Wardrobe Closets

While many of us dream of the type of custom closets that we see in celebrity magazines, the reality is that our budgets just will not make this dream come true. While we may not be able to push a button and watch our designer shoes circle by, the reality is that most of us simply need a good way to organize our everyday shoes and our couple of pairs of special occasion pumps.  The Internet provides a wonderful way to view closet accessories that are reasonably priced and can add a little touch of organizational glamour to our closets.

While lacking a little in the glamour department, an affordable choice in closet organizers is made by Rubbermaid, the folks who have brought great organizational items to the kitchen and pantry. Their closet accessories and organizers are called Rubbermaid Closet Configurations.  This wire based system has received an excellent rating from Consumer Reports, citing its durability and ease of installation.

Image by Twicepix. CC.

Rubbermaid Configurations come in two sizes, one that fits smaller closets in the three to six foot range, and a larger version for closets up to four feet by eight feet. What is really terrific about these systems is that there is no need for measuring or cutting shelf supports since the package provides rails and shelves that telescope.  There is even a choice in colors, basic white, titanium or nickel.

The installation process is just about as simple as it can be, a four step process, with an online video for those who are really apprehensive. Basically, all the closet owner needs to do is mount the rails for hanging items, no cutting involved as the telescoping feature makes it easy to simply overlay the shelves and adjust the width. The uprights are put in place over the hanging rail, shelves and brackets are attached and then the clothes rods are put in place.

Voila, the pieces are now in place to have a truly organized closet. The best thing is that these closet accessories can be purchased at very reasonable prices online, from $80 to $200, depending upon closet size. There are also a number of additional items that can be added to this system such as shoe racks and specific organizers for things like ties and belts.

It’s winter time yet again, isn’t it?

I live in the south, and we’ve recently been hit with our sporadic dose of Carolina winter weather. You never know when it’s going to come – it may be November, it may be January, heck, it may even be February or March. But despite our winter season being quite mild, at some point those winter jackets are coming out of hiding and onto our backs.

Our home has no closet by the door. It’s almost an odd thing to notice – the house itself (not mine, my roommates) is very nice, and there’s ample opportunity as far as storage space to have had a closet built in by the door for us to store our coats.

But nope – no closet.

Which is what led me to look at shopping around for good free standing coat closets. I learned a thing or two about them in the process; important points about coat closets that I thought I’d share here with you, dear reader.

Coat Closets: What to Look for in a Good Coat Closet

1. There are a lot of options. It helps to know first what you are looking for.
What I mean by this is that there isn’t just a single type of closet furniture that you can point to and say “that’s a coat closet” that doesn’t have other uses, and vice versa. Many storage closets are sold to hold a variety of items, from office supplies to a persons wardrobe to coats. Some are wide open, like a wood garment rack, and others have closed doors, like a 3 door wardrobe armoire. Some are meant to be lightweight and basically portable. Others are meant to be heavy duty. The latter we are more interested in, which brings us to the next point.

2. It should hold a lot of weight since winter clothing is heavy.
A coat closet gets the most use when it’s the coldest outdoors, and this is precisely the time when the durability of a coat closet comes into play. When shopping for a coat closet, look for the maximum amount of weight it can hold. The more, the better.

3. You can definitely keep find a coat closet under $300.
The wide range of prices in coat closets reflects how willing we are to pay for a nice piece of furniture. But there come a point in which you don’t really get much more functionality for your money. Now by all means, if the coat closet is intended to add to the room as a piece of furniture in its own way, then feel free to leave the budget out of the picture. But if your main concern is simply having a solid wood coat closet, you can find something like this for about $300 or less that will do the trick. Any more than that and you’re paying for aesthetics, which may or may not be worth it for you.

4. Before you spend all that money, organize any nearby closet first that could function as coat closet.
If you’ve already got a closet by the front door, why not use that as the coats closet? If the reason is that it’s jammed pack full of clothes already, you might be surprised to learn how much space can be leveraged out of a messy closet by first organizing. For some ideas on closet organization, take a look at our articles on closet organizers.

5. High quality, durable hangers belong in a high quality coat closet.
After going to the trouble of buying, shipping, unpacking, and then assembling a coat closet, don’t bring things down a notch by using cheap hangers that will end up being more trouble than they’re worth. Coats are heavy, and if you use light, cheap hangers, they are going to either snap or hold the coat lopsided, or worse yet, let it slip off. It’s better to invest in a good dozen set of quality, strong coat hangers from the start than to buy bad ones and then replace them when they break.

A good wardrobe closet is a good investment for a home. They make a fantastic looking piece of furniture while providing additional space in which to securly store your wardrobe, often providing protection against dust, dirt, and allergens in the environment.

Let’s take a look at the different features and benefits offered in various wardrobe closet designs.

They give you ample space to store and organize your wardrobe. First and foremost, the biggest benefit of a wardrobe closet is its sole purpose; to provide you with additional space to correctly organize and access your wardrobe. They can be used to compliment a room with an existing closet or used as a guest closet in a spare bedroom, in such a way that your guests need not to bother any items that might already have found their way into the guest closet.

They’re designed as a solid piece of furniture. This is what sets wardrobe closets a part from other closet-type furniture, such as a stand-alone closet organizer or a portable closet. A good wardrobe closet is a solid piece of furniture, weighing 100 or more pounds, sometimes considerably more than this, on there own without any clothes or items inside. They are made of solid materials and are designed to look good. This is not something you’d sheepishly hide in your room. They’re an impressive site for a means to store clothes and they will look great in any guest bed room that is short on

They offer a degree of protection from allergens in the environment. While not making any claims as medical advice, many wardrobe closets are designed to be breathable while at the same time offering protection for your wardrobe against dirt, grime, pet dander, and other allergen that are free-floating in the environment.

They can be expensive. A wardrobe closet is not a flimsy shelving unit or a simple closet organizer for hanging your clothes. Often designed for the long-term, with solid wood and lots of support for the hanging weight of your clothes, wardrobe closets often get into the many hundreds of dollars range. If this puts them out of your reach, there are alternatives which are less (often much less) expensive that also provide the same benefits, i.e. space for your closet items. See The Closet Organizers Guide for more information on re-doing an existing closet to make use of the space.