How to Plan a Closet. . . Nerdy Doctor Style

In the name of planning out as much as we can while we wait to move in, I've been working on our closet situation. Growing up in the inner-city of Chicago, I didn't have a closet until I left for college. After I got married, we were still living in the city and all my stuff was in a hallway built-in, supplemented by some IKEA storage. Later, in 2005, we moved into our first home and I got to share a tiny reach-in closet in the master bedroom. I was thankful for that, but it really was/is cramped. Now with our second house, I'm getting a walk-in. (High fiving a million angels.)

OK, so it's not terribly large. Every now and then I'll read on someone's blog or find on Pinterest a tutorial on how to maximize space in a closet somewhere in Texas, where the owner could practically do cartwheels in there. But for me, my closet-to-be is all that I need and more.

To plan things out, I considered one of my top priorities: price. This had me eyeing Martha Stewart for Home Depot, IKEA, and Elfa storage (on sale) for The Container Store. These all seemed like good options.

Next, I made a list in Excel (my other love) of every type of article of clothing I own, and grouped them by the type of storage from which I prefer to access them. So, for example, I don't like to hang my jeans, I would much rather have them nicely folded on a shelf so that I can better see their color and arrange them by fit. Then, still in Excel, I pulled from each category and placed them into a rough draft of a closet layout. It looked like this:

Once I had a goal in mind, I made sure it would work logistically by using Urban Barn's Online Room Planner. -This thing is the best!!! I changed the size options for furniture to be exactly to scale with our actual closet and the options available from the closet sources I listed above. This is what it was looking like (sorry it came out so small), with descriptions added:

As I moved things around, it became clear that our best bet was the IKEA Pax system. I got excited to try out the different combinations of storage, so I played around with the following schemes:

Option A

Option B

I'm pretty sure I'll go with option B. It makes better use of space. Right now all of this is drafts and ideas (and a lot of Excel spreadsheets, more than I care to admit), but when it starts to become a reality I'll need someone to pinch me.