I love living in my 1920's bungalow, but an annoying drawback is lack of closet space. My house has four bedrooms, two down and two up. All the bedrooms are small (the largest is 11 x 11; the smallest is 10 x 10). A previous owner removed a closet from the smallest bedroom to enlarge the bathroom that's adjacent. The closets in all the other bedrooms are very small. In addition, the closets in the upstairs bedrooms are tucked under the roofline, and you have to stoop if you step in more than a few feet to avoid hitting your head on the sloped ceiling. And don't even try to find something in there after dark -- there are no lights.

In the 1920's, most people didn't have the possessions they do now, so minimal closet space was ok. And some, like Frank Lloyd Wright, felt that storage space was an inhibitor to healthy living anyway, because it just enables us to accumulate junk (I think he was right about that). But I am a 21st century girl, and I have lots of stuff that I want to store and be able to find when I need it. So I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out how to remedy my lack of closet space.

I was spending a lot of time upstairs designing my second bathroom (see bathroom article in the archives), and one day I focused on the long wall in the upstairs hallway outside the two upstairs bedrooms. At one end of the hall, near the floor, was an access door that was about 3 feet tall by 2.5 feet wide. I opened the door, squatted down and looked inside. After brushing myself off (man, it was dirty in there!) and grabbing a flashlight, I sort of duck walked in there and found… a large open space, tall enough to stand up and going the length of the hallway, about 16 feet long. What a wonderful area that was being totally ignored. And this is where I found a great closet space.

I wanted my closet to look like those wonderful built-ins that were so common in bungalows. After talking to builders, architects, even closet companies, I could find no one who was willing to design it for me. Everyone pretty much said, tell me what you want, and I can build it. The closet companies wouldn't even do that much. They said, they could install the shelving, etc., after the space was already built. So it was up to me to design my closet.

I knew I wanted a bank of drawers that would pull out into the hallway and that would look like a dresser just built into the wall. For that, I knew I would need a cabinetmaker. From there, the design just sort of fell into place. I knew I would need lots of hanging space, so I envisioned a long middle section for hanging clothes (this turned out to be about 8 feet long). Then finally, I felt a section of shelves would round things out nicely at the far end of the hallway. Since the space was very deep, the shelves pull out.

As much as I like unpainted wood, I painted everything white for two reasons: first, all the trim in my house had already been painted when I acquired it, and second, white trim would have been quite common upstairs when the house was built. So it's a nice clean open space. I added a Charles Rennie Mackintosh inspired pendant at the top of the stairs for color.

Now I have tons of storage. Since I have added my bathroom and the closet, it feels like my little bungalow is twice as big.

Have you solved some storage problems in your Arts and Crafts home? If so, we’d love to share them on our site. Please send them to us at sue@mibungalow.com.

Are you trying to find space in your old home? Check out some of these sources – they inspired me.