Updated Little Girl's Closet & Room

This project took awhile (I started LMS' room 2 years ago when we first moved in) and went through a couple of incarnations before it finally got to a point where I can call it finished.

The closet is deep on both sides, which caused problems when it came to figuring out the best shelf/closet rod combination.

It started out as this:

not a great before picture, but it's all I've got

Then looked like this:

Then I ripped out the shelves and clothes rods and built some stand alone shelves and it looked like this for the last year and a half or so:

The problem was that the walls aren't perfectly straight, and the shelves ended up not fitting nearly as well as I had thought they would. This was pretty discouraging and I just left the closet like it was for over a year. During that time, I contemplated how to change things so they'd be more efficient and practical.

Last week, during spring break, I finally got to work on the closet.

I sanded the spackle that I had put on the walls after removing the old shelf supports, then put a fresh coat of paint on the walls. I really like this color and think it works great as an accent to all the purple in her room.

I had removed all the trim when I was going to install the stand alone shelves, so after the paint dried I reinstalled the trim and added the supports for the original ridiculously-high shelf and new supports for a lower, more useful shelf. I didn't want to mess with painting an 8' shelf top and bottom, so I took the easy way out and purchased a melamine-covered board from Lowe's for the new lower shelf.

Then I installed my favorite shelf strips on the walls on either side of the closet and searched through my wood stash for shelving. I had prepped some wood for shelving when I first started working on the closet, so I was able to cut down those pieces to the length and width I needed and only needed to paint one new piece of wood for a shelf- bonus for me!

One thing I noticed is that the left side of the closet is about 3" shallower than the right side, so the shelves are not interchangeable from one side to another. No idea why there's such a difference, but that's how it is.

After getting the shelves in, I needed to get the closet rods up. I ended up using pieces from Rubbermaid, which definitely aren't the cheapest, but they do exactly what I want them to do. I installed 3 vertical supports (they're screwed into studs), then 3 sets of rod supports at different heights to accommodate different items of clothing. The rods come in a set of 2 that fit together and are adjustable, but because of their length I ended up using one for the lower rod and the other for the middle rod. They're a bit long, and I haven't yet made up my mind about cutting them down a bit. I used a full two piece set for the top rod.

Once those were up, it was time to organize LMS' clothes. The large metal-framed canvas baskets (found at wally world about a year ago or so ago) were too wide for the space on the left, but I found some woven baskets at Lowe's that fit just right. We hung some clothing up and put the rest in baskets.

I then went all ocd and made tags for each basket, which I've actually wanted to do for a long time, and I feel so much better now that I have, even if it did take awhile to do them all :) I safety pinned the tags to the canvas baskets and threaded ribbons through the holes in the woven basket.

We store off season clothes and clothes that are too big in these file boxes I found at Target. I love them! They have hinged lids and work great for storing things in closets. I use them in our closet for Mr M and my off season clothes as well.

I love how much more functional (there's that word again!) LMS's closet is and the fact that she can actually see and reach all her clothes. I've noticed that she tended to wear whatever was on top of the basket, rather than wearing all of her clothes.

When we organized her clothes, we also switched out her cold weather clothes for spring/summer clothes. Just in time for weather in the high 80's- nothing like instant summer! Now she can see all her cute outfits (several of which I found on clearance at Crazy 8 a couple of months ago and have been saving for warm weather) and actually wear them.

A couple little details I love:

I switched the boring brass knob for a glass knob. It didn't come with the metal flange, which I had to buy separate. It's smaller than the original though, so the screw holes are over the original knob hole. Right now it's held together by the central screw that extends from one knob to another. Still thinking about a fix for this issue.

It's a nonfunctioning knob now- the glass knob didn't accommodate the tongue mechanism, so I just removed it. LMS doesn't like having her door closed and we don't think kiddos need to be hiding behind closed doors, so it's not a problem for us.

I also switched out the boring wood knobs on the closet doors for these cute purple polka dot knobs I found at Hobby Lobby.

And I finally hung pictures and hemmed the curtains:

Now that I finally have LMS's room finished, we're probably having a girl :) But I had that in the back of my mind as I worked, so everything can be rearranged a bit and still work with another little girl in this room. And if we end up having a boy, then LMS has lots of room to herself still.