10 Space-Saving Closet Hacks

1. Clean out your closet

The first and easiest way to make the most of your closet space is to go through and clean out your clothes and accessories. If an item doesn’t belong in your closet, find a home for it elsewhere. Closets can become “catch all” areas, when they should only house your clothes, shoes, and accessories. If you haven’t used or worn an item in a year, it is time to move it out of your collection. Only keep the items that are useful to you. If you need a new way to look at what you have, there are apps such as Cloth that allow you to upload your clothing collection. Using one of these apps can help you decide to remove outdated or unnecessary items and make the most of your available space.

2. Maximize your closet space

There are several spaces that often go unused inside of our closets. One of those places is the floor. To make the most of your floor space, you can place shoe organizers, add a dresser, or storage baskets. Another little used area of the closet is the shelf above the hanging clothes rod. On that shelf, you can again use storage baskets or store folded clothes, using shelf dividers to keep the piles upright. Corners in the closet are often left empty because it is more difficult to get to. To make that area more accessible, purchase a corner shelf for shoes or smaller accessories.

3. Double hanging closet rods

Most closets come with one standard clothing rod that spans the length of the inside of the closet. If that is not enough storage for your hanging clothes, there are a couple of options available to you. If most of the things hanging in the closet are separates, then hanging an additional clothing rod below your current one would double the hanging space. If there are lots of long pieces in your wardrobe, staggering the hanging rods is a viable option. That way, your long hanging items can be on one side of the closet and the rest of the closet can have double hanging rods.

You don’t have to install additional closet rods into the wall for this hack, either, which can be time-consuming and expensive. Double hanging clothing rods are simple and inexpensive options for those seeking more closet space, usually retailing for under $20.

4. Closet Doors

If you have closet doors with hinges, there are many ways you can use the back of the door to make better use of your space. You can place shelving on the inside of the door or hang a shoe organizer, to store shoes or accessories. If you have sliding closet doors, removing them may be the best use of your space. If you remove the closet doors, dressers or other storage solutions may fit that would not otherwise. If you don’t want to see the inside of your closet at all times, a curtain can be a nice way to decorate while you cover the closet opening.

5. Clothes hangers

Most closets have a variety of types of hangers inside, of all shapes and sizes. Replacing all of your various hangers with flocked skinny hangers will save so much space! You can also use cascading hangers that hang multiple items or create your own with bottle tabs, s-hooks, or a length of chain.

6. Out of season clothes

Keeping your closet pared down to only the current season clothes can save a significant amount of space. Out of season clothes can be stored in under bed boxes, vacuum sealed bags, or behind your current clothes on deep shelves. Only having the clothes out that you need right now will make daily outfit selection easier as well as save room.

7. Use vertical folding

Transfer foldable clothing into dressers. In dressers you can stack the clothes vertically, making everything visible and creating more usable space in each drawer. If you do not have space in your room for a dresser, consider making room for it inside your closet.

8. Shoe organization

Shoes can be a huge issue in a closet. Most of the time, we throw them in a pile on the floor, to be dug through every day. Organizing your shoes can not only save space, it can also save you time every time you get dressed. To store your shoes more efficiently, you can use shoe racks, bookshelves on the floor, over the door shoe organizers, or organizational bins.

9. Accessories storage

Little things, like accessories, can easily overwhelm a closet. Finding inventive ways to store your accessories can provide an overall polished look to your space as well as give you more room to work with.

To store handbags, consider placing them upright on the shelf above the clothes rod. Using bookends to keep them in place will help to maintain the shape and provide a designated space for your handbags.

There are a couple of ways to get the most out of a tie rack: you can either mount the tie rack flush on the door to use it for ties, or hang it on your clothes rod as a way to store tank tops.

For scarf storage, consider clipping shower curtain rings on a hanger in order to store several scarves on the same hanger. You can also hang a towel rack to the inside of the closet door for scarves.

A final way to store all of your accessories is in storage bins. Grouping similar items per bin makes it easier to find what you are looking for while also being organized.

10. Once you’ve done it, maintain it

After all this work has been put into organizing the closet to best fit your needs, put the time into keeping it up. Putting everything back into its place each time will save you hours of reorganizing in the future. Also doing a seasonal rotation of clothes in storage will keep your closet usable and up to date.