The Family Closet

{This is the 200th post on the blog...wow.  I don't have anything planned to mark such an exciting occasion, just my scheduled post on family closets, but I thought I'd mention the 'big day' anyway!}

The Duggar's Mega-sized family closet!

I had never heard of a family closet before I saw one in action with the Duggar family, which I think may be the case with a lot of people.  If you haven't seen the need for a family closet in your daily life, you've probably never peeked into one!  In my never-ending quest to organize our little home to hold the things we need I've been thinking long and hard about whether a family closet might be an answer to at least some of our storage problems.  And with that in mind I'd like to share what I've discovered in my research.

One of my favourite blogs right now is Keeper Of The Home, and wonder of wonders they were my first 'real' look into a family closet.  In fact they even had a video blog about it!  It was so inspirational to see a closet that wasn't gigantic, but so well organized.  I couldn't help but wonder if this was an idea that might work for us.

Lotsof Kids.com was the next useful site I came across.  This article I've linked to was actually very helpful and what's more, it looked do-able.  That's a big thing for me; if I look at your amazing blog photos and fantastic decorating and floor plans I'm unlikely to be overcome with jealousy, but I am highly likely to be overwhelmed by what work it would take to turn my space into anything approximating your space.  Michelle Lehman wrote in the article that "It has been one of the best things we have ever done. There is more room in the house, since there are no dressers. Bedroom closets can be used for other types of storage."  The bedroom closets as alternate storage sounds very appealing, as does the idea of being rid of dressers once and for all.  In our space we each have a dresser, and they are worse than useless.  Samuel's especially, because as a 'baby' dresser the drawers aren't deep enough to really accomodate toddler-sized clothing and everything just gets hung up or thrown in one of two big Tupperware containers that I fill with clean PJs and underthings for him, and then have to rummage through every time I need another white sock.

My dresser dilemma is not only mine, either.  The more I read the more I realized that almost everyone detested their dressers and the general lack of order that comes from using them.  Rosie at The Telling Mom wrote an article all about skipping the whole putting-clothes-away routine altogether and using laundry baskets on specially built shelves to store clothes.  How neat is that?

Some people seem to be using part of a room, while others have gone all the way and use an entire room as a giant family closet! 

Some other Family Closet posts:

*Michelle Duggar talks about the family closet on her blog here.
*Raising Olives has a post on the pros and cons of using a family closet here.

Although we currently only have three people living in the house and two bedrooms we do have a large storage room and I think, with proper tidying, that it could become quite a nice family closet and free up all of our current closet space for other things!  More room!

Take a look at our foray into eliminating clothes here...