Before
Here is the before picture of my closet. As you can tell, it wasn’t really doing much for me. The one rack made it hard find things. My clothes didn’t really slide well since there is the vertical bar for each section. Overall, this just wasn’t a very efficient closet at all! My hope in redesigning my closet was to have a more usable, organized space. With only one rack I did my best to organize clothes by section but there is only so much that can be done since all my clothes were squished together. The shelf at the top was also a bunch of wasted space since I hang most of my clothes. I wanted less shelf space and more hanging space for all my clothes!
How It Works
Prior to going into The Container Store, I looked online for some closet inspo. Since I don’t have a walk in closet, I wanted to maximize the space I do have. Prior to going in to the store. it’s important that you measure everything! Length, width and height of closet but also little things like how tall the baseboards are and how much space do the closet doors take up when they are opened. Seriously, measure EVERYTHING so you are prepared. Once we gave our measurements, I was able to share what I was hoping for in a closet with our design consultant. She was very helpful and showed me all of the different options I could include in my closet. There are so many different options that the Elfa system has so you can customize it to exactly what you’re looking for.
Once the design consultant had an idea for what I was looking for, she went ahead and started designing a blueprint. After the blueprint was complete, she went over it with me to confirm it was what I was looking for. Once you’ve approved your design, you go ahead and set a pickup date to get all of the parts for your closet.
There is the option of having your closet installed or installing it yourself. Mike and I chose to get it professionally installed to make sure it was done correctly. (We also wanted to avoid getting in an argument that would’ve definitely happened if we had installed it ourselves. 🤪) However, our design consultant said plenty of people install it themself.
Installation
In my opinion, paying a little extra to have it professionally installed was totally worth it. Our installer took our old shelf down, patched up the holes from the shelf, painted, and installed the new closet system. All of that work took them about an hour and a half! If we had installed ourselves, it would have taken longer than that for sure. Plus, having the piece of mind knowing it was installed properly made it all worth it.
Final Thoughts
Overall, I’m SO happy I decided to redo my closet. It’s made a huge difference in being able to actually pick out what I want to wear. I can actually slide my clothes along the rack and see what’s in my closet! I wasn’t about to do that with my one rack before. It’s also helped make my closet way more organized. I love that I have multiple sections for my clothes as well as drawers and a shoe rack.
If you’re thinking about redoing your closet with The Container Store/Elfa system, I’d recommend doing so when they are having a sale going on. It will definitely help to save you some money since each piece of the Elfa system costs money and each piece can add up quickly. In my opinion, it’s totally worth the investment, though. I want to fix all the closets in our house now to help make them more functional.
If you have been thinking about redoing your closet, I hope this helped to give you some more info. If you have any other questions, I would love to answer them since I genuinely believe this is worth the money. I’m so happy with the finished product.
