Real Life Closet Makeover: Aimée and Jonny’s Shared Catch-All Storage

• Closet size: 25.3 square feet
• How many people use this closet? Two! My husband Jonny and I.
• How long have you lived in your home? 2 years
• Your closet in 5 words or less: jam-packed, chaotic, mysterious, lazy, hoarding

Aimée and Jonny’s closet is a major multi-tasker. When they first moved into their current home, Jonny had the closet all to himself. A year later, Aimée started sharing it with him. Today, it stores not just clothing and shoes for two adults, but also their household linens and props for photo shoots and styling. It isn’t always a total disaster but, with no organizational system in place, it’s always just a matter of time before it gets out of control again. According to Aimée, right now it’s at an all time low.

Here’s the entire closet, along with the three major problems Aimée and Jonny hope to fix with this makeover:

Closet Personality Profile: We’re the Clothing Economist.

Biggest Closet Sin: We chuck things in the closet and close the door as fast as we can so they can’t fall out again….whatever that’s called.

One Odd Item that really doesn’t belong in there: A 2ft x 3ft wooden sailboat model. (???)

Closet Goals: 1) To not have things fall out on you every time open the door; 2) To feel like we are treating our clothes and shoes with care; and 3) To actually be able to find what we are looking for!

Aimée and Jonny have big plans for the space. Even though the closet has a newly-installed shelving system, it’s still quite small for two people to share. It doesn’t help that Aimée and Jonny have far too many clothes and shoes — many that don’t even get worn —which means they’ll need to go through all of clothing and get rid of what they don’t want any more. They’ll repeat the process with the shoes and linens, towels, extra blankets and pillows. After sweeping and mopping, they’ll add a variety of storage to keep items organized and looking beautiful.

Here’s what they bought for their new closet:

Basic Natural Wooden Hangers: These have always been our dream. Since our closet is so bare with white walls and white racks, we want wooden hangers to bring texture and class into the closet. All the hangers are the same, which will look fantastic!

Natural 12-Belt Wooden Hanger: These will keep our belts and scarves organized — some of the items that seem to never have the proper place and always end up on the floor.

Stackable Shoe Shelf: These shoe racks have three layers of shoe storage instead of one. All our shoes will no longer lay on top of each other on the floor of the closest.

Montauk Woven Storage Bins: These bins are to help us organize our linens, such as bath mats, hand towels and wash cloths. A second bin will hold all our photoshoot linens. A third bin is for extra backpacks and bags.

Peva Blanket Bag: Instead of having our down blanket and extra pillows thrown up on the top shelf of our closet, this tidy bag stores them and keeps them dust free.