Miss Chloë got ripped off in the closet department – but in our defence, we didn’t know we were having two kids when we built. As it was our builder hadn’t incorporated a linen closet into our home, so we had to use part of – what later became – Chloë’s closet.
It’s a single closet, so not minuscule by any means, but certainly smaller than most closets being built in houses today.
A few months back I posted 50 of the best Ikea Rast hacks, and ever since I’ve itched to implement one of them in her closet.
As it turns out, Ikea Rast
I assembled two Ikea Rast
We tested out placement of the dresser for our small closet organization project and found that tucking it to one side allowed for more hanging space while still keeping the Rast usable.
We left the previous closet system in place 1. because it was relatively expensive and 2. because we still needed it to hold up the upper closet rod and shelf.
We attached the two dressers together with some metal strapping
If you want your closet organizer to be flush with the wall, cut a small notch out of the lower back of the bottom dresser – the height of your baseboard and about ¼” deep.
Once we had the dressers in place it was time to add in a second closet rod for hanging. I had a 1″ dowel in the garage, so we used that and two pieces of scrap wood with a 1″ hole drilled out of the centre.
One piece of wood was a square with just the hole in the centre and on the second piece we used a jigsaw to notch out a section to slide the dowel into.
We held the dowel at 42″ high and 11″ out from the back wall. With a level on top of the rod we then placed the scrapwood squares and drilled them into the wall with 2″ screws and into the dresser with 1″ screws.
Forty-two inches is the average height of a lower closet rod and leaves you plenty of room to tuck shoes underneath. If your clothing (and kids) are small, you could probably install two lower hangers – as it is this will last Chloë and won’t need to be changed as she grows.
The whole thing received a coat of primer and two coats of white paint and voilà – Small closet organization!
Since I had the paint already, the entire project came in at $100 (Cdn) for the two Ikea Rast dressers – not too shabby right?! (You can find the Ikea Rast dresser for about $35 per in the US)
Here you can see the Ikea Rast drawers fully extended – they have stopper built-in to the unit to stop people from pulling the drawers out completely – and it’s set at the perfect depth to fit inside a closet as well.
Chloë now has a dresser built right in to her closet, which means we can remove the dresser from her room and give her more space to play!
The spacing between the top of the closet dresser and the upper hanging rod was too large for one shelf and too small for two, so we left it as an open space where Chloë hangs her necklaces and scarves and sets out her little treasures.
I was caught up in the idea that only larger closets and walk-ins could hold drawer units and shelves and that this tiny space was destined to be cramped full…
but with this small closet organization / Ikea hack, Chloe’s closet actually holds considerably more than it did before, at a FRACTION of what other closet organizers cost.
I may have to implement a few more of those Ikea hacks I was raving about.
Have a great one!
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