For living in such an old house, we’re lucky to have decent sized closets in all the bedrooms. They’re not “big” (by any stretch of the imagination) but they are bigger than most found in older homes.

As luck would have it, the “study” off the bedroom makes for the perfect walk-in closet. “Spoiled rotten” has popped to mind on more than one occasion as I stare at our new Elfa organization. I’m a lucky girl.

While storage for clean clothes, shoes, & bags is taken care of, it does leave a few things left to sort out.

Enter, our bedroom closet.

Yup! That’s the only closet actually IN the bedroom. Thank God for the study, right?!

And for awhile, it’s looked like the hot mess you see above. Here at Brick City Love, we put it all out there. And besides, really awful “befores” make for better “afters”, don’t you think?? Although, if we’re going to get technical, that’s actually an improvement!

Here’s what it looked like before we painted!

A couple weeknights ago, I got fired up and decided it was high time to make this little space function properly – and for cheap!

Our dirty clothes bins stay and yes, we need 6 different bins. We presort all our dirty clothes. When a bin fills, it’s time to do that load. {Or at least that’s the theory. The fact that we don’t currently have a working washer/dryer is a small detail we’re still working out. Laundry is currently done by dragging it to our parent’s house, which completely defeats my pre-sort method. Hey; it’s a work in progress!}

I love my bins.

The theory works but the layout wasn’t really working for our storage needs. After thinking about it a little, we needed a place for:

• our 6 dirty clothes bins
• the iron & ironing board
• the steamer
• towels
• clean linens

And the makeover had to be cheap; use what we already have an buy as little “new” as possible. Not only is that friendlier for our wallet and the planet but we’ve got a ton of stuff still sitting in boxes waiting for a home. Why’d we move all this crap if we aren’t going to use it?!

Sitting empty on the second floor was this dresser.

First purchased for Rob’s bedroom back in our college apartment, it moved to the apartment, then here. It’s an IKEA Malm dresser and the moves have taken a toll on the poor little thing. It’s still holding together though and the right size to hold all our clean bed linens.

A fresh coat of white paint was a free upgrade.

The height was perfect too. 2columns of 3 bins fit with room to spare under the closet’s built-in shelf. The only problem was the dresser was a little to narrow. A quick trip to The Depot and retuned with the only purchased item for the entire redo – a 2’x4′ piece of 1/2″ plywood.

By laying the bins side-by-side upside down, I was able to trace out the perfect size. The bins taper at the base so, if the wood was the size of their top, the bins would have a little wiggle room at the bottom.

The depth of the shelf was cut – not to the size of the bins – but to completely cover the top of the dresser + 1″ for the base board. I didn’t want a gap in the back for the bins to slip down into.

That got 2 coats of white semi-gloss too.

The groudy built-in shelves cleaned up nice with a couple coats of fresh white ceiling paint {same as we on the inside walls of the closet}.

Then it was time to put it all back together.

After playing with the placement of the steamer & ironing board, I found the steamer fit perfectly in the space to the right of the dresser. The ironing board could hang in front of it and still allow enough room to manuver in & out.

To hang the ironing board cady, I added a piece of wood underneath the existing strip of wood.

Don’t forget! When screwing into plaster, it’s important to predrill your holes!

Paint white & hang up your cady {which we already owned}!

Then everything else stacked into place.

The finishing touch were labels for our bins.

I thought colored dots would be a fun way to label the different bins, instead of words. Things are sorted white through beige; black, navy, gray, brown; red, orange, yellow, purple; green & blues. The last two are for jeans, linens & towels and dry cleaning. We mix jeans & linens because those fill up the slowest. We wear jeans & use our towels multiple times before washing them.

FYI – when you can’t find a paper cutter, a pearing knife & magnetic knife rack work.

I printed the dots in 2 sizes but the larger ones looked best. They’re printed on 8.5″x11″ label paper i had left over from our Christmas card labels.

Fun Fact: our dirty clothes bins are actually stackable recycling bins from The Container Store. They’re the perfect size for 1 load. Just scoop out the dirty clothes into another basket or bag and carry to the washer; no unstacking required.

So there you have it! In just 2 evenings after work we went from chaotic & grody to organized & bright. Not bad for $8 {the cost of one 2’x4′ piece of 1/2″ plywood} & a little work.

And if you’d like your own dot labels, here’s mine for you to download free! Click on each to download.

Happy organizing!