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Here’s a tour of my husband (to-be) Ed’s organized closet! He uses elfa as well. The trickiest part of his closet is how the closet itself is longer than the opening of the door, making it tough to access the items in the back corner. If you have this problem as well (most people do!), check out how I resolved the problem making it super easy for Ed to SEE and ACCESS all of his shoes. Is your husband//wife/fiance/boyfriend/girlfriend organized or is he/she a hot mess!? Leave a comment below or create a video response!

Video Details

Hi guys. It’s Alejandra. And I am behind the camera today because I am still in my pajamas, I haven’t showered and I’m just having, not a lazy day. I’m still being productive but I just haven’t showered today. So that’s why I’m behind the camera.

OK. So for today’s video, I’m going to do – I’m going to show you guys one of Ed’s closets in the bedroom. He has two closets. I’m going to show you the first one today and give you guys a quick tip if you have a closet that has a smaller opening and a wider closet. So that means if your closet door is smaller than the actual closet itself, meaning that the closet goes deeper than the closet door.

There are a lot of closets that are like that and I know a lot of people struggle with how to make the stuff inside easy to access when it’s hard to get to. So that’s exactly what I’m going to share with you guys.

Men’s Closet Organization – How To Organize Your Husband’s Closet

So this is Ed’s closet. Let me start down here. So he has elfa in his closet just like I do. He has four drawers right here. He has his t-shirts at the top two drawers. He has his shorts there and then he has all of his jeans and khakis down there. And if you look down here, he has all of his jeans and khakis stacked instead of stored vertically like I do, which I showed you guys in my How to fold and organize jeans video . If it works for you then keep it. If it doesn’t work for you then change it. That’s kind of my general rule.

Men's Closet Organization - How To Organize Your Husband's

Men’s Closet Organization – How To Organize Your Husband’s Closet


Ed has four drawers at the bottom of the closet. Then he has his a pullout jewelry organizer. It’s kind of like a men’s valet. Now, if you look here, you can tell that it’s not very organized. Like there are receipts and there are business cards and there are all kinds of stuff in there. And you know what? I could never have my valet like that like I don’t know if you guys have seen mine but mine is very organized. But I don’t touch this drawer. I let him have it the way he wants to have it. If it was a common area, that would be a different story. But since this is his closet and I don’t go in here. I don’t – put my stuff away. I leave it alone.

How to Organize Suits & Pants

So let me show you the top of the closet. So this is where he organizes all of his pants, his jeans remember are in the drawers below. At the top of the closet are all of his dress pants. And yes, it looks really high up. But Ed is actually 6’5” so that is within reach for him so that works fine for him. If those were my pants, that would not work.

Then to the left of the closet, he has all of his suits and jacket. This is his work closet where he has all of his dress clothes, his other clothes are more casual. I swear if you look at his closet, you would think that he was such a sharp dresser. I mean he is a sharp dresser but you would think that he was all about business because this is all business attire. But his other closet is all fun shirts and polos and more casual clothes. He’s more of casual person, by the way.

So his tie racks are right in the center of the closet. He has two tie racks. And again, they are made by elfa.

How to Organize the Back of Your Closet

So getting to the main tip of the video, what I want to share with you guys is if you have a closet that has a door, this is a bi-fold door obviously, like you guys know that’s a bi-fold door then why I just said that. But if you have a door that has a smaller opening than the closet itself, meaning there is this extra wall space back here inside the closet which means you can’t really access the stuff all the way in the back. Well, you can access it but it’s going to be more difficult.

If you have this setup which I know a lot of you do then what you want to do is you want to – I didn’t do it in this closet. I did it at the bottom of the closet which I’m going to show you guys, we built this out about three years ago and we just haven’t changed it. But if you have this type of closet, you want to build the shelving on the back wall.

So let me show you for example. You can see down here where Ed has all of his shoe racks. We built this shoe rack, it’s made by elfa also, on the back wall – not on the back wall. Why am I saying back wall? On the sidewall. Do you see how the top track is back there, the standards are back there and then the shelves are back there. I’m sorry. The lighting is so bad because it’s such a dark corner.

But you can just tell that when Ed comes to grab a pair of shoes, when we walks out and then turns to the side, he can see all of his shoes, all he has to do is bend down and he can grab any pair. As opposed to just having them all lined up and against the back wall then he kind of has to reach in and grab whichever pair he wants. So this just saves space and it made accessing the items a little bit easier instead of having everything on the back wall. Does that make sense? I’m not sure if I explained it very well.

But basically, if you have a closet with an opening smaller than the closet itself, meaning the extra wall space here then you want to build out your shelving or you want to put your free-standing racks facing this way. So you want to build it out on the sidewall and have it coming out this way toward you, kind of like what we did down there.

Men’s Dress Shirt Organization

So this is Ed’s second closet in the bedroom. It’s another reach-in closet. It has elfa as well. The elfa up here is built into the wall and then the elfa down here, these are free-standing drawers that we kind of just put in there. And it had a – the closet door here had a bi-fold door just like this closet here that I just showed you guys. And it was more of a pain to open because it’s in this very narrow hallway. So what we did was we just took the door off the closet because it was more of a pain than it was really worth. So now that the door is off, it’s just easier for him to get to his stuff and it’s easier for me to put away his laundry.

So Ed has all of his short sleeve polos on this side. And then over here, he has all of his long sleeve shirts. So he has them organized by type like polos then dress shirts and then he has them by colors. So these are kind of out of order. But yeah, he has them by sleeve length type and then by color. And he uses just regular black plastic hangers. I think we’re going to switch him to different hangers because these, they were starting to break like very often. So we just haven’t done that yet. But yeah, he’s using those black plastic hangers for now.

And then down here in the drawers is where he has all of his socks, his underwear, his t-shirts, high biking gear. Ed is a big biker so he has all this biking gear, his gym shorts, his gym shirts, and so forth. And you can see here, I went ahead and created labels for all of his drawers. I don’t know if I shared this tip with you guys on video but these are just elfa labels. And what I do whenever I use elfa labels is I go ahead and I put a piece of scrapbook paper inside the label. Like normally with elfa labels, all you do is you just stick the white paper inside and ten you create a label on top. But I like to just put scrapbook paper inside to make it a little more fun and a little more colorful.

Men's Closet Organizing Tip: Maximize Closet Space with Free Standing Drawers

Men’s Closet Organizing Tip: Maximize Closet Space with Free Standing Drawers


So anyways, that’s really all I want to show you guys. This is Ed’s second closet. This is more of his casual closet as opposed to his work closet which I just showed you guys. I will see you guys soon. Bye!

About Alejandra

About Alejandra

Since 2008, organizing expert & certified life coach, Alejandra Costello has taught thousands of students in 132 countries how to get organized through her video-based training programs. Her YouTube videos have been viewed 100+ million times. Named 1 of the 5 most organized people in America by HGTV and “The Decluttering Queen” by Good Morning America, Alejandra’s expertise has been featured in The New York Times, Oprah.com, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Good Housekeeping, Family Circle, Woman’s Day, Parents Magazine, and CBS. 

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