Thank you California Closets for sponsoring this post.

Anyone else have serious OCD tendencies? In general, I navigate the world without too many weird quirks. But there is one place in my house where things take a serious turn: my closet.

Ever since I was a kid, I have been a crazy person about my clothes, more particularly, my closet. One time in high school, I made my mom take an absurd amount of trips to the store to buy matching, color coded hangers. Shirts were one color, pants another, jackets an entirely different shade. No lie, I still have a bunch of those hangers. So 15+ years later (I don’t want to talk about how long ago it was), they don’t seem like such a waste of money after all. Thanks Mom!

And as they say, some things never change. I’m still a full-on crazy person when it comes to organizing my closet. At least once a season, I pull everything out, try things on and make decisions on what stays and what has to go. Everything goes back in, color coded and sorted. The last few times, I’ve taken to using the Marie Kondo KonMari method when making tough decisions (here’s my experience my first go round trying it out). As silly as it sounds to hold items up and ask aloud whether it brings you joy, it does honestly work. The whole idea of thanking the items and then letting them go is also, oddly, liberating. I told you all I was crazy.

That’s not to say it doesn’t still get messy. It does. Proof below. Please don’t judge.

So when I got the opportunity to partner with California Closets to see how to make the most of my closet space, I jumped. No really, I may have jumped out of my seat a little bit. I’m on a serious mission to get our master bedroom looking polished and put together and one of our first orders of business is eliminating our two giant dressers. My goal has always been to make the most of my small walk-in closet in order to ditch one of the dressers. This project allowed me to finally take the plunge and start the process. Now I feel like there’s no way I could not follow through with the whole thing.

A week or so ago, Emerald from the Louisville California Closets location (it’s on Breckinridge Lane right by Graeter’s)came by my house to survey the situation. Our room has two closets – one is a standard reach-in closet with an accordion door and the other is a small walk-in attached to our master bedroom. As you could probably assume, the reach-in closet is Drew’s and the walk-in is mine, although Drew does have some of his stuff living in my closet. Both are nice enough but pretty standard, without any bells and whistles.

The thing is, they both are a lot bigger than they seem so I knew there had to be a way to maximize the space. This is where Emerald came in. During our consultation, she checked out the space while listening to my closet challenges and of course, my closet dreams. And boy did I dream big. I’m pretty sure I could have incorporated every fancy detail if I could. I was just flipping through the options, imagining my pinterest-perfect closet dreams coming true.

That’s where Emerald brought me back to reality in the best way possible. We talked about what I really needed from the space and the custom details – like a built in hamper and slide out shoe storage – that could help make it happen. More importantly, we talked about a reasonable budget and how to maximize the organization while staying within it.

Next up, she took measurements of both spaces. And by measurements, I don’t mean just the dimensions of the closets. She measured each section of clothes to make sure our plan allotted for everything. Once she had a feel for the space, we sat down to go through some preliminary options and to go through some of the features I’d be interested in incorporating. Emerald listened to all my caviar wishes and champagne dreams before bringing me down to an attainable luxury that gives me the custom closet I’ve always dreamed of without breaking the budget.

The entire process was really easy – especially since I didn’t have to leave the house – and the consultation took less than an hour. I guess I talk pretty fast and get to the point quickly when it comes to my closet. Before she left, Emerald and I scheduled a time to get back together in a week to go through her plan of attack and make decisions.

The best part was that she was able to easily imagine a plan that used every possible inch of the space for the type of storage we needed. Nothing extraneous or fancy for the sake of it, just well thought out organizing options to make the most of our closets.

Yesterday I swung into my local California Closets location to see the options. To say I was excited was a huge understatement. I couldn’t wait to see what she’d come up with and I definitely wasn’t disappointed. Emerald came up with three options for both mine and Drew’s closets. Drew’s were a little more cut and dry but for mine, I got three different configurations each at a different price point so I could gauge the level of customization I wanted. The top of the line version was obviously my favorite but I realized I’d rather splurge on the organization aspect instead of the finishes, so we settled with the middle option. I don’t have pictures of the options but since I plan on moving forward with the plan (that part is #notsponsored), I’ll be sure to do a follow-up post to this.

The really great part of this part of the consultation was how we could swap out options as went through everything. We switched out a drawer for a sliding shoe organizer, ditched jewelry organizers (not because I didn’t love them though) and even realized that the built -in ironing board was a no-go since there’s no outlet in our closet. It was all really easy to change things out until we had it perfectly put together.

Now I can’t wait to finalize it all and move forward with the plan. Since our house was flipped before we bought it, there aren’t a ton of ways for us to add value but we realize that custom closets are a good option – especially in the master bedroom. It’s certainly a splurge but one that will be worth it, especially for this closet crazy lady.

I can’t say enough good things about our experience thus far. It’s definitely sparked joy in me. If you’ve been considering doing something like this – whether in your room, your pantry, your kids room, your basement – I would recommend it. My biggest tip would be to think through what your goal is for the space before sitting down with a consultant. Having a clear idea of your goal for the space is a huge help. That’s not to say you need to know exactly what you want but more of knowing how you want to save time and space will allow you to make the most of your time with the consultant. It will also help them to know what you want to achieve with the room or closet.

Consider this Part 1 of 2 since I’m looking to finalize my closet update this week and will share the results after it’s installed later this summer. I’m already counting down the days.

I was selected for this opportunity as a member of CLEVER and the content and opinions expressed here are all my own.