Coat Closet Organization

After living for almost 5 yrs in a home with a joke of a coat closet and no mud room we’ve had enough! For the record if we ever buy another home a good mud room is going to be right up there on the must have list on the same line as a spacious kitchen. Even with a small family of 4 we cannot fit any of our stuff on the one single shelf that is in there! Can’t even imagine how it would work for a bigger family.

We almost always ended up with a pile of bags, jackets, and what not on the floor. Things got dropped from the bags/backpacks, jackets got stepped on, and when someone wanted something out of the bottom of the pile it took a good 10 mins to get to it.

So how did we tame this mess monster?

With The Container Store’s Elfa shelving system! We’ve heard many of our neighbors rave about Elfa and had made up our minds to get it last year this time (they have their annual 30% off sale from late Dec to Early Feb). But then the week after our Container Store appointment I got laid off, shelving all our closet organization plans (couldn’t help but miss a chance on using a good pun 🙂 ) . Fast forward to Dec 2014, we were back in the market and this time around we decided to do the 2 smaller closets and wait on doing our master closets for maybe another year. First up was this excuse of a closet and I cannot pat ourselves on the back enough for finally getting it done!

It is a life saver! We went from a single shelf to 3 full ones and 2 half ones!

The off season clothing is now stored all the way up on the top shelves followed by less used backpacks and handbags.

There are separate hooks for kids’ jackets and backpacks.

And I can finally see my floors! Yup, nothing is piled on them anymore!

I don’t lose my keys or Smart Trip card from the side pockets of my handbag and the laptops don’t get stepped on!

What did it take for us to go from the messy before to the beautiful after?

The Container Store Elfa Facts (no, I’m not an affiliate nor is this sponsored):

• It cost us around $330 with the Walnut facade and installing it ourselves (after the 30% off).
• Installation is easy, took us around 3 hrs. Anyone who has fitted a piece of furniture together can install it.
• The Container Store designers are awesome! You just take the measurements to them and they sketch the design out for you for free.
• That said, the default option they show you will almost always be the most expensive version. Feel free to tweak it or suggest other options. They work with you to find the design that works for you.
• Before you go in for the consultation, it is a good idea to jot down what the issues with your space are and what you would like to see in there.
• Tweak, tweak, take out the extras like the liners if you are worried about the $$ adding up.
• Coming back to installation, the thing to remember is that they cut the pieces to the exact measurements, as precise as ever. Their instructions are very clear yet we had some trouble figuring out that the end rods on the horizontal shelf should rest/lock in at the edge of the supports. Another thing that we had some trouble with was the backpack hooks bar.

Not bad to go from an empty one shelf space to a much more organized one in a few hours? Oh and I did paint the space before we installed the shelves with some left over paint.

Wondering where the rest of the shoes are? We are a ‘leave your shoes outside’ household. So we store them in the garage except for my boots. No particular reason on why the boots are inside other than I just like them that way. 🙂

In case you are not tired of all the pics in the post here is one more of my pretty DIY’d painted baskets. Can you believe those were Christmas Drum baskets that I scored on 80% off at Michaels?

How is your coat closet looking? Is coat closet organization on the top of your “things to tackle soon” list? Have you used Elfa?