Old homes never had enough space for stuff. In many homes, from the 17th century onward, clothing was kept in a "chifferobe" or an armoire, free-standing clothing cupboards, or stored in the attic. "Closets" were for storing bed linens. It was not until after WWII that the closet made a return as a clothing storage unit, meaning that the current owners of older homes are scrambling for storage solutions. Fortunately, several options exist for storing today's wardrobe. Does this Spark an idea?
Use a Closet Organizer System
Closet organizers are readily available at almost every home improvement center. They range from a hanger rack that holds multiple hangers to a cubbyhole system that literally provides a place for everything, so that everything is in its place. You can be purchase and install a system with a minimum of time and effort.
Organizer systems offer advantages other than ease of installation. If you make changes in your space by building a closet or adaptively re-using part of a room, you can relocate the organizer into the larger space, maximizing its utility. If you move to a home across the country, the organizer can come with you, where your perfect built-in closet cannot.
Bring Back the Clothes Cupboard
A free-standing clothing storage unit for each bedroom in your home brings back the past in a piece of fine furniture. The trade-offs are that the storage unit takes up floor space.
Talk to your local furniture dealers and determine if the lines they carry include an armoire that fits your needs. If you can find an armoire that appeals to your taste and is appropriate to the age and size of your home, it might make a fine addition to the furnishings of the room in need of closet space. Occasionally, these appear on auction sites online and most antique dealers have at least one in stock. The advantage to this approach is that it is usually the least labor intensive: all you have to do is hang up the clothes. The disadvantage is that storage space remains static, even if your wardrobe grows.
Expand into the Room Next Door
Stealing part or all of an unused room next to the bedroom is a time-honored path to more closet space.
This is the most labor-intensive approach but the trade-off in labor means more flexibility and a larger space for clothes, shoes and off-season storage. It also requires some basic carpentry skills, since it means constructing a doorway between your bedroom and the unused room if one does not exist already, and building a non-load bearing stud wall to separate the closet space from the rest of the room from which it was borrowed.
Tags: closet space, storage unit, armoire that, clothing storage, clothing storage unit, free-standing clothing
