When I moved into my apartment, I was able to find a place for most things fairly quickly. Books go on the bookshelves, dishes go in the kitchen cabinets, sofa goes in the living room, cats go wherever they please, etc.

My clothes, however, were a different story.  I am fortunate that my small apartment has a good size bedroom closet.  The only problem is that it is set up for hanging space only. I’m sure the apartment was designed with the expectation that the tenant would bring a dresser or armoire, which most normal people have, but I do not yet own one.  Eventually, I hope to buy a really neat, antique armoire with shelf and drawer space, but that will take lots of searching and deliberating and may not happen for many months/years.

While I pondered this dilemma, my folded clothes, bags and shoes sat in boxes and even larger bags on my bedroom floor for about a week, which I found to be thoroughly irritating.

This is actually a fairly cleaned up version of my room before I had shelving in the closet:

I like to be organized and for everything to be in its place so this was a bit challenging for me. I had to dig through boxes and piles of clothes to find an outfit for a meeting or Church or just any outfit that didn’t look ridiculous in public.

More boxes…

It probably would have been easier to find things if I had labeled the boxes…but that would have made the box situation far too manageable.

I perused the isles at Lowes, Home Depot and Bed Bath and Beyond, waiting for just the closet solution to jump out at me.  I didn’t want to spend a ton of money on some fancy system, but I also didn’t want something that was going to fall apart. A few days into my search, I found some simple, metal racks with 3 adjustable shelves.

There was a lot of assembly required…

The directions specified that this was a 2 person assembly job due to the dangerousness of the metal objects.

Somehow, I survived the assembly of 4 shelving units.

And this is what my closet looks like post shelf-lift:

This brings me joy.

I have fairly high ceilings so I actually put one of the shelving units on a high shelf for my “winter-ish” items that I don’t need to wear at this time since we are averaging 75 degrees in Nashville.

After testing the limits of the upholstered stools in my room by jumping on them in order to sling purses onto the top shelf, I decided it was probably a good idea to invest in a proper step-ladder to prevent any injuries to me or my upholstered stools.

Meet my new best friend:

Look at all of that glorious shelf space.

Clearly, I could use an internship at J. Crew where everything is folded perfectly, but I was just so happy to have shelf space that it appears I let it get the best of my folding skills.

One thing that irks me is that the shelves in the unit on the far right do not line up with the shelves in the other two units. This is not a mistake; I had to make them higher so my Uggs would fit underneath, but nonetheless it bothers me.  Maybe I should adjust the other two so they are higher?

I know, I need help.

Sadly, all of my shoes did not make it into the closet due to a lack of space.  Luckily, I brought along my trusty door-hanging shoe organizer from college that has 30 shoe slots.  I have been known to pack 50 pairs of shoes into this thing so I’m very glad to have it.  The alternative was to line up my shoes around the perimeter of my room, which would have kept me up at night.

While it would have been ideal to hang this on the back of my closet door, there is not enough depth between the door and the wall to accommodate the shoe rack. Thus, the shoe rack is hanging on the back of my bedroom door.  Not perfect, but at least my shoes are off the floor and can be hidden from sight when my door is open.

I am hoping that when I finally find the perfect armoire I can put a lot of my folded items in it and then use the metal racks in the closet for my shoes.

I can’t wait to find that armoire so I can worry about more important things like what color I’m going to paint my kitchen.

Y’all come back now, ya hear?

Sugarlump