One of my main missions this year, was to give our small master bedroom closet a complete overhaul from top to bottom. A new closet was mine and Hasani’s Christmas gift to each other, to get organized and stay that way. It’s one of those projects in our home we’ve been putting off for years and years. Our master bedroom closet isn’t original to our 1950’s house, our original closet was a five feet wide reach in closet that was teeny tiny. When we re-built our home in 2013 after a house fire, we adding an addition of a master bathroom and master bedroom closet. Our intention after moving back into our home was to design a closet, but life gets in the way and it wasn’t made a priority. For the longest time we just two hanging rods and two closet towers, everything that couldn’t be hung up was either stuffed in our bedroom dresser or wound up in piles of clothes around the room. Out closet now is roughly 5x8 - five feet deep and eight feet wide, about the size of a small bathroom.

After doing research, I quickly landed on the IKEA PAX Closet. I loved all the different configurations for clothing rods, drawers, shelves and accessories. I was also sold on the fact that my side of the closet can be completely different than my husbands to meet both of our needs. Plus the price point of the PAX system makes having a dream closet affordable reality. Everything about the PAX Closet System has been a win-win. Read more about the design process for our closet here and how we built our IKEA closet here.

MASTER BEDROOM CLOSET BEFORE

Here’s a reminder of our how closet look at the end of December, keep in mind I had already started cleaning it out so it looked even worse! Painful right?

IKEA PAX CLOSET DESIGN COMPLETED!

I’m so excited to share our finished IKEA PAX Closet!! Having a closet that’s organized and personalized to fit my needs and my husbands needs is amazing! Keeping it 100% I still have a few things to complete in here and decide on 1. Caulk and Repaint the Baseboards 2. Decide if I want to add a rug to this space, and I’m toying with the idea of adding a small bench. It’s a small space and only five feet deep, but I like the idea of completely ‘getting ready’ inside my closet. But other than those minor things our closet is DONE!

I enlisted the help of my best friend, who loves IKEA and can hack a PAX like nobody can! After talking through my design ideas, we landed on an galley style closet, creating his and her sides. This little space was so hard to shoot, thanks to zero natrual llight

HER SIDE OF THE CLOSET

Before, I put my clothes back into our closet, I did a massive clothing purge, shoe purge and purse purge, thanks to Marie Kondo’s show Tidying Up on Netlfix! I really helped me get rid of clothing, shoes etc. that no longer sparked joy! I have less clothing now, and I’m so happy about that! Instead of having 20 pairs of jeans I hate, I now have 8 pairs that I actually wear! It’s really freeing.

Back to my closet design, I have an area of hanging blouses and nicer t-shirts and below have a four drawers. The drawers are super wide and deep! I have plenty of room for sweaters, jeans, and a full drawer dedicated to bras, underwear and pajama’s. The very bottom drawer is an extra drawer for tennis shoes, flats and summer shoes.

The smaller unit holds dresses and coats. I love all the open shoe storage I now have! This has been a game changer #NoMoreMissingShoes I have five shelves for shoes, each shelf holds four pairs of shoes! Two in the front and two in the back. I can easliy rotate my shoes for Fall/Winter and Spring/Summer in the very back, I have my tall walking boots hidden.

I’ve never been a purse girl, in fact my fanciest purse I own is for my camera, looking for the perfect camera purse? This post is for you. To keep the purses I own organized, I added a two brass hooks next to the IKEA Nissedal Mirror, its such a great affordable mirror! I love going vertical with storage, when space is at a premium.

In the last year, I’ve been become a ‘hat girl’ and now have a shelf dedicated to my hats! I love the ease of being able to grab a hat and pair it will an outfit and that stay nice an safe in my closet. I’m considering getting these clear hat boxes, if it seems like my hats are getting dusty.

One of my favorite details in my closet, is the extra large pullout accessories tray. It’s amazing and one of the huge selling points for me when looking at closet options. The Komplement tray, tray is a complete game changer and can be customized with different configurations. .

I have room for all my jewelry, I love how organized its made me! No more tangled necklaces, everything stays nice and neat. I love that I now have a dedicated spot for watches and sunglasses. A used a glass shelf above the drawer to create a more boutique feel to my closet.

Inside my closet, I have room to stash my mini clothes steamer, and a spot for my clutches, I used a clear mail holder to keep them organized and upright.

One of the best upgrades in my closet, its our new hangers! Yes, its a silly thing to be excited about, BUT non slip hangers are the best! We used to have plastic (slowly donating them all, once I upgrade the kids hangers) that would always break, take up to much space, plus they’re very hard on clothes. I found a large pack of non-slip hangers at The Container Store and I’m totally converted. On my heavy items, such as coats, I love the White Bumerang hangers from IKEA.

HIS SIDE OF THE CLOSET

As I mentioned of the things I love about the PAX is the ability to customized the units, nothing was to able the mirror image of the other side! For Hasani’s side of the closet, he wanted more hanger storage vs. folding storage. We used the large unit for Hasani’s side giving him two hanger rods for clothing, plus a shelf above for misc clothing and two shelves below for shoes. He also did a big clothing purge, after I begged him to watch Marie Kondo’s Netlfix show. He too, like the spark joy method and got rid of a bunch random clothes and shoes he no longer wore. Due to space constraints of an outlet box on his side of the closet, we used a shallow unit. The small unit has four drawers and five shelves. To keep his side organized, I added a few simple grey fabric baskets to hold t-shirts etc.

In the mirror, you can see a little peak of our pretty wow closet lighting. I have a thing for Mid Century Modern influenced lighting (see our living room and dining room lighting) Here’s a similar light fixture here.

On one of the shelves, I created a simple vanity area to hold books, watches and his cologne.

I’m so happy with how our closet turned out! It feels like a dream compared to were we started! The small space now feels larger, thanks to the galley layout design we decided on and thanks to all the storage! Mornings are so much easier now, that I’m no longer looking for missing shoes or looking through piles of clothes. I love how having and organized closet space has really improved our day to day lives!

Read More about the process of our Small Closet Bedroom Makeover: BLOG POST ONE: Small Master Bedroom Closet Makeover | IKEA Pax Closet Inspiration and Design Plan BLOG POST TWO: Small Master Bedroom Closet Makeover | Building Our IKEA Pax Closet

I would love hear your thoughts our Master Closet Makeover and happy to answers any questions you have in planning your own closet update/upgrade.

A few weeks ago, I shared our plans to give our closet a complete overhaul, and tear out the old non-functioning closet and install an IKEA PAX Closet. The Friday before New Year’s Eve, we headed to IKEA with our shopping list in hand and brought home roughly 30+ flat pack boxes which as thrilling and crazy, know that inside each box contained an IKEA puzzle! Our Sacramento IKEA is set-up where you create a shopping list online with all the items you need for your closet, and then head to the store and see a sales associate and they print you out an order number and list and then take it to the cashier to purchase and then pick up the items. The process was so smooth and a huge timesaver! We didn’t have to pull any items ourselves, everything was perfectly loaded up, and this feature was free! I think we waited about 15 mins to receive our items. I’m not sure how other IKEA Store is set-up, but from reading lots of blog posts about the process, it seems that you pull your items from the colossal warehouse.

OUR IKEA PAX HAUL

I was so excited to get home and tear everything out! But, we still had a closet full of miscellaneous crap that needed to be sorted and tossed. Over time our closet became a dumping ground for stuff, a place to stash things. I used to open the door and full-on cringe. The closet gave me anxiety, and for the longest time, I felt stuck. Like there would never be a solution. After looking for closet options, I quickly landed on the IKEA PAX closet; I loved the design style of the PAX, how customizable each unit can be and its affordable price point. With some planning, I knew we could maximize our small closet and get the most bang for our buck!

Read more about the design process for our closet here.

Building Our PAX Closet

After removing all the stuff from our closet, we got to work. We wanted the units to fit flush to our walls, so we removed the baseboards and set them aside.

Seeing our closet empty felt incredible and exciting! As you can see in the photos below, we were totally under-utilizing our space.

We stored all the IKEA PAX boxes in our garage and only brought in one box at a time; this helped from feeling overwhelmed with the number of boxes. We gathered our tools and got to work building the small cabinets first. We followed the directions and quickly realized due to space on constraints it made more sense to build the cabinets standing up. Without a doubt, the building of the PAX closet is a two person, sometimes three person job! Some parts of the process can be done alone, for example, I built all the drawers myself while watching TV.

Tips on Building IKEA PAX Closets

Follow the directions closely and take your time!
Build the smallest PAX frame first; it will help when you tackle the larger sizes
Determine if the unit should be built laying down or standing up
When installing drawers in the units, start from the bottom up, it makes the process easier

Overall it took us around three days to build the frames; we had family in town on New Years weekend, so we never had a chance to dedicate an entire day to building. After we built each unit was built, we placed the frame in place. Building Our PAX Closet

After removing all the stuff from our closet, we got to work. We wanted the units to fit flush to our walls, so we removed the baseboards and set them aside. We stored all the IKEA pax boxes in our garage and only brought in one box at a time; this helped from feeling overwhelmed with the number of boxes. We gathered our tools and got to work building the small cabinets first. We followed the directions and quickly realized due to space on constraints it made more sense to build the cabinets standing up. Without a doubt, the building of the pax closet is a two person, sometimes three person job! Some parts of the process can be done alone, for example, I built all the drawers myself while watching TV.

After getting the units fully installed, I re-painted the inside of the closet. Giving the closet a nice freshening up.

OUR IKEA PAX CLOSET INSTALLED

I’m so happy with how our closet is coming together, the drawers and shelves were super simple to install. We learned when installing the drawers, its best to start from the bottom and work your way up. As a reminder, Hasani prefers to hang most of his clothes, in his PAX unit we installed double rods. He has an upper shelf for hats and sweaters. His smaller cabinet has four drawers and four shelves, giving him ample storage.

My IKEA PAX side. I have four drawers in my larger unit and a pull out drawer for accessories and one hanging rod. My plan is to fold most of my clothing. My small has three shelves for my shoes and one hanging rod for coats and dresses.

We’re nearing the home stretch and a few items on our list to check off, below is what’s left on our project list.

Install Baseboards
Replace light fixture with something fun, maybe a sputnik light?
Find storage cubes for open shelves
Find a full length mirror for back wall in the closet, I really want get dressed in our closet so a full length mirror is a must. I like this one from Target
Add organizers in my top drawer where my under garments will reside, so everything stays nice and tidy

While its tempting to fill our closer right back-up, we want to be thoughtful about how we organize it and make sure the clothes we keep, ‘spark joy’ Did you notice my reference to the new Netflix Show Tidying Up? I have her book, pretty much skimmed through it. But thanks to the TV, her method totally clicked, when it came to going through our clothes once again! We’re slowly in the process of putting our clothing back into our closet.

In the next couple of weeks, I up to share our master bedroom closet reveal! It totally feels like a brand new space. I’m loving all the storage we have and how much space we have! What do you think our closet makeover so far?