I Made Over My Closet With a Container Store Elfa System and OMG, the Sock Storage

Author image: jillian quint, editor-in-chief of purewow

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Published Apr 9, 2021

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It’s no secret that I’m a Container Store obsessive. But while I’ve previously chronicled my love affair with Elfa shelving in my living room, I’d never actually used it for its original purpose—closets. (Guests don’t open closets…nobody has to see my squalor except for me, right?)

Fortunately, prompted by some late pandemic deep-cleaning, my husband and I were motivated to rethink the side-by-side his and hers closets in our bedroom which, when we began this endeavor, were filled with things like an ill-fitting dresser, an old air conditioner and so, so many boxes labeled “old photos/misc.”

Enter: The Container Store Elfa System!

Both closets’ shameful beginnings

Though I certainly could have designed the closets myself using The Container Store’s intuitive online tools, I decided to meet virtually for a free consultation with Courtney Lomonaco, an absolutely incredible closet designer who, one gets the impression, pretty much lives to do things like maximize square footage in the name of sock storage. She helped me measure the spaces and talk through our needs (drawers for pants, overhead shelving, room for a 10-year-old wedding dress), then got to work designing two modular systems.

His and hers renderings

There are many ingenious tweaks in these designs, but a few of the notable ones are how she included different-sized drawers for smaller items and managed to give me way more space and prevent my shirts from pooling on top of my drawers, simply by moving the closet rod up several inches. For my husband, she provided shelves (to keep shoes off the floor), drawers (to tuck away clothes) and overhead storage (for all the memorabilia he insists on holding onto).

Once we had settled on a design, we placed the order and started obsessively tracking our packages.

Jillian Quint

TCS can help with installation, but we opted to DIY because it’s honestly, truly intuitive. One single top track serves as the concept behind the entire Elfa system (The Container Store offers several custom closet lines, at several different price points; our Elfa designs clocked in at about $700 per closet). Once you install said track, everything else hangs off it in a modular arrangement that is easy to adjust and makes mercifully few holes in your walls. It took us about three hours to install each unit, but much of that involved the old is-that-or-isn’t-that-a-stud game.

Jillian Quint

The drawer units in both closets actually sit on the floor and employ simple, sliding mesh baskets that fit snugly into the frame. One thing I love about Elfa is how they’ve truly thought of everything—tiny stoppers keep the drawers from extending too far and sleek veneers affix to the exposed frame, to give it a more polished look.