Italians are meticulous closet organizers. You can be, too. The rule is simple: have stuff you need every day easily accessible, and the stuff you don’t need as often stored away. The devil is in the details. The first step to an organized morning is viewing closet space like a small room, and then carefully and tastefully designing the interior. You wouldn’t place your bed a foot from the door, and turn your chest of drawers towards the wall. But that’s what tend to do with our closets – shove everything in, use the door for leverage, and hope to goodness if (when) something falls it’s not heavy.
Designing a closet is fun – it’s like discovering a new room in the house to decorate and enjoy.If you find the right components (some of which might already be in your house) you don’t have to spend much to whip a closet into shape. Any closet, no matter how small, needs dimensionality and movement.
You have to be able to reach items from floor to ceiling, and from front to back. Once you have cleared out your off-season items, and the ones to give away, separate your clothing into two groups. The first, items worn throughout the week (undergarments; work clothes; casual clothes), and the second, items that are formal or specialty wear (cocktail dresses; hiking gear; leotards – okay maybe that’s just my closet).
At this point, you can probably gauge what type of shelving and storage you need for the lesser-used items. Home improvement and other big-box stores have a wide range of affordable and easily assembled custom shelving units to “sculpt” the blank walls in your closet. You may well find that with some extra shelving, and the closet clean-out, you can fit everything in one go. If you need an extra vertical layer of space, think wheels or sliders. This IKEA unit can double the usable space in a walk-in or reach in closet:
The casters leave a little to be desired, and it took some arm (a couple of arms) strength to stretch the fabric around the metal supporters, but hey, it’s $15! Bonus idea for this little number – if you have a guest-room closet that’s a walk-in, like ours, you can tuck this component in at the very front and leave empty for guests, and then fill the balance of the closet with your storage items.
Instead of organizing or cleaning, think designing, and get one step closer to a sleek Italian armadio:
Emilia :)
Photo credits:
Armoire: photo credit: <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/26098878@N06/23256537253″>2016 collection MAZZALI GRANDI ARMADI</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/”>(license)</a>
Armoire in room: photo credit: <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/26098878@N06/6969676634″>MAZZALI al SALONE del MOBILE Milano 2012</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/”>(license)</a>
Open armoire:photo credit: <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/26098878@N06/13888668413″>Mazzali: TWIN wardrobe armadio</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/”>(license)</a>
