mess + doors = closet wars
In order to come up with a new plan, I addressed all of the problems and decided what the project would entail.
This closet was obviously not designed for children. One of the hanging bars was so high that no one could reach it. So I would have to come in to get a sweatshirt down etc. And I was sick of that. So the new arrangement needed to have all reachable items. They keep most of their regular t-shirts and sweatpants (99.9% of a boy's daily wear) folded in bins where they can reach. But the bins were getting too small. Or perhaps the clothing is getting too big?? So the new closet must have bigger bins. The doors were obviously a huge part of this problem, so bye bye doors. And lastly, the closet had to look nice (mostly because of the whole no-doors thing).
bins of overflowing boy garb hanging bar for 6' man
Now as you can see, when I originally ripped out their old green carpet years ago, I got a little lazy and stopped at the edge of the closet. In order to get the carpet out from there, I would have had to take out the whole closet system and at that time I just wasn't doing it. So that became issue number one. Luckily I had just enough of the floor boards left in the basement to do the closet. I had to run them the other way and add in a transition strip, but I'm ok with that.
Carpet, doors, and old wire system out - So much better already!
Of course, whenever I start a project, it's like opening a can of worms. You know those walls were so dingy that we had to paint them, right? I gave the boys the choice of three colors of paint that we had enough of in the basement. They chose bright green. And I put them to work.
This lasted all of about 5 minutes.
I decided to install one bar per side (at an acceptable height, of course) and several shelves since most of their stuff doesn't hang anyway. I left the floor open because they have some rolling bins of toys that they like to stash down there.
Ahhhhh... clean and new. It's so tempting to just leave it this way.
With all of their clothes and toys back in. I only got rid of a couple of smaller toy bins. Everything else is back in here. Amazing difference, no?
They even have their own hamper now. Up until this point they were required to walk across the hall to our room to deposit dirty clothes in a hamper. It was starting to become a problem. They were having a rough time making it the whole 3 feet away and I have been finding dirty clothes deposited everywhere from on their floor to under their playroom couch (which, by the way, is farther from their room than my hamper).
We shall see how neat this remains. I feel like I should be required to post a "reality" picture in a few weeks. But even in a bit of time, I'm sure it will be better than the state of the previous arrangement!
