Small Space Living- Living Room Closet

I know, a living room closet sounds strange, but if you live in a small space it totally makes sense. Our apartment is so small that basically the office, kitchen, pantry, living room, craft room are all in the same place. With such limited space I've had to get creative with storage and decor.

moving day! august 2011

Last week I showed you my biggest trick when I went through the bedroom closet- purging. Today I went to go drop off my massive box of donations at the Goodwill and of course go look through the lovely aisles of treasures. Don't worry, I actually had a to-get list to keep me from buying back a bunch of stuff to replace what i had just purged.

I'll come back to Goodwill in a minute, but lets go back to over a year ago when we first moved into this apartment. I LOVE this little home. It's so perfect for two newlyweds! It's just not easy on the storage.

Technically the apartment only has one closet-the walkin in the bedroom- but with that all full of clothes and linens we needed somewhere else to store things.

The above pic is from the day we moved in. See the back wall in that picture? There is a small space, about the width of a desk, between the fireplace and the outer wall. The spot was meant for a table and a desk-but I envisioned more storage. At first I just piled things in that corner while we moved in and i contemplated what in the world to do with that spot. Fill it with book shelves? No, I didn't want to SEE all my stuff-gotta make it cute! Install closet doors? no that takes up too much space.

you can see the space on the right of this picture. it's the perfect size for a closet.

Then it hit me. A quick trip to Target, a pretty tension rod and two long curtains later I had a lovely closet.

We hide a midsized fridge in this closet and store all kinds of things. The pile started to look something like this...

Every time I needed something out of the pile I either had to completely take apart the tower or risk death by landslide. So i decided it was time to build or buy a shelf to organize all that stuff.
I was at the Goodwill the other day (surprise surprise) and spotted a shelf that seemed perfect. I went home and grabbed my measuring tape and went back later in the day to see if it would fit. IT DID! and it had just been marked down to $20! (Apparently they mark down furniture Friday mornings to keep inventory moving.) I was so excited I bought it up and (with a little help from my neighbor) muscled it into the closet to surprise the hubby with!

My next project is actually organizing the closet so I know where everything is, maybe add some cute baskets, bu at least I don't risk being buried alive anymore!

Do you need more storage space? Look around. There might be a perfect little nook to curtain off and make into a sweet little closet.

Stay tuned for more Small Space Living Ideas, but until then check out past week's posts.