How to turn a not so walk in closet into a functioning walk in pantry for free!

We recently had some family circumstances that allowed us the chance to clean out our home completely. It became a very exhaustive but cathartic experience as we worked to turn this house from a "if I can find a tiny corner to fit it in, it's okay to keep it" or the "it's ok to buy 10 of something even though I only needed one" mentality to the point of tripping over piles of things into an open functional space that works for our family. Most of my life I've heard comments like "we can just put it in the basement" which led to "I don't want to have to dig through the items in the basement, I'll just buy another." And the cycle continues. For someone who is Type A and mildly OCD, looking at rooms like that made me cringe. 

So when the opportunity arose, I knew exactly what room to start with and what I envisioned it to become. What used to be my brother's bedroom growing up had gone from a couple extra baskets of clothes storage while he was away at college to a room full of clothes and shoes etc. once he got his own place and removed his furniture. Many moons ago, Dad and I bought almost floor to ceiling wardrobe shelving units from Ikea to organize the items up off the floor like a true walk in closet. It soon grew to my old bedroom dresser full, 4 large storage bins full, and literally piles on the floor in addition to what we folded and organized on the shelves. There was just too much excess of everything to function as a walk in closet. 

My goal for this room was to not only get rid of the clutter but also to repurpose the shelving unit into a real walk in pantry space for my couponing stockpile. If you follow me on Instagram, you would have seen my after photo of turning an old bookcase in our laundry room into a laundry station with all of my laundry product stockpile. Before this, everything in my stockpile was lined up on metal shelves from Lowes in our old playroom turned pool room after we also reorganized that room to get everything off the floor into boxes on shelves in order to put a pool table in there. It was jokingly referred to as "going shopping downstairs" because my OCD self relished in organizing it like a grocery store. Moving the remaining products upstairs has been much more efficient for the family since we're steps away from the bathrooms where we use the hygiene products and from where we cook in the kitchen with the food. One con of this effort is now I don't have to debate the effort of walking up and down the stairs when I'm craving a snack. 

Here is the before pictures of what we faced in this room alone;

Step 1: Pick a place to start sorting in the space you're looking to clean out. If you do a little bit all over the place, it will take longer to see improvement and you'll tire of the task faster. Focus on one specific category or region of the space and work just on that until it's done. The satisfaction of the effort will motivate you to keep going.

We first chose to start with the yarn from a since given up crochet hobby. To the right of the last picture above sat floor to ceiling skeins of yarn stacked into the corner between the shelving unit and the wall. Between that and the bags of yarn we found under the stairs and amongst the craft bins in the shed plus a freestanding bookcase in the dining room, we compiled over 10 containers worth of yarn, pattern books, and supplies. While being able to make back the cash spent on items never used would have been nice, our main goal was to remove the items from our home while helping others. It was important for us to not only facilitate a better home space for ourselves but also to see that the items went to someone who could use them. This yarn was split between two crafters who make blankets for NICU babies and for a local chapter of the Linus Project. 

Next we focused on the books that were under the hanging clothes as well as on various bookshelves throughout the house. 99% of them were books we'd already read ourselves so there was no need to keep them anymore. We compiled 19 boxes of books in the end and hired someone through TaskRabbit to carry them all up from the basement and into our van. Reached out to a used bookstore who unfortunately had so much stock right now, the owner would only look at 3 boxes per visit. We drove over to her store with all of them and she decided to buy essentially enough from those 3 boxes to reimburse us for the cost of hiring the gentleman from TaskRabbit. The remainder of the boxes were left out for our first driveway pickup from the Pickup Please company that collects items to benefit veterans. 

Next I started working on the first wardrobe case on the right. Very little of it was something I wanted either in size or personal style so it was quick work once I could get it all off the shelves. I kept that hanging clothes section as a place to hang clothes I was considering keeping. It helped with the sorting aspect and kept items off the floor so I could walk around. So many items had been simply stacked throughout the room due to having no more hanging space. I then was able to use the shelves above it to organize the non clothing items I uncovered like makeup, styling products, and oh so many watches. It became a running joke as I found more and more watches that we must not have had any time on our hands because it was all tucked away in here. Side note: if anyone is in the market for say 5 or 50 nail files, let me know.

By day's end, I had cleared enough items off the first hanging clothes section to hang up items I was keeping from that rod plus over the door hangers plus what had been stacked on an old TV tray table and shower chair. I now had a shelf dedicated to compiling makeup/jewelry/styling products and a space for stuffed animals and hygiene products to be dealt with later. Since I'd cleared off the TV tray table and shower chair, I was able to relocate them elsewhere in the house freeing up floor space. It was also a relief to no longer have anything hanging on the door causing it to be pushed out from the wall.

The clothing sitting in a pile loose on the floor is because I had upended one of the four bins pictured in my other photos to start going through it. We then used the bin itself to corral yarn.

Disclaimer: Yes, that is the toilet paper from my stockpile in these pictures. I had already been storing things like toilet paper in this room because it was closer to the bathrooms. When TP disappeared off the shelves at the start of the pandemic, we lived off my stockpile that was less than the amount pictured here. (Same with hand soap and redirecting body wash into hand soap refills) When stock came back in, I would pick up 1-2 (abiding by the store limit) of the 4 packs during routine weekly shopping for several weeks. We used to go through a roll a day so it was going out as fast as it came in. Now we're not using as much as fast but this is what I'd already bought before the cleanout. Never was one of the "toilet paper hoarders" that cleared shelves at the start of pandemic shopping.

Our first pile of clothing filled trash bags from the first day's worth of cleanout.