Home Saw a great house, BUT...

[TravelingGal]

In two out of the three rooms (including the master), there were no CLOSETS!

Keep in mind, this is LA, so by "great" I mean something that isn''t disgusting in my price range. This house is small, under 1200 sq feet, and it seems the closets were sacrificed to make a master bath. The third little room looks like it never had a closet.

HOW do people survive without closets?? The rooms are too small to put in an armoire or something.

Which made me wonder...life must have been different in the 50s when they were building these homes. Did Dad only have a couple of nice suits for work and Mom only 3 pairs of shoes, an apron and a Sunday best outfit? Where the heck did all the JUNK go?????

 

[fisherofmengirly]

Was the home occupied? If so, where to do the current owners put their clothes?

I always wonder about things like that when I visit older homes... where did they put all their "stuff?" We''re a "stuff" loving society these days...

 

[zoebartlett]

That''s weird. I know it''s very common for some homes not to have a closet, but it''s not very convenient. When we moved into my parents'' house, my sister''s room didn''t have one. At first they bought an armoire with a rod inside and she used that for years. Eventually my parents had a real closet built for her.

So what did you think of the house? Not having any storage space would be a deal breaker for me probably, but are there ways that you could get creative with finding storage space?

 

[Jas12]

I am living an almost closet-free life (two teeny tiny closets in my whole 2 story house)
Dives me crazy--esp now with so much baby crap!
My house is over 100 years old, so i get it. not as much ''stuff'' back then. But it is a huge part of why we are moving now.

Any way you can fit some sort of storage in...somewhere? take down a wall, under a stair case, something?

 

[canuk-gal]

HI:

Common in Europe, no? People own wardrobes.....don''t think I could live without a closet tho...

cheers--Sharon

 

[sctsbride09]

Hubs and I rent a house built in the twenties, it has NO storage and I hate it! While it has some nice attributes, the lack of clothes space is a problem. We have 2 bedrooms and only 1 has a teeny tiny closet. So most of our stuff ends up sitting clean in a basket til theres closet space and our ahem my

shoe collection is under the bed lol. And dont even get me started on how freakin small my kitchen is. Needless to say, we want more storage when we buy.

 

[TravelingGal]

Fisher, it''s a REO and sitting empty. Jas12, there is no way to put in a closet unless you knock down the side of the house and build out. It''s a one story house. Wow, I probably have more storage space than you in my little apartment!

Storage space is a must for sane living, IMHO. Zoe, it was an absolute dealbreaker. No way. We turned down a FSBO house who was willing to work with us on price because the closets were simply too small. This house was cuter, but far worse when it came to storage.

 

[onvacation]

Oh, come on now! It sounds perfect to me:

1 master bedroom
1 room for Amelia
1 WALK-IN CLOSET

 

[TravelingGal]

Date: 5/12/2009 11:05:01 PM
Author: onvacation
Oh, come on now! It sounds perfect to me:

1 master bedroom
1 room for Amelia
1 WALK-IN CLOSET

Ha, the third bedroom was about the size of one!!

 

[onvacation]

Hehee, so instead of these horrid things the rest of us have:

 

[onvacation]

you''d get....

Can you imagine the lighting! Swooooon indeed

 

[TravelingGal]

There are closets within that closet!!

 

[puffy]

YIKES....i HAVE to have closets. where would you put stuff? that''s just crazy!!! we have 2 unoccupied bedrooms right now, and both of those closets have MY stuff in it, only until my dream closet is finished, which i am hoping it will be similar to the one above, just not as big.
it could be do-able to make one of the bedrooms a closet/storage area, no?

 

[snlee]

Closets are a must for me too! Sucks when rooms have no closets and the rest of the house looks great. When I told my mom that rooms no longer have to have closets anymore to be considered a room, she couldn''t believe it!

 

[Elmorton]

We love old houses, so there's pretty much always going to be an issue with closets. Our master has a closet the size of a pea (DH gets that one) and my closet is in the guest room/study. Though space is limited, I think we're pretty inventive with organization. My closet has a double rack for clothes, a shelf, and hangers for my purses, bins for shoes, and a little drawer thing - and it's something like 3x3 ft? I also keep all my jeans/slacks/underwear in my dresser and lingerie in my cedar chest, and belts in Dh's closet. . Oh, and there's clothes/shoes in storage under the bed, and boots in the hall closet. It sounds a little nuts, but it totally works. My major trick is that EVERYTHING in my closet is something I like/fits/is in wearable condition. Once I've put an item on and discarded it twice because it doesn't look right, it goes to goodwill.

All of this said, I have no idea how we'll re-organize when we have a kid. I suppose then we'll be all about storage!

btw, one house we looked at was a 4 bedroom and the 4th bedroom was ITTY bitty, next to the master - they'd done exactly what someone suggested - made it into a walk-in! Perfect solution in my book, but DH was less impressed.

 

[MishB]

That would be a deal breaker for me. We''re hoping to buy another house by the end of the year, and it will either have a walk in wardrobe or space to install one. We will probably have to do some renovation, and I am fine with the idea of expanding into a smaller adjacent bedroom to convert it to a massive wardrobe/ensuite.

 

[onedrop]

Date: 5/12/2009 11:19:18 PM
Author: onvacation

you'd get....

Can you imagine the lighting! Swooooon indeed

onvacation: That closet is TDF! I DREAM of a room-sized closet like that. I'd probably never have enough shoes or clothes to fill it, but just the idea of it....wow!

TGal: I watch a lot of HGTV and on the House Hunters series and My First Place, the real estate agents address the lack of closets issue a lot. One agent mentioned that the lifestyles were different back then. Maybe Dad hung his suits in the one coat closet in the foyer area? Or maybe there was actually a chiffarobe, and probably a smaller bed in the parent's room? I'm to am curious about the storage solution.

 

[swimmer]

Tgal, If you love the house, you can deal. I totally understand, have been renting in various 150+ yr old houses for the past decade. It involves wardrobes. I personally don''t purchase clothes that wrinkle so the fact that my "closet" is an acute triangle under steep stairs that starts at my knees and goes to my head with a sideways bar for hanging things, isn''t really an issue. We share it. We have one of those beds with built in drawers underneath, but I''m guessing Boston requires more sweaters/fleece than LA, so that could be for toys and baby paraphernalia.

If you love the house and the location, you can figure out wardrobes/chiffarobes/shelving as you are a clever woman. Could the lack of closets help you negotiate a lower price?

 

[neatfreak]

That''s a hard call TGal. I grew up in a 300 year old farmhouse so I am used to small/non-existent closets. We had large dressers and storage chests outside of bedrooms where we would put away our seasonal clothes. Then we had toy chests to store our toys.

We just made an offer on a house that has very small/odd closets as well. But it does have closets in each of the bedrooms-they just aren''t large. I think I could make no closets in bedrooms work if the rest of the house was phenomenal. But only then...otherwise I think it would be such a PITA.

 

[movie zombie]

people had furniture to hold clothing. armoirs anyone?!

people also didn''t have 1200 square feet to live in for the most part.......

mz

 

[Burk]

Closet space is one of the reasons we''re moving from our current home. It''s almost 100 years old and I love old homes but I''m currently using one of our bedrooms as my closet. It would be a deal-breaker for me too.

 

[MichelleCarmen]

Date: 5/12/2009 11:19:18 PM
Author: onvacation

you''d get....

Can you imagine the lighting! Swooooon indeed

Wow, look at that. I don''t even have enough clothes to fill up one of those cabinets!

 

[MichelleCarmen]

Date: 5/13/2009 10:49:52 AM
Author: movie zombie
people had furniture to hold clothing. armoirs anyone?!

people also didn't have 1200 square feet to live in for the most part.......

mz

Didn't people mostly also have smaller beds? When did King size become in vogue for couples?

 

[Aloros]

I could live with a smaller closet, but I wouldn''t want to! We have a room-sized closet right now - even has its own window. Love love love it!

But no closet at all...?

No.

 

[purrfectpear]

Technically in realtor-speak no closet = no bedroom.

A room without a closet cannot be termed a "bedroom" just as a room without a window cannot be termed a bedroom. You can call it a bonus room, den, library or whatever...but NOT a bedroom. Could make for a very tough resale sitch once the crisis is over.

 

[oobiecoo]

Date: 5/12/2009 10:11:57 PM
Author:TravelingGal
In two out of the three rooms (including the master), there were no CLOSETS!

Keep in mind, this is LA, so by ''great'' I mean something that isn''t disgusting in my price range. This house is small, under 1200 sq feet, and it seems the closets were sacrificed to make a master bath. The third little room looks like it never had a closet.


HOW do people survive without closets?? The rooms are too small to put in an armoire or something.


Which made me wonder...life must have been different in the 50s when they were building these homes. Did Dad only have a couple of nice suits for work and Mom only 3 pairs of shoes, an apron and a Sunday best outfit? Where the heck did all the JUNK go?????

We lived a few years in the house my mom grew up in... built in the 40s or 50s. Both bedrooms had teeny tiny closets so I ended up with one of those oh-so-stylish rolling racks in my bedroom to hang the rest!

Can you do something like the "california closets" or that system from the Container Store on one wall maybe?

 

[TravelingGal]

Ha, I tell ya ladies, we''ve sure gotten used to "stuff", haven''t we?

Date: 5/13/2009 12:16:17 PM
Author: purrfectpear
Technically in realtor-speak no closet = no bedroom.

A room without a closet cannot be termed a ''bedroom'' just as a room without a window cannot be termed a bedroom. You can call it a bonus room, den, library or whatever...but NOT a bedroom. Could make for a very tough resale sitch once the crisis is over.

PP, I''ll have to look into this. They are definitely calling it a 3bdrm house.

Either way, I''m still waiting...just looking casually in the meantime.

 

[Burk]

Tgal~according to our real estate agent, PP is right. NO closet=no bedroom. Not that it really matters in this situation because that doesn''t make closets magically appear.

 

[TravelingGal]

Date: 5/13/2009 1:19:05 PM
Author: Burk
Tgal~according to our real estate agent, PP is right. NO closet=no bedroom. Not that it really matters in this situation because that doesn''t make closets magically appear.

What about doing the closet dance?

 

[Steel]

PP That is fascinating! Over here there is no such rule but perhaps it should be no closet = no bedroom!

TGal: I know you passed on the house but could you not have taken 600mm / 2ft of any wall to install a built in? Were the rooms already that bit tight?