A few months ago, we decided to tackle our master bedroom closet, which snowballed into a complete room refresh. (As all home renovation projects tend to do.) Before we finished decorating, we did several things to cut clutter and increase storage. Today, I’m sharing the simple ways I ensure our small main bedroom keeps feeling minimal and calm. Read on for all my best small bedroom organization tips (and see some photos of our almost-finished bedroom)!
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Small Bedroom Organization: Decluttering
- Have fewer clothes. As I talk about in my capsule wardrobe post, I spent several years narrowing down the amount of clothing I own. I keep a smaller wardrobe, which is the best and easiest way to make bedrooms and closets clutter-free.
- Keep things off the floor. One big thing that makes the room feel less clutter is to stop placing things on the floor. In my brain, things on the floor always look like they aren’t supposed to be there. Shoes are always a big culprit – consider reorganizing to keep them off the floor.
- Consider the furniture orientation. We made the decision a few months back to rearrange our furniture to make the room feel more visually open. If you can, orient your room to leave wider walkways and/or open corners.
- Think about furniture size and shape. In our room, we decided to try to avoid any furniture that’s really large and blocky. Instead of nightstands or dressers that go all the way to the floor, consider ones with legs. We also chose a cloth bed, which is visually much softer than our old one. Consider scale as well – large nightstands or overstuffed chairs probably won’t work well in a small bedroom.
- Eliminate open storage. In our room, we chose to stay away from any open storage, like bookshelves and clothing racks. Those items tend to have lots of items on them, which can make a small room feel overwhelmed. We also kept styling minimal; we only have a few items styled on our nightstands and dresser.
Here’s a quick series of photos showing the progression of our main bedroom. You can see how implementing these strategies has helped our room feel more finished and less cluttered, even though we have more storage space now than before!
Small Bedroom Organization: Storage
- Consider rearranging. We re-oriented the furniture in our bedroom, which allowed us to add nightstands and a larger dresser. Think about alternative furniture arrangements, because you may be surprised to find that one works better for your needs!
- Buy furniture with storage. In a small bedroom, I think that all main furniture should have some kind of storage. Our bed has space underneath that perfectly fits these underbed organizers. We have 4, which gives us a TON of extra storage space. (The bed is from IKEA and was a killer price – although it’s apparently not available anymore?) We also chose nightstands with drawers to keep things like books and chargers.
- Replace your hangers. A few years ago, we replaced all our hangers with these thin velvet ones. They give a really neat, cohesive look and save tons of space, which means we can fit more clothing in our small closet. (Really, they save a ton of space – changing out our hangers probably almost doubled our closet storage space.)
- Maximize your closet. We knew that the one hanging bar in our 1960’s closet wasn’t going to cut it. Even with our 7.5′ ceilings, we still have plenty of space for some double-hang rods in our closet. If at all possible, add some storage to your room by taking advantage of vertical space. We redid our closet using the elfa system from the Container Store (see our review below)!
- Organize your clothing. We file fold most of the clothes in our drawers, which makes it way easier to find everything. Drawer organizers (we have and love these) can make your drawers much easier. Since organized drawers mean you can find the things you need, you’ll be less likely to keep a bunch of clothing in your room that you never wear.
- Leave room to grow. We made sure that we didn’t fill up all of our storage spaces right away when creating them. (For example, I have a large underbed storage box that’s completely empty, and we have open shelf space in our closet.) Leave yourself some empty storage space, so you don’t have to scramble or stuff when you acquire new things!
Elfa System: A Brief Review
After a bit of research, we decided on the Elfa closet system from the Container Store. We really liked the ability to create a closet that worked for us, but appreciate that it’s easy to rearrange if needed. After purchasing and installing 2 Elfa systems (we also used it for our kitchen pantry), I have a few thoughts to share!
We really liked that the process was easy, that installation was simple, and also that the system includes everything you would need. We also like the hanging standards system, since we were able to screw the top track into our header to ensure the entire system is extremely secure. You can see in the before and after below how we added hanging space, shoe storage, and shelf space to our small closet using the Elfa system!
(Someday, we will put the doors back on our closet, but alas, today is not that day.)
However, we had a bit of difficulty with the designers at the Container Store making some errors. We found and corrected several, but we still had several errors in our final design that we didn’t find until installation. One other small con is that the way the hanging bars are set up eliminates about an inch on each side of each hanging bar – which is a big deal when your closet is just shy of 5′ wide! Overall, I’d recommend the system, but I’d suggest working with a very experienced designer and going over the plans with an eagle eye before purchasing.
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