How to Organize a Child’s Closet in One Afternoon

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This last weekend, we took advantage of the holiday to really dig in on several home improvement projects.

The first one I wanted to tell you guys about was a total closet makeover for my little girl. I really wanted to start summer off fresh and clean and you guys already know I have been a tidying up fool for a few months now. When I had the opportunity to work with Rubbermaid® and their line of Rubbermaid® HomeFree Series™ closet organizers I jumped at the chance!

My little one has a large enough closet for a child, but the layout just didn’t work. No matter what I do and how often I rearrange, I find that the closet still looks like a giant mess.

I like the girl’s bedrooms to be open spaces with room to breathe and play and not a lot of cabinets and shelves and toys and such all over the place. So the closet has to hold the majority of her things and I really wanted to just rip out what was not working and start fresh with a brand new design that would work and more importantly grow with her.

To get started I identified what we need the closet to hold:

1. Dresses, jackets and sweaters. (lots and lots of dresses)
2. Shoes (lots of shoes)
3. Books
4. Stuffed animals and dolls
5. And a few bins with clothes that are too big and a bin of costumes for dress up.

I measured the closet and determined it was 72 inches. I popped over to the Rubbermaid® Storage Planner – a super simple planning and design program that is free to use.

This is really a very cool program as you just select the type of space you have (closet, pantry, office and so on) and adjust the dimensions to fit your space.

Next you can add items or subtract items to see all the designs available.  This was my original design:

I wanted space for lots of dresses, jackets, shoes and then a few shelves to hold dolls and other treasures.  You can add in the items you want in any configuration and once you finish, click the “what you need” button and you get a simple little shopping list to take with you.  This process probably took 5 minutes.

Next we popped over to Lowe’s and easily found all the items we needed:

You will find the Rubbermaid® HomeFree Series™ for closets or the Rubbermaid® FastTrack® system for pantries, laundry rooms and mudrooms. The HomeFree system is the one I used and that comes in 3-6 feet, 4-8 feet and 6-10 feet.  The kit will include basic closet shelving and you can add on any extras you might want such as the shoe racks.

Next we brought the system home and took one last look at the hot mess closet before:

Horrifying.  I know.  What nightmares are made of really and believe it or not I clean and tidy this closet all the time.

Pretty standard builder grade closet with one shelf.  The shelf was installed so low, it took up a lot of valuable space.  Plus my little girl has a lot of shoes and those always wind up a big jumbled mess on the floor. So out with the old and in with the new!

We removed the doors to make the process easier and installed the system plus the additional shoe racks.  This was a quick process- maybe one hour in total.

After removing the original shelf, we did have some differences in paint color so I did quickly put up one coat of a fresh white paint so everything looks nice and clean.

Then it was the fun part- putting everything back together.

And the after!  I can’t tell you how delighted I am with this new closet.  On the left are Maya’s day dresses that she wears all the time. On the far right are nicer dresses for special occasions.  The bottom right has all of her sweaters and jackets so she can reach them herself.  She wasn’t able to reach her sweaters before and was always trying to jump up and yank them down.  The lower hanging rack is low enough for her to reach and doubles the space for clothing storage which I love!

She has space for the shoes she wears regularly and extra shoes that aren’t worn as often (snowboots, dress shoes and cleats), I tucked up on the top shelf.

The most important aspect to a clean closet is not having things on the floor.  We wanted to avoid that if at all possible.  We were hoping to add extra shelving on that bottom left side to hold books but the shoe racks we choose overlap slightly so an extra shelf won’t fit.  No problem though as I still have a rolling crate to hold books and allows extra room to hang the backpack she uses for dance and tennis.

We also have shelves to hold stuffed animals and her doll plus a piggy bank and other little treasures. Maya has a fairy door that I have struggled to find a place for and now the fairy door has a new home right in the center of the closet.  The fairy door comes with notecards for the fairy to leave messages so she can easily reach it and I don’t have to look at the door and cards and stickers and such on the floor of her room.

I also hung a little poster I made for her birthday a few years ago that I haven’t had the heart to part ways with.  Once we showed Maya her finished closet she said “oh Mom I love that poster!  I always try to read it but it was smashed behind all that other stuff.”  Ha!

We did push that top shelf up several inches from where it was before.  I was concerned we wouldn’t be able to get the few storage boxes up there but they actually fit like a glove!  One tub with some treasured baby clothes, one tub with items waiting for her to grow into and one tub with costume items for dress up.  Plus space for hats and a few extra shoes.

We really fit a ton in this closet and I think it looks fresh and clean and I am so happy with the finished project.

All in all this was a simple and affordable home improvement project.  The Rubbermaid® shelving does not require any cutting or fancy tools so I was a little concerned it would be rickety and unstable.

So far I find it very sturdy and I think this system will last a long time.  We spent about 3 hours in total on this project removing the old shelf, painting and installing the system and then putting the closet back together.

If you want to pop over to a Lowe’s store and try this system in your home, here are the tools we did use:

• Level
• Screwdriver
• Measuring Tape
• Drill

And that is it!

Do you struggle with organization or clutter?  Please leave a comment below so I can try to find solutions and ideas that might help with the hot spots in your home!

You can find the various organization products from Rubbermaid® here.