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One of the major problems in today’s home is too much stuff.  We have so much more than we actually need.  Take a look around the rooms in your house.  If your home is like most, you’ll probably see all kinds of electronic equipment, including the discs, remotes and the assorted wires that go with it.  You’ll probably see books and clothes along with shoes and just a whole lot of stuff that you are never going to need.

So what can you do?  Well, if you read my recent post on clutter you’ll learn that having too much stuff is really an emotional issue that needs to be addressed on a psychological level.  But, assuming that you have addressed all of those issues and there really is some stuff that you do need to keep, where are you going to put it?

How do you get it out of sight so that your home does not wind up looking like one big chaotic mess?  The answer lies within your closets or more specifically within your closet organizational skills. Much of what is stored within your home is stored in closets.  But, what are you going to do if you cannot possibly jam one more thing on your closet bar and every available inch of the shelf is already being used?

Although additional closets can be built in an existing home, there is quite a bit of cost and mess involved in building additional closets not to mention the loss of room space.  Want a better more cost effective idea?  Let’s take a look at what is known as a closet system.

What Exactly Is a Closet System?

A closet system is any combination of bars and shelves that once installed within a closet will make retrieval and storage easier. They are available in a wide variety of styles, ranging from very simple all the way to custom built fixed shelving designed by a professional closet company.  One very common type of inexpensive closet system includes wire racks that almost any do it yourselfer can install.  In fact, many do it yourselfers can even build their own out of plywood.

Regardless of the type of system that you use, the most important things in setting up a closet system are planning and design. The first step in becoming organized is planning exactly what you need storage for. Begin by taking stock of everything that you will be storing in that particular closet, grouping similar items together.

Once you have taken stock of all that is going to be stored in your closet you can begin to design a plan.  Hanging items should be stored according to length as well as category.   For instance all men’s suites should be stored on the same bar.  If more than one bar is needed for a particular category you can break the category for that item up into two bars.  There should also be a bar for pants and items of that length.  For women, dresses should all be stored on one bar with shorter items on another, the objective being to take full advantage of the vertical space.  I also recommend the use of good non slip hangers.  The correct hangers will keep you clothes from sliding off and creating a mess.

When it comes to shelving all like items should be stored together as well.  Sweaters and shirts should get their own shelves.   Shelving should be 11 to 12 inches from back to front as well as in multiples of 12 inches across to match the size of an average folded sweater.

Another thing that you may want to do is use plastic storage bins.  Storing items in plastic storage bins and then storing the bins on shelves is a very convenient as well as inexpensive way to not only store items such as shirts and sweaters but to be able to retrieve them as well.  I recommend using the clear bins so the each time you go to look for something you will not have to retrieve and open every bin.

Conclusion:

A closet system is an arrangement of shelves and bars used to make storage and retrieval easy.  Closet systems can be designed and constructed professionally, but by the do it yourselfer as well. Begin by taking stock of exactly what you plan to store in your closet.  Then once you know what and how much of each category of items that you will need to store you can begin to design your closet system.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 27th, 2008 at 4:36 pm and is filed under closet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.