clothes by style and color as well.

Here's how our closet looked after we hung a temporary light fixture, purged some clothes, added shoe racks and moved back in.



This setup worked great until I got the decorating bug and decided to bring our white, gray and yellow color scheme from the master bedroom into our closet. One evening of painting gray stripes just above the closet shelf did wonders for making our closet feel larger, taller, and more like an actual room.



The rest of the design snowballed from there, and a few short weeks later, we had a completely transformed space!



One of my favorite additions to the room is the oversized pendant light fixture (CB2). That thing puts out so much light and makes finding clothes in the morning much easier.



I was also pumped to find this gray and white area rug (at Walmart, of all places) to warm up the tile floors.



On my side of the closet, I hung my shirts and dress pants and placed my shoes on the racks beneath. Up above, we found a couple of hat boxes to match our color scheme (they hold purses and hats) and a black and white tray to store extra toilet paper (Hobby Lobby).



Who would have thought a tray of toilet paper could look so fancy?



My husband hangs significantly less clothing than I do, so he graciously gave me a bit of his side of the closet for my dresses. Up above, we have another black and white tray for our yellow towels (World Market) and some photo storage boxes for things like nylons, cufflinks, and other small items we don't use every day.



It's so nice not to have a ton of clutter on that top shelf anymore. I love that we didn't completely hide the stripes with random boxes and that we actually have room to store extra bedding and throw pillows from our master bedroom now.



In the center of the room, I replaced the mirror that hung over our little dresser with this jewelry board for hanging necklaces.



Instead of a jewelry box for earring, pins, and bracelets, I use a snack/dip set from Bed Bath & Beyond. This has to be one of my favorite re-purposes ever, and I recommend it to friends all the time. My earrings hang perfectly around the edges of the bowls and it's so much easier to see what I have in these white bowls than in a tiny box.



Once we'd finished the dirty work in this closet, these surface treatments and organization supplies only cost around $100. Pretty encouraging if you're planning on doing something similar in your home, right?



If you'd like step-by-step instructions on how we tackled the painted stripes or popcorn ceilings or a source list for what we used in this room, hop on over to Welcome to Heardmont and click the master closet link in our sidebar.

Thanks for letting me share our closet with your readers, Stefanie! I'm looking forward to the rest of your closet organization series!