Creating a closet where there is none

 

So as you may already know, I live in a old house. Apparently people in the 1960's didn't have much stuff - because there is a serious lack of storage in this 1964 brick ranch! Which we then made worse by taking out the very small closets in the master bedroom and the office and turning that space into a luxurious shower. (Totally worth it!) The upstairs guest room has a small but usable closet - you know, the kind with the two sliding doors that always fall off the track? It has a long shelf at the top and a bar for hanging stuff. That's it. I gave that closet to my husband because I'm nice like that, and because I have two dressers and he has none. So where do I hang my stuff, you ask?

Originally I had one of these in the corner of the guest room. I broke that thing in no time by hanging way more weight on it than it could apparently handle. The plastic thing at the bottom snapped. I propped it up with an old dictionary (who uses a dictionary anymore, anyway?) and that worked for awhile, but eventually it all came crashing down. If you don't overload it, though, these things are really nice.







So then I invested a little more cash into one of these. Yes, it's way more expensive - but you do get what you pay for. In my case, this was necessary. I kept it in the same corner and mounted the two bars straight into a stud in the wall. Now we've got sturdy!


But now when we have guests staying in our guest room, they are forced to fall asleep while staring at all of my clothes. That's kind of weird. So I started looking around Pinterest for ideas and came up with a great one! Curtains!

But curtains are tres expensive and I'm cheap. So instead of looking for 96" long curtains, I went straight to the bedding section at Walmart and bought three flat twin sheets for under $5 each. They are exactly 96" long and just perfect for what I needed.





I don't know why this green always looks NEON in photos. I had one shade darker of this green in the old kitchen and it looked neon in photos, too. It's not. It's a nice, soft green - I swear!  But anyway - check out my closet corner now!  (Sorry the photos suck. I have no idea where my "real" camera is these days so you just get phone photos. Good enough, right?)

I just took two curtain rods and mounted them directly to the ceiling. Then I cut two small holes in the top hem of the sheet - one in each end on the backside, and slipped the rod through. I didn't even have to break out the sewing machine!  There are two sheets hanging in the front and one on the side. That's it!

Here is a somewhat better photo of the whole room. I updated the bedding, rug, and curtains in this room in recent weeks. I used some birthday gift cards for the beautiful duvet from Target. The curtains were previously used in my master, so they were essentially "free"! (Yes, I know I need to iron them. I will do that tonight.) I did buy new sheers to go on the windows - the windows in this room face the street and the neighbor's house, so a little more privacy was necessary. I made the green throw pillows you see on the bed (fabric and pillow forms from fabric.com), and got a new lamp shade in grey chevron (from Target, of course) to update the lamp.  (Not that you can see it here, but that lamp was originally purple and was in my bedroom when I was a teen! I spray painted it high gloss black and it's new again!) I also got rid of that horrible television and replaced it with a small flat screen that I scored from a friend who was moving for $40! 

So there you have it. It might not be the BEST solution for having no closets in an old house, but it works for me and at least my in-laws won't have to stare at my entire wardrobe when staying in this room.

Oh, and Yoda is sitting next to the TV because he thought he matched the room and wanted to be a part of it. Silly Yoda.