Folding Fitness

I have a very tall closet, need help to organize?

My closet is a mess - but it is very tall, with two sets of wire shelving. Any ideas for maximizing storage of clothing on the shelves? I'm afraid if I just use shelf dividers, everything will still fall over; open top bins look messy unless meticulously folded; plastic drawers/bins aren't good to store clothing in. I have winter shirts/sweaters I need to store for 9 months a year, and non-maternity clothes I will need to store until I get back into them, and then I will need to store the maternity clothes. I would also like accessible storage for fitness clothing that I will be using 3-4 times/week. An additional goal is to NOT fill the floor space with drawers/units though, since in case of a hurricane, that is our only windowless room.

Not looking to spend a fortune on items, but want something nice looking. Any ideas? Thanks!

Sounds like a unique set of challenges. If you use space bags, you can protect your items from almost anything and store them indoors, outdoors, basement, attic, garage, shed...or compress them to store better in this closet. The bags I have seen have a flat shape, meaning they could be FILED standing up into the top area of the closet.

Another thing that comes to mind for your top shelves is tall kitchen wastebaskets. These will help you corral your clothing on a tall shelf with plenty of headroom. They are narrow to sit on the shelf, but would keep the clothing from toppling off the shelves. Even if they started to tip, they would probably not come crashing down, they would probably catch on the wall above the closet doorway. This would be the way to store stuff you are not wearing at the moment, like your regular clothes while you maternity clothes while you are pregnant, or your maternity clothes when you are not...as well as out of season clothes, in this case all your sweaters now that it is coming on summer.

The clothing you are wearing right now needs to be out and accessible. If you have lots of rod space and little reachable shelves, you can use one of these. You can get them lots of different kinds of stores, and they can be used for socks, undies, bras, tee shirts, workout items, or anything else you prefer to fold.

http://www.qvc.com/qic/qvcapp.aspx/view.2/app.detail/params.aol_refer.false.tpl.detail.msn_refer.false.item.H139005.ref.GPA?cm_ven=GOOGLEPRODUCTADS&cm_cat=For%20the%20Home&cm_pla=Laundry%20&cm_ite=H139005

However, if you have plenty of rod space, I bet you can find a way to hang almost anything on a hanger in a way that doesn't destroy the garment, just get clever. You can hang bras by the armhole, panties by the leg hole, you can fold stretchy shirts over the bottom of a hanger, etc. Also just because they aren't fancy and maybe you don't care if they wrinkle, doesn't mean they have to be stuffed in a drawer or stacked up in a pile. I hang my sleep shirts, tees, tanks, sleep pants, my sweat pants, anything that can be hung, because I have lots of rod space, few drawers, and hangers are cheap. This also enables you to see everything you have.

And if you don't have a lot of rod space, you can create more with a doubler like this. The bottom rod is suspended from the top one.

http://www.stacksandstacks.com/images/product/reg-20137.jpg