Our dressers and wardrobes have been sold. But those are 4 pieces of furniture that will not be replaced, because we built an open wardrobe in the bedroom.

Open-closet

One thing I loved, loved, loved about the open storage in the kitchen is how much easier it is to keep everything neat and orderly.

I know, it’s weird. It’s not like opening a cabinet door is that much work. I don’t understand how or why it’s so much easier…it just is.

Closet

An issue we struggled with in keeping the bedroom tidy is piling things on any available surface (dresser tops, nightstands, etc). When there is no surface available, we won’t have the option to be lazy, so we should suck it up and put stuff away, where it belongs.  Hopefully.

While our closet is mostly finished, it still needs some adjustments, and there is still a lot of work to do in the room, so updates will continue.  But we’ve been using it for a couple weeks now, and we love it so far.  It almost feels like getting dressed in a boutique.  And our bedroom feels so much bigger without all that furniture.  Here’s what it looked like before, one more time:

Closet before and after

Here are links to similar products (though treads are MUCH cheaper at the DIY store):

(Affiliate links above)

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28 Comments

  1. Looks fabulous. You have pared down your clothes significantly. I’m not sure many would be able to live with so little. (I do, but it isn’t all that common!) Where do you keep your unmentionables? Alana in Canada

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    3. Kate, they are stair treads from Home Depot that are fastened to wall brackets. And for the clothing rails, we screwed IKEA rails to the bottoms of the shelves.

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  2. Psychology woman to the answer: Our brains are notoriously lazy, in an “out of sight, out of mind” sort of way. If there isn’t something pressing in front of us that demands we act, it takes a (comparatively) enormous amount of energy to override the autopilot that pushes us to conserve energy and effort for more important tasks (e.g. finding food, avoiding predators, staying alive). Open shelving like you’ve created (which looks amazing, by the way) helps remove many of the barriers to creating new habits, by placing reminders in front of you so you expend far less energy trying to “remember” to hang up your clothing and keep it organized, leaving you with more energy to actually do it.

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    1. That’s really interesting. So apparently the “trick” to getting things done is to have them in front of you? Glad to know I’m not just lazy! 😉 Very cool, thank you for explaining!

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  3. Well there’s still the surface of the floor. It looks like you have less clothes than hubby! I could do that but…
    Seriously it looks great and I know what you mean about it being easier to keep in order. Great job!

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  5. AbbePB explained it so well!
    Genius idea to use open shelving, I was first thinking that it would not work for us, but we have sliding doors on our clothes cabinet and how often are those doors closed? Never! So it’s practically open storage, but has a less open feel, I’m not sure if that’s good or bad.
    What has helped us keeping clothes in the cabinet is that we no longer have any furniture where to pile things. Which you now have removed too.

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    1. I was thinking about the ladder you used to use! I tried to get the old wooden one we had to use either for clothes or shoes, but it was rotten.

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    2. We still use the ladder and it’s working. You can only use it for limited amount of clothes otherwise the pile will collapse 🙂 That keeps the ladder looking neat (or as neat as a ladder and pile of clothes can look)

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  9. Can I ask where you got the wall shelves? We have been planning a similar project (dauntingly, on a larger expanse of wall) for a while but yours looks better than what I pictured in my mind… I’d be grateful for info! Beautiful outcome…

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    1. Thank you, Helen! The shelves are made from stair treads from the home improvement store and the brackets are from Anthropologie. We did the same thing in our kitchen, so I have a more detailed posts here and here if you’re interested.

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  10. I love this open look so much more than a wardrobe — it actually makes me wish I didn’t have a built-in closet so I could do this in my room 🙂

    I also love the cohesive look of the wooden hangers (right now I have mismatched colored plastic hangers of various sizes and it drives me nuts). Can I ask where you purchased your hangers? I’m also curious if you built the shoe rack(s?) or if you purchased it somewhere?

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    1. Awww… 🙂 Thanks Kyla! Don’t the hangers make such a difference?! Mine are from Target, IKEA also sells wooden ones. The shelves below are actually IKEA end tables that we cut the bottoms off of so they would sit that low. Unfortunately, they don’t sell them anymore.

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  11. You closet is beautiful. I am just adding shelves to my open closet and was wondering what you used for the hanging bars for you clothes?

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    1. Thanks Karyn! They are IKEAS Bygel rails, just mounted to the bottoms of the shelves. They have been perfect (especially at $3 & 4 a piece), if you’re going to use them this way, just be sure to attach them to solid wood and not MDF shelving–that wouldn’t hold up the weight.

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  12. Did you make the shelves or buy them? I’m not terribly handy but am a school teacher and trying to find affordable shelves!

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    1. Hi Nancy, the shelves are stair treads from the home improvement store. The rails that the clothes are hanging from are wall-mounted rails from IKEA, they’re just screwed in to the bottoms of the shelves. So yes, they were very affordable, and very easy!

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