I share a closet with my husband. Yes, I do. I’m not joking. He doesn’t have another closet in another room, and neither do I. How do we manage this? You might ask? It’s easy: we optimized all the space possible in the closet. Here’s a photo:

It may appear that Mr. J has most of this closet, but that is not true. My stuff is hidden behind the wall on the right of this photo. We actually have some space to spare.

This isn’t the first home where we shared closets. When we first got married, Mr. J moved into my loft condo in Chicago. (Man, I still love that condo so much, even if the next owners painted the walls all sorts of ghastly colors.) And since it was a loft, there wasn’t a lot of storage. Did I mention it was a one bedroom? Yup. Not the biggest space, but still very cool.

Anyway, as soon as I knew he was moving in, I called California Closets and asked them to help me. I needed our only clothes closet tricked out, to store not only his clothing, my clothing, but bedding and other home-related stuff. They worked miracles! We loved in the condo for another year without arguing over closet space. My hand to G.

Mr. J even drank the California Closets Kool-Aid, because as soon as we moved into our next home (a 4-story) townhouse in Lincoln Park, the first thing he said to me was, “We have to call California Closets and get them over here. My closet situation is sub-par.” Yup. He said it. And, after having been spoiled with organization, I guess he wasn’t happy with some flimsy wire rack that took up one side of the wall of his closet (no we weren’t sharing that time.)

So now we live in Minnesota. You bet your butt we called California Closets. Since our home was built in 1959, the closets were small. And there was only one closet in the master bedroom, so we really had to make use of every inch of space. In general, my new lifestyle doesn’t require me to dress up, so I don’t need a lot of hanging space. Since my daily uniform consists of jeans and sweaters (a significant upgrade from yoga pants and nursing tanks), I put most of my clothing in my own dresser.

If you want to make better use of your closet space, but don’t want to spend on fancy closet organization stuff, I have some ideas:

• Make full use of your coat closet. Coats take up a ton of room, so get them out of your bedroom closet, if at all possible. Also, put your shoes in there too? Those items can free up a ton of space.
• Declutter. No seriously. I have a whole post about going through all of your clothing here. If you need help, get in touch with me. I can be your sounding board and let you know if something is worth holding on to. (But usually, if you haven’t worn it in a year, the answer is generally ‘get it out of your house.’)
• Fold, don’t hang the following: sweaters, knit pants, t-shirts, athletic wear, denim jeans (a post about folding clothes is forthcoming.)
• Put the clothing that you want to keep for posterity in acid-free boxes and store them elsewhere.
• In order to maximize space, consider adding a second curtain rod. Here’s an example.
• Find another home for luggage and non-clothing items. Try to allocate space for clothing first, and then whatever you might need in your bedroom on a regular basis, for example, towels and bedding?
• Set some ground-rules for between yourself and your spouse. Ours include: 1)dirty clothing goes in the hamper; and 2) if we buy something new, we have to let go of the something already in the closet.

If you have any questions or thoughts, please let me know! Comment below or send me an e-mail. I’d love to hear from you. As usual, I am not receiving any commissions from the links in this post, they are just a guide.