5 Real-Life Wardrobe Storage Solutions From Apartments with No Closets
Perhaps you have known this pain: you find a perfect apartment, but there is no closet to be seen anywhere. Or there is one, but it is a two-foot-wide joke capable of holding only a vacuum cleaner and a very thin jacket. This isn’t uncommon in apartments in older buildings, designed before we realized that everyone needed at least 25 changes of clothes. But you, with your modern wardrobe, have to deal with it. So take inspiration from these four real-life apartments, whose residents found smart ways to store everything with no closet in sight.
This makeover from Refinery29 is proof that you don’t need to have an actual closet to enjoy the benefits of a walk-in closet. The closet solution for this Brooklyn bedroom includes wall-hung rails, which have a less obtrusive profile than floor-based garment racks, and a wardrobe with a door for neatly storing shoes. The setup also includes a dresser, a rolling cart for corralling accessories, and a rail with hooks for hanging purses.
Holly at Avenue Lifestyle created this full-wall clothes storage setup in her home in the Netherlands. She used two IKEA garment racks; a shelf above holds baskets for seasonal storage, and folded items get tucked away in the vintage cabinet. An open wardrobe may not be to everyone’s taste, but Holly loves it because she says it forces her to be honest with herself about what she does and doesn’t wear, and purge often.
The NYC home of Jen Ramos of Made by Girl did have a closet, but a very small one, so she brought in two IKEA Pax wardrobes and created some pretty impressive clothes storage along one wall of her bedroom. The great thing about wardrobes like this is that you can close the doors so you don’t have to look at your clothes all the time, which singnificantly decreases visual clutter.
Myka and George did something very similar for their place in San Francisco, adding baskets on top of the wardrobe for even more storage.
And finally there’s this clever solution from Dutch blogger Jindi of M-occa (via Live Simply by Annie). Instead of arranging her wardrobe along a wall, she took over a corner and created what amounts to a DIY walk-in closet. The compact shape means that the freestanding wardrobe hides a bit of the closet clutter, presenting a relatively uncluttered face to the rest of the room.