Closet Flip: Take 2

Last year, my semi-annual closet flip wasn't very well thought out. I just sort of took out the summer stuff and tossed in the fall/winter stuff without any real re-arranging. After 12 months of feeling cramped in our closet I decided that this time around it needed a total overhaul...

Insert: longest Friday project of my life. I skipped my afternoon class, made trips to Target and BB&Beyond, and nearly divorced my husband. Jk. But when he came in with a handful of garbage bags and insisted that I fill at least 4 with clothes to give away, I got ugly for a minute. And then after I purged the clothes and shoes I haven't so much as looked at in 2+ years... I felt so liberated! ;)

I'm hesitant to horrify you with these pics....... but in the interest of keeping it real, you can see what the closet basically looked like "before" in my post from last year, and here is what this year's flip looked like during {click to enlarge, if you dare}:

Looking from bedroom into living room...

The bed/bedroom before storage bins 4, 5 and 6 made their way in...

I made the stupid bold decision to completely empty the closet this year. The whole. entire. closet. I was amazed at how big it was once I got all our junk out of there... I think it could seriously fit a twin sized bed.

Almost emptied...

View from the inside

Stuck shoe racks :(

I knew when I put the shoe racks together (sans husband) and crammed them in the closet a couple years ago that they didn't quite fit. I figured I'd smoosh them in as best I could and just live with the fact that they were an inch or so off the ground on each end haha....... 2 years later, I decided I'd pry them out of their nook and move them. Easier said than done. Those suckers were wedged so tight that I broke one of them as I yanked it out of the groove it had made in the baseboard.

Then I sat down in the middle of the closet and looked out at the mess I had made and the broken shoe racks and the mounds of clothes I didn't know what to do with..... And I cried. Just a little. Sometimes you just need to have a good, pathetic meltdown.

My mid-meltdown view haha

Sitting in the closet gave me some real perspective on what made most sense in terms of organizing it. Enough perspective that I wiped my eyes, put on my big girl panties, and headed to Target for some storage solutions. Then I made my way to Bed, Bath & Beyond for a new shoe rack. And when I came home, I swapped our "sides" and added some plastic drawers... I kicked Andrew's shoes out (along w/ ones I don't wear that often) to the guest room closet... I (unwillingly, at first) filled 4 giant trash bags with clothes/shoes to donate... and 7 hours later, I sat down and enjoyed the view from our bigger, better, more organized closet(s)!

Husb's side after

Creative storage under his hanging clothes + hanging organization for flats and slippers

The top of my side after 

Bins tucked on the shelf between my hanging bars store socks, leggings, clutches, etc.

My side after + bins under the lower bar for Ts and sweatpants... and boots tucked under to the right

So. much. more. room! We can actually walk in our walk-in. Geesh.

Ta-da!

Moving all the extra shoes out to the other closet made a world of difference. Hubbs came home from a matinee w/ his boyfriends to find that his shoes now lived 50 whole steps away from his bedroom. He wasn't thrilled at first, but after I played it up and convinced him it was cool, I think its growing on him.

Andrew's shoes + ones I don't wear often...

The other side of the spare closet had to be somewhat re-organized to accommodate the new shoe rack. But mostly we just stacked the bins of off-season clothes and decorations as high as we could pile them and shut the door....... I couldn't stand another minute of closet organizing!

Little scary........ but it works?

A few tears shed, a few {dozen} articles of clothing given to someone who needs them, and a few hours of my life spent making our shared closet space a little more practical, organized, and pleasant.

Fingers crossed it stays this neat and tidy until next spring's flip!