Closet Organization Before & Afters

The mood board featured dark tones, crystal chandeliers, and wood floors.

It's completely unrecognizable.

The Rifle Paper Co. wallpaper is the star of the transformation.

Hope and Ted Conner spent seven months and $1,081 to completely makeover their closet.

A walk-in closet is a hot commodity. Obviously, if you draw that dream ticket, you'd like your walk-in closet to actually be functional, not just a large room of minimal organization opportunities.

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.

At first this closet was perfect. Then it slowly fell apart over the course of a couple of months.

Closet size: 4.125 ft² plus a garment rack How many people use this closet? 2 How long have you lived in your home? We moved into this apartment about 8 months ago. It’s gone smoothly for the most part, but I’m definitely messier than Steven. Your closet in 2 words: Cramped and cluttered Can Melanie and Steven’s closet even be called a closet?

Closet size: 24 square feet How many people use this closet? Two. My partner Todd and I share the closet. How long have you lived in your home? Five years Your closet in 5 words or less: Small, narrow, chaotic, cluttered, disorderly. We moved into our Oakland apartment five years ago, and our bedroom closet has been a mess ever since. It’s not the amount of space that’s the problem, but how we use it.

Tired of pulling my shirts, all wrinkled and creased, out of my over-stuffed closet, I decided to come out of the closet completely and create a hanging clothes bar in the corner of my bedroom. Say goodbye to these colorful (but useless) drawers-turned-shelves and hello to my new rope wrapped hanging clothes bar…This is actually a project I’ve had in mind for a couple of months.

Who doesn't love some spring cleaning inspo?

Five hours of work and $150 later, this fresh new laundry space was clean and organized, and most importantly, fit her needs.

This family's toy closet was better looking than many, but it definitely had some room for improvement.

The space needed function and organization, but now this well-organized linen closet is too pretty to be hidden behind closed doors.

Closet size: 24 square feet How many people use this closet? Two. My partner Todd and I share the closet. How long have you lived in your home? Five years Your closet in 5 words or less: Small, narrow, chaotic, cluttered, disorderly. My partner Todd and I challenged ourselves to clean out our closet from head to toe, then reorganize it in a way that made more sense. We did a massive purge session, shopped for smart storage solutions, and are now ready to share our new space.

Aimée and Jonny just gave their shared closet a major makeover from head to toe, breaking it down and building it back up to be better than before. Their main take away? Don’t be afraid to purge! It makes all the difference. See what changed, and how they tamed their trouble spots. Aimée and Jonny’s linens refused to stay stacked neatly on their shelving, preferring instead to fall over, flop around, and unfold themselves.

Closet size: 4.125 ft² plus a garment rack How many people use this closet? 2 How long have you lived in your home? We moved into this apartment about 8 months ago. It’s gone smoothly for the most part, but I’m definitely messier than Steven. Your closet in 5 words or less: Cramped and cluttered Melanie and Steven had their work cut out for them. Their teeny tiny closet was small for even New York standards, and the added garment rack overflowed with clothing and shoes.

Katy’s walk-in closet had plenty of space. It was just poorly thought out and lacked the proper organizers for the job of keeping all their clothes, shoes and accessories in place. Katy moved a bunch of stuff around, and added in more variety to meet their different storage needs. Katy wasn’t making the best use of her upper shelves – when she stored shoes up there, the heels fell through the slots. Bags were hard to organized and flopped over on their sides.

If your home doesn’t contain at least one disastrous closet, I salute you. (And if you only have one closet, it’s even more likely to be overstuffed and overwhelmed!) This doorless closet, which was a catchall for everything from cakestands to lampshades, got a full makeover for less than $100 and is now totally display-worthy.

If you’re excited about getting a glimpse into strangers’ closets, you’re only going to get half the thrill you’re hoping for, because one of these closets has been converted into something a little unexpected. Here’s how the homeowner describes that closets before their makeover: The before photos were from the day we bought the house.

Whether you’re a pet owner looking for some inspiration, a design enthusiast who loves a good transformation, someone stressed out by this photo who needs to know that this closet is nice and neat now, or simply a human who could really use some photos of two darling dogs, this is for you. I so appreciate the realness of this photo, as well as that of this paragraph: With five children we found our entryway coat closet in constant disarray.

When Kristina moved into her new home, the lackluster office was of little use to the owners—besides being a place to toss mail, or hang art that didn’t fit with the rest of the home. Kristina decided that, if she was going to use a room as a dumping ground, it was going to look as fabulous as the rest of her home. Instead of a hodgepodge of furniture and decor, it’s now a highly functional mudroom, ready to organize all Kristina’s incoming and outgoing things.

Today’s One Minute Tip comes from Fay Wolf, with three simple ways to rethink vertical space. • The Star: Fay Wolf is a singer-songwriter, actor and professional organizer. She’s acted on shows like 2 Broke Girls and Bones, and her songs have been heard on shows like Grey’s Anatomy and Pretty Little Liars. Fay’s Los Angeles-based company New Order has been organizing lives since 2006, helping creative people deal with both inner and outer clutter.

It took two days to create this walk-in wonderland.

Project by: Erica of Dwell Beautiful Location: Seattle With the new year beginning and the days getting longer, I got inspired to tackle one of the bigger projects that’s been on my to-do list for over a year: our master closet. Our master closet is unique in the fact that we have to walk through it in order to get to our master bathroom. There is no door on it of any sort, and I can see directly into from my bed.

It's like walking into a little, glamorous jewel box every morning.

A tale as old as time: you find yourself with the luxury of space—a shelf, a closet, a garage, a basement—and then you observe yourself slowly but surely filling it. Suddenly, there are piles and heaps and plenty of shame. One hardy soul managed to turn things around, creating a garage that’s a joy rather than embarrassment. Let’s all get inspired to clean up our own messes!

If you have a disastrous closet, but are bound and determined to get it in shape this spring, let the following four transformations be major inspiration. Whether it’s a sliver of space, or a full on walk-in closet, there’s an organizing solution out there for you. See how these four people (with very different set ups) maximized their storage and made their lives more efficient. Katy’s issue definitely wasn’t space.

This is one of the most inspiring types of projects: it was done for approximately $100, it includes a detailed budget breakdown, it is neither glamorous nor thrilling, both the before and the after photos were taken in the same artificial light, and it hugely improved someone’s quality of everyday life. May we all tackle similarly approachable yet satisfying projects! Let’s explore. It’s so much brighter now! Well done, Old House To New Home.

The master bedroom of Nikkia and Daniel’s two-bedroom apartment had an especially perplexing and inefficient closet situation: two tiny closets side by side, each with a single shelf and hanging rail, and a tiny door that made accessing the closet’s contents a challenge. So as part of their apartment renovation (which included a very smart kitchen update), they combined the two tiny, poorly designed closets into one big, super-efficient one.

A broom closet of varying depths and without any built-ins was collecting Carla’s random stuff. She decided it might serve better as a place for paperwork and projects, and we love how she made this strange small space fit her needs: From Carla: My husband uses the downstairs as an office, which I didn’t think I needed for my business.

We can all agree — too many closets is a good problem to have. Tanya decided to trade the closed storage for more square footage in her home office. See how she transformed it after the jump: From Tanya: In my current home and the one before that, I’ve been lucky enough to have a spare bedroom to use as a home office. In both spaces, I’ve needed less closed storage space and more square footage, so I’ve turned the closets into nooks, simply by removing the closet doors.

Mallory from Classy Clutter had been itching to make over her coat closet since she the day she moved in. She found that no one in her house, including herself, wanted to hang up their coats when they had to untangle hangers and fiddle for a spot to hang their coat. She decided it was time to remove the hangers and closet bar, and replace them with hooks and bins.

My bi-fold pantry door is an eyesore. It has a fake woodgrain and blocks the left side of the shelves when it’s opened. But it’s an unusual size, so finding an off-the-shelf or salvage replacement has been impossible. I thought about converting it à la Jason’s closet-door hack, but then I stumbled upon Ashley’s attractive solution. While she didn’t have a bi-fold to begin with, her door replacement would work for just about any ugly door, including mine.

I love before and after projects that involve a good afternoon of organization — no paintbrush, no tools… just some motivation, a vision, and some hard work.I recently came across this mudroom makeover and thought it was a great example of how a before and after doesn’t have to be a super-expensive or super-involved affair. It’s encouraging to see how little changes can have a big impact!

This hallway closet needs some serious assistance! Being the only closet in our apartment other than our bedroom closet, I need to utilize every inch of space here. And, as you can see in this before photo, there is all sorts of wasted space that can be reclaimed with a little reorganization.When we moved into this apartment, the hallway closet was set up as seen in the “before” photo above — a few high shelves positioned over the clothes bar with wasted space underneath.