Why didn't I think of this sooner??

I had a bit of a revelation this morning as I was getting dressed. Why I haven't thought of this sooner, I'll never know. It seems so obvious now!

My walk-in closet is small but adequate. It's functional, but has three big drawbacks that are pretty aggravating:

1. The door blocks the right side of the closet. To get to my dresses and the shoe racks on that side, you have to go into the closet and shut the door. Functional? Yes. Annoying? YES

You can see here how the door blocks part of the right side of the closet

2. The door blocks nearly half of the top and bottom rod on the left side of the closet. That's why there are skirts (pic above) and shoes (pic below) in that section. If you use regular size hangers, you can't shut the closet door. Yes, really, the design is that poorly done!

Two feet each of the bottom and top rods aren't accessible.

3. There is no vent (and little insulation) in the closet. As a result, the door has to always stay open. Otherwise the temperature soars in the summer and freezes in the winter. I don't know about you, but I really don't like walking into a 50 degree closet at 6:45 a.m. come winter.

Clearly, the solution here is to get rid of the darn door. Again, not sure why it has taken me well over a year to figure this out. The door was relatively easy to take off. Just had to pop the pins out of the hinges. A bigger problem was where to store the door, as storage in our apartment is non-existent.

I considered a few storage options, including under my bed and propped against the back wall of my closet (where the hamper is above). The first option didn't work because it would displace some items we have stored under there. Plus, it weirded me out. A door under the bed makes me think of direct access to a monsters' lair or something equally strange. The second option just looked atrocious.

In the end, I did some measuring and realized the door would justfit behind the couch in the living room. Perfect! I simply removed the knob and stored it with the door pins. I may or may not have broken a small piece off the inside of the knob in the process. However, I quickly reassembled it and realized it worked just fine, so let's just go with that little bit being a "non load-bearing wall" of the knob and pretend it didn't happen.

Stay tuned for the after picture. I'm not sure what I'm going to do yet. Probably just get a short tension rod and a cheapy curtain so I can cover the space when we entertain. Wow. That sounded so classy didn't it? Let's rephrase: We're renting, so I'll figure out something that looks nice but is super budget-friendly. There, that's better.

P.S. - Yes, my husband and I have separate closets. We have two walk-ins, but neither is big enough for more than one person. I have a lot of shoes; he has a lot of golf polos. It happens.