Coat Turned Toy Closet

Three kids six and under. Yep, you guessed it, toys toys toys. However our house is just under 750 sq feet, no that isn't a typo. Space is a premium is the understatement of the century. We had a coat closet that just wasn't getting used enough to warrant keeping it. Since we rent, I couldn't do any permanent changes but wanted to repurpose it for our needs. So, for around $20 I outfitted it as a toy closet. Let me show you how.

First, I bought two wire shelves from Wal-Mart. I want to say they were $8 or 9 each. They are made for closet storage and they stack on each other. I put them on top of the top shelf in our closet. As you can see in the picture, there was a fair amount of room between that top shelf and the ceiling of the closet. Maximize the space as much as possible. It also helps to keep a huge stack of boxes falling on you when you are trying to pull something out.

I'm still figuring out how to get the most use out of the actual closet bar. I have a bag hung from it now, but I want to get more from it. For now this is how it looks.

On the door I hung two bathroom organizers that I purchased from the Dollar Tree. Perfect for little things. Seriously love them. As you can see a few pockets have broken, but since they are from the Dollar Tree it's no biggie to replace them (so why haven't I!).

I scored these two plastic storage drawers from Freecycle. However most of us have a few of these around the house that aren't being used to full potential, so repurpose them here. They stack really well, just put heavier stuff on the bottom to keep them from getting top heavy. The cassette storage on top I picked from a free pile in front of someone's house.
The blue bag has several puzzles in it. I put puzzles in ziploc bags and just cut out the top of the box. Much less space taken up that way and those puzzle boxes never hold up long.

So that's it...toy closet on the WAY cheap. As you can see, I even still have room to add to it if I want too. However I'm a big believer of rotating toys, so we'll see if that happens. If you don't have an entire closet available think of other options. Even just hanging the bathroom organizers over the back of your closet doors will net you lots of little storage pockets.

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