Building What Works for Us

When Michael and I got married 14 years ago, we had about four and a half years together before we were blessed with children. Those years were such a gift. Although we were hit with the repeated heartbreak of pregnancy loss and infertility struggles—things that could strain any marriage—we found ways to grow together and take our minds off what brought sadness. We bought our first home. We learned how to be homeowners. We tackled projects on weekends. We figured out what we enjoyed doing together and what we didn't. Most importantly, we had the time to create a home that worked for us. One which we later sold, but that's beside the point. One of my favorite projects was renovating our master closet. For months, we looked at prefabricated closet systems. While they looked nice, they were expensive and functionally limiting. They came in predetermined layouts with fixed combinations of shelves, drawers, and hanging space. They looked "fine," but not exciting. I know... how exciting should a closet be? But if we were going to spend money changing something, I really wanted to love it. May I also mention that we were completely broke? The more we looked, the more I thought, Why am I trying to make my clothes fit someone else's design? I wanted my work clothes together. My casual clothes together. My workout clothes together. Dresses and long skirts in their own section. I wanted shelves exactly where I wanted them—not where someone else decided they should be. I kept thinking, Can't we just make exactly what we want ourselves? So one night over dinner, I casually asked Michael if we could design and build our own closet. Now folks, Michael might not have known this back then, but after 14 years of marriage, he definitely knows what the word "we" means whenever there's a home project involved. "We" means I come up with the idea. "We" means I spend hours researching, measuring, sketching, and designing. "We" means Michael reviews the plans, offers modification requests, and then somehow turns our collective vision into reality. Technically... I build absolutely nothing. I'm less of a builder and more of a junior architect with a clipboard and strong opinions. Thankfully, Michael is incredibly talented, patient, and willing to entertain my "What if we just..." ideas. Together, we've found a rhythm that plays to both of our strengths. As it turned out, we could build a custom closet for far less than buying one of the prefabricated systems—and we could design it exactly how we wanted. So that's exactly what we did. This project also became our first real test as a married couple. And by "test," I mean living without a functioning closet for almost a month. Every morning started with trying to remember where various clothes were. Shoes somehow ended up in three different rooms. And I think we visited Lowe's enough times that they probably knew us by name. Before we built a single shelf, I emptied the entire closet. I sorted my clothes into categories, measured the total width of the hangers for each section, and designed the layout accordingly. It also became the perfect opportunity to donate clothes I no longer loved. (If you've read my Only Good Choices post, you know that's one of my favorite things.) Once we had a plan, the real work began. We (Michael) removed every wire shelf and hanging rod. We (Michael) patched every hole in the drywall. We (Michael) painted the walls a soft gray. (Yes, gray. In my defense, this was over ten years ago, and I am technically a millennial.) Then we (Michael) built floor-to-ceiling shelving and hanging sections out of MDF, painted everything a rich deep brown, and installed every shelf and rod exactly where we wanted it. Since I had... let's call it... a slightly larger wardrobe than Michael, we agreed he would take one side of the closet while I claimed the other side and the back wall. The finished closet wasn't just beautiful. It worked perfectly. Every morning, everything was exactly where we expected it to be. This was our first venture into learning to build systems that fit our life. That mindset has influenced almost everything we've done since. If something isn't working for us, we think through constructively how to make it better. The world is full of ideas. Borrow them. Improve them. Customize them. Design what works for you. That's become one of our guiding principles over the years: simplify and modify the things we can so we have more time, energy, and margin for the things that matter most.

A glimpse into the Before...

One view of the After...as this was not a large closet, we maximized every amount of space we had. The end result was perfectly us.