Wednesday, October 10, 2012

costume closet hack

Our play costumes have a new home in the playroom.


When we moved here, I set up the playroom with all of our cube units from our previous house, and just set them up in a row along the back wall.


At first, we kept our costumes in an open toy chest in the playroom area.  That was kind of a mess, and the toy chest took up a lot of room.


Then I transferred all the costumes to a plastic bin that I stored underneath the sofa.  This was much neater, but since the kids couldn't see the costumes, they didn't play with them nearly as much.


A few weeks ago one of the kids used the cube storage as a ladder and broke the interior shelves.


 I decided that this would be a good excuse to turn the cube unit into a costume closet. I have wanted one ever since seeing this one at Rambling Renovators.

I took out the interior of the cube unit.  This cube unit was a cheap one from Home Depot, and all I did was unscrew the top and loosen the screws on one side, enabling me to just wiggle the posts out and remove the interior. Then I tightened everything back up so it was reassembled. As a side note, we nailed the pegboard to the back of the unit to give it more structural support; the unit didn't come with that on the back.


I screwed a closet rod socket in the top sides of the unit. These are about $2 at Lowes or your local hardware store; you put the rod in the closed side and then slide the other end in the open side.  I discovered these last year when our tension shower rod kept falling down.



I actually used a 24 - 48 inch shower curtain rod for $7 as the closet rod.  Using a wooden dowel would have been about $2 cheaper, but the saw at Lowes was broken and thus I went with the expedient route.  (Yes, you could just use the tension rod, but my kids will rip that down in a hot second, so I went with the additional reinforcement of a closet rod socket.)


I lined the back with fabric I had in my stash.


And voila, a costume closet for $9.


The playroom has been gone through a serious purge.  With the costume closet, we lost 9 bin spots, and I moved another 6-bin cube from the other end up to the Princess's room.  The blank spot on the end is to make room for a new play kitchen that should be arriving this week.


Its working; our neighborhood has seen an invasion of terrifying pirate clowns complete with hook hands and cutlasses.


If you have kids, how do you store your play costumes?


8 comments:

  1. Ah so much better! I used to store mine in a big chest as well ... always a huge MESS!! What a creative and awesome MOM! Your kids are very lucky indeed!! xo

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  2. That was totally my clown costume when I was in Brownies and we had to march in the halloween parade.

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  3. I need to do the same thing with our costumes. Yours looks great!

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  4. Love this idea. We seriously have costume overload at my house. I need to purge - Brandy

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  5. Super-clever and cute, too. We had a dress-up trunk. It worked, but this is much nicer.

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  6. I really love this idea and need to pass it on to my brothers and sister for their kids' dress-up clothes! I especially like how it keeps them visible for spontaneous play AND they're hung at a level they can access on their own.

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  7. What a good idea, love the easy to assemble tips about using a tension rod and socket - that could be used in quite a few other places as well.

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  8. We used a wicker basket- laundry size- so T+C could look through, find whatever and clean up was easy. Also, basket could be moved outside , to bedroom or porch. Love your pictures and stories -- and cookies too. Aunt Reggie

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