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5 Tips for Organizing a Reach-in Closet in the Guest Room

Rick Santos • October 5, 2022

When you’re thinking of ways to tidy up and optimize the organization in your home, you might not think a reach-in closet could help much. These smaller closets get a bad reputation for not offering much in the way of storage space, but it doesn’t have to be that way.

With a few simple adjustments, you can free up quite a bit of room in even the smallest of reach-in closets. With more space in your closet, you’ll find you also have more space in your home.

Here are five tips for organizing the reach-in closet in your guest room:

Commit to shelving solutions.
Maximize wall space with wall hooks.
Try out double hanging rods.
Use stackable bins and cubbies.
Make verticality work for you.

Now that you know the basics of organizing even the most stubborn reach-in closet, let’s look into the specifics of how to get the most out of your space.

Commit to Shelving Solutions

As Martha Stewart says, the easiest way to stick to organization in your closet is to set up a system that you can both maintain and adjust when you need to. The best way to start this is to put in shelving that you can section off by clothing type, season, or any other category that might work for you.

Wide shelving can work quite well in situations where you have more foldable items than hangable ones, as you can make several folded stacks and still have floor space for bins and baskets.

Maximize Wall Space With Wall Hooks

Optimizing a reach-in closet is all about making the most of the space you have available. Where most would stop with hanging rods, shelving systems, and sliding racks, you should also consider using your wall space to get the most out of your reach-in closet.

You can make your own version of a valet rod to make getting changed in the morning easier or even hang up bulky items that would otherwise take up too much space. Or, if you’d really like to commit to using your wall space, you can put up hanging shelves as well.

Try Out Double Hanging Rods

If you don’t have many foldable items that you need to store but instead have a large number of hangable garments and items, double hanging rods can help you accommodate everything all in one space.

These can be staggered to make it easy to reach everything while still giving you room for other closet organization systems. You can even separate garments out by season or cycle out items according to categories that work for you.

Use Stackable Bins and Cubbies

While it’s true that you’re pressed for space in a reach-in closet, that doesn’t mean that you can’t also use the space constraints to your advantage. Stackable bins and cubbies can give you the equivalent of a full closet’s worth of storage space in a smaller footprint.

You can save the far wall for shelving systems and hanging clothes while the two smaller walls can be set aside for stacking bins that go flush with the surface of the wall. You can even color coordinate to make it easier to remember where everything is.

Make Verticality Work for You

When it comes to most reach-in closets, you might not have much in the way of square footage, but you will probably have a fair amount of verticality to work with. With this in mind, and if you don’t have much you need to hang in your guest room, you could forgo hanging storage entirely.

Instead of hanging rods, you could put in a tall set of drawers or install another shelving solution. Reach-in closets are more modular than many assume, and you’ll be surprised by just how much you can get out of stackable storage solutions.

Conclusion

Reach-in closets aren’t usually the first consideration when it comes time to optimize storage space in the home, but they should be. By following these five simple tips and building out a solution that works best for your wants and needs, you’ll have more space - both in your closet and your home.