Closet Organization Inspiration

I've been on an organizing kick lately. A couple of weekends ago, I spent an entire day reorganizing our kitchen. It's not quite done yet, and I am still tweaking it, but it's way more organized than it has been for the past year and a half. Poor D can't find anything in our kitchen anymore because I've moved everything around. Hopefully, he will get used to it soon. I promise to share photos once the organization is a bit more complete.

Meanwhile, I am contemplating tackling our closets. Some of them are already in pretty good shape, but some need major help. So, I turned to Pinterest for inspiration. My search for closets came up with tons of inspirational and completely unachievable scenarios. It just so happens that I don't have an entire room dedicated to storing my shoes. Also, I own more than three pairs of pants. Is this somehow unrealistic? Because you would think, judging by most of the closet pictures I found, that people either own three shirts that they generously hang in their oversized closets, or they live in mansions and can afford to dedicate several rooms to clothing storage only.

I insisted on pinning only more or less realistic looking closets, and here is what I found.

Pretty and organized. Realistic amount of clothing. Found here.

Custom-made closet designed to fit the needs of the individual. Still, everything fits in a realistic amount of space. Found here.

Real size closet. Organized and not cluttered. Found here.

Another realistic closet. Built-in shelving helps keep it organized. Found here.

In all these closets, shelving and dividers help keep things organized. In the real world, we don't just store clothing and shoes in the closet. Handbags, luggage, extra blankets all find their way into our bedroom closets if we live in small apartments with even smaller storage space. The trick to keeping things organized is to set up the closet in a way that is easy to maintain. Even if the closet does not have built-in shelving, you can still put standing shelves on the floor of the closet, and hang sweater organizers on the closet rod to maximize the use of vertical space. Baskets and boxes could be useful as well, as long as they don't become junk collectors (which they can easily become, since you can simply throw things in and keep them out of sight, out of mind). Hanging hooks on the inside of the closet walls and doors also helps maximize storage in a small closet.

My bedroom closet uses all of these tricks. When I get my ass into gear and take photos of the closet, I promise to share them on the blog!