8 Space-Saving Closet Ideas to Help You Get Ready Faster

Turn Towel Bars Into Scarf Storage

When her collection of colorful scarves grew, Jennifer Bridgman, the blogger behind The Chronicles of Home, had to devise a new system to contain it. Her DIY solution: Repurpose a wooden towel bar as a scarf holder.

Once the bar was attached to a small blank closet wall, each scarf was looped on. To get the look in your closet, pair a blank wall with an affordable towel bar.

Divide and Conquer Drawers

If drawers aren’t equipped with dividers, they easily become a mishmash of socks, belts, and undergarments to hunt through every morning.

“When everything has its place, you’ll spend less time pawing through your clothes and accessories looking for what you want. An organized closet makes getting dressed and packing for trips a breeze!” says designer Annie Selke.

Invest time to get closet clutter under control, and you’ll save minutes every morning. The first step: Take inventory of what you own.

“Be honest about the number of items you want to store,” recommends Selke, then plan your storage system accordingly. Once drawer dividers are in place, you can kiss the formerly messy sock drawer adieu.

Keep Off-Season Clothing Out of Sight

When Joy Cho of Oh Joy! asked the organizing experts at Bneato Bar for help wrangling a closet, a valuable lesson was learned: Don’t display out-of-season clothing. Instead, use storage baskets or boxes to hide seasonal gear that could be stashed out of the way.

While this wouldn’t be a smart spot to store items you use every day, it’s an ideal place to tuck clothing you won’t wear for several months. Label each bin with a word, number, or color to help you remember what’s stored inside.

Put Jewelry on Display

When Brighton Keller of Brighton the Day designed a dream walk-in closet, nothing was left to the imagination. “It was really important to me that I be able to see everything that I have. That way, it would be easier to put together outfits,” Keller explains.

To make sure jewelry was easily accessible, Keller put a small blank wall to use. Once a couple of transparent organizers were installed, they were draped with statement necklaces. Rather than take up valuable drawer space, these pretty accessories are now on display, where they double as decor.

Hang Pants Single File

If you typically fold pants over the bar of a shirt hanger or place them inside a drawer, then you’re not storing them in the most space-efficient way possible. Instead, Stephanie Mark, one of the co-founders of Coveteur, recommends hanging pants on ultra-thin skirt hangers.

When folded over a shirt hanger, pants are bulkier; when clipped at the top, you can store twice as many on the same bar. Most importantly, this storage method fits with Mark’s motto: “If you can’t see it, you won’t wear it.” When organized in a single file, each pair is easily found, shaving minutes off your morning routine.

Give Every Purse a Place

If your purse collection rivals your shoe collection, you may want to take a tip from Melissa George of Polished Habitat and buy or DIY some purse dividers. George crafted wall-hanging acrylic clutch holders (find the full how-to here) over a few afternoons. Custom-cut acrylic sheets were also inserted into one closet compartment to give a separate slot for each purse.

“Acrylic was the perfect material to keep things tidy but still visible,” George explains. To get the look in your own closet, invest in store-bought transparent organizers.

Don’t Forget the Back of the Door

The back of your closet door is a wide-open surface, waiting to be put to work storing shoes or sorting scarves. Attach the right organizer and you’ll feel like you gained a few extra feet of closet space. Now all you have to figure out is what to do with that open floor space that once held your shoe collection.

Buy an Under-Shelf Basket

Below each shelf in your closet, there’s likely a few inches of unused space. To put that underutilized area to work, Melissa George of Polished Habitat decided to install a couple under-shelf baskets.

These shallow wire containers clip onto the edge of a standard shelf—without screws or hardware—and can hold everything from socks to spare toiletries. Once you add a couple of these floating containers to your closet, you’ll wonder why you ever let this area sit unused.