You know how you have those spaces in your house or apartment?  The ones that should be useful, but kind of aren’t, and things just pile up?  And then they fall out of wherever they’re piled and attack you when you open the door?  Yeah, I have experience with those sort of spaces.

The most recent area of the house to fall victim to the continual organizing/purging bug was the closet in the study.  You may have noticed that I totally glossed over the fact that we have a closet in the study (technically, it’s a bedroom, but I’d argue that the closet isn’t “technically a closet).  This little 3′x3′ area has been one of the most frustrating areas I’ve come across in my house.

The closet in the study sits right over the stairway, so the entire floor is sloped.  It’s also a bit deeper than a regular closet – all of the other ones in the house are about 24 inches deep, but this one goes about 29 inches, so you’re inclined to take a half step into the closet when you want to pull something out – BUT YOU CAN’T BECAUSE THE FLOOR IS SLOPED!!  And it’s not a nice little slope – it’s about a 45 degree angle.

Our lovely closet also has two shelves and one clothing bar.  The first shelf is a wire shelf that’s about waist-height on me.  I have a thing against wire shelves, since stuff falls through them all the time and they sag. We’ve been using this shelf as our “catch-all” shelf – to catch all of the extra printer paper, gift bags, bows, random wrapping paper, craft supplies, stuff to sell on eBay, and our school supplies (we’ve both been finished with our MBA programs for almost 18 months).

The second shelf is about seven feet above floor level, so I can’t reach it without standing on a chair and leaning into the closet – not really the safest thing.  We’ve stored some old textbooks and wedding memorabilia up on this shelf, since we don’t access it that often, but the books and folders are almost too tall for this shelf, and they’re hard to get up and down.

Finally – the hanging bar.  Giants must have lived in this room before because no normal-sized (aka – my sized) person could actually reach hangers that are up that high.  We never actually hung anything in this closet, since we use the guest room closet to store our out of season jackets and such.

Demo was a really easy decision – it all had to go.  First I took down the hanging bar and the high shelf/supports.  Since the original blue-green wall color was behind the supports, I patched all of the holes and did some touch-ups to camouflage the old paint.  I definitely wasn’t worried about making everything perfect; this is a closet after all.

I decided to go with the Rubbermaid closet system from Home Depot – we’ve used it in our linen closet and the pantry, and I like the flexibility to change the heights of the shelves and add different components.  While the lower shelf was still in place (I used it to balance myself), I hung the horizontal piece that everything else would hang off of.  Our upright pieces were 60 inches, and I had about 68 inches from the top of the slope to the ceiling, so I guesstimated a height, made sure it was level, and marked my holes.

From there, it was just a matter of pre-drilling a few holes so my mollies would go into the wall a bit easier, and then actually installing the horizontal piece.  The vertical pieces popped into place as well, and then I popped in the shelf supports.  Each one can support something like 50 pounds, so I’m not worried that we’ll overload the shelves with all sorts of office supplies.

The closet is slightly more than 36 inches wide, and buying two 72 inch boards was cheaper than buying four 36 inch boards, so I marked my lines and had Brandon cut them for me.  Once they were marked in pencil, I covered the line with Frog Tape to keep the board from chipping where it was cut.

A couple minutes later, and I had shelves!!  These are only 12 inches deep, and I was really hoping for 15 inches, but it just wasn’t in the cards this time around (they weren’t in stock, they don’t come in white, and I’m not patient).

I loaded up the shelves with all of our stuff, no real rhyme or reason yet, but I needed to get everything back in since we had company coming over.

Originally, I was planning on adding a step into the closet, so you’d get that half-step you’re used to taking into deeper closets and then it would be easier to reach the higher shelves.  I scrapped this idea for the time being, since I didn’t want to lose my wrapping paper storage.

The slope is the perfect place to store wrapping paper – I laid a 1″x3″ across the bottom of the closet as a stopper, and most of my wrapping paper supply fits on the slope itself.  For my extras and the rolls that are taller, I hung a basket to the side of the door using mollies, hooks, and a basket I already had on hand.

There are still improvements to be made, since the closet didn’t actually get cleaned out – it just got new shelves – but I’ll tackle that another day.  I’m just thrilled that I can open the door without worrying about stuff avalanches!!