Welcome Home, Clothing: A Closet Reveal-ish

We’ve finally passed the stage of our closet renovation that forced us to store our clothing in a pile down the hall. Meet our new closet:

Please note that Rick has more clothing than me. We’re not sure how this can possibly be. It must be my fault, because I’m the one who likes the mall. He’s just the one who follows me around at the mall and asks if he can buy a hot pretzel.

This beast took three coats of off-the-shelf Behr paint + primer in one. I figured that since Rick basically built it by himself, it was the least I could do to live in my paint clothes for approximately two weeks, so I was exclusively in charge of the painting process. Not gonna lie: it wasn’t the most fabulous thing ever. I didn’t, for example, cry when I was done.

The cats were, as always, quite helpful, and provided their assistance when I was done painting and ready to move my clothing from piles and drawers to the closet.

We’ve decided (we think) to forgo putting doors in front of the shelving. This is partly because we are cheap and partly because we don’t know how and partly because it seems like a waste to cover up all of our built-in closet work. Instead, we might just get wooden hangers for more uniformity and find a magical potion that will make me keep my clothes organized so it doesn’t end up looking like this again:

I don’t think that’s entirely possible, because there’s something about the crisp dividers in our new closet that mysteriously makes everything seem that much more organized in the first place, but I’m not willing to take any chances. Besides, would you believe how much easier it is to find your black pants when, brilliantly, all of your pants are hung together? It’s a new revelation for me. My closet of yore was a melting pot of sheer and total chaos, as you can see. Life makes so much more sense when the dresses snub the pants and the short sleeves refuse to mingle with the long sleeves. It’s like middle school, in a closet. Except middle school made little sense. Ah, well. I tried.

So, hooray for being able to cross “build and paint the closet” off of our lengthy to-do list. Some of the remaining items on said list can happen soon (the lighting fixtures are both in the works) but others, like the floor, will have to wait until we can open the windows and fumigate the stinky paint that will be required for a durable finish. So you shouldn’t expect to see a final reveal until at least…June. June of 2013. (Kidding. I think we have better motivation than that…) :) We began this project at the end of December, so I’d say we’ve made pretty good time so far.

How do you organize your closet? Is it segregated like middle school, or does it take on the “we-share-everything!” persona of a kindergarten classroom? Who wins the clothing contest, you or your husband? Spill. And have a fabulous Monday, while you’re at it. :)

P.S. Last week’s Honey-Do blog series was seriously so much fun. If you missed any of the posts, you can find them here, here, here, and here. And Rick would like you all to know that, for the record, he wouldn’t decorate with cords, just wall-mounted televisions. I haven’t yet figured out the difference…

***Linking this up to Serenity Now, Fingerprints on the Fridge, Chic on a Shoestring, and The Rooster and the Hen!***