Deciding What to Put in My Van #3 – Closet and Shoe Storage

    Hello! This is another series post for my blog! If you would like to read the first two of these, here are the links: 

Deciding What to Put in My Van #1

Deciding What to Put in My Van #2

    This post is going to be about how I want to design my closet and my shoe storage in my van. These two things are important for a few reasons: I like my clothes, I can use all the extra storage space I can get, and I need both of these things to survive living in my van. 

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Closet

     The thing I am going to talk about first is the design of my closet. I did not have any idea of how to design my closet before I saw this YouTuber, Jannelle Eliana, who had made her closet be this huge drawer underneath her bed that slides out into the main space of the van. 

    I really like this idea, since it would provide a lot of storage space for my clothes, but would not take up any wall space. However, there are a few problems with this design. One of the main problems I have is that the drawer can only be as wide as the open space inside of my van. This means that the drawer would not be as wide as it possibly could be, due to there being cabinets along the side of my van. This may be a good thing, because I can store other things in the space that I cannot use for my clothes.

     Another problem I see that will come with this idea isn’t really an important one. When I imagine myself living in my van, I do not imagine having to bend over every morning, throughout the day, and every night to access my closet, which would be on the floor. I don’t really like the concept of my closet being on the floor, but there is only one other real option. 

    The other option for my closet would be to make a tall cabinet that went from the ceiling to the floor for my clothes. I do not really like this idea either, because it would take up space that I could be using for other things that I access more than my clothes, and it would take up wall space and make my van feel smaller than it actually is. 

    One of the main things I want my van to have is an open feel. I do not want to feel cramped in this small space, and I know that will be difficult, but I am going to try and prevent that as much as possible. I think that having my closet under the bed would prevent the van from feeling cramped, even though there are some other small problems with it. 

    If I do not store my clothes in a large cabinet, I can design the cabinets to be more shallow and smaller to fit things that are easier to store than clothes, which would definitely make my van feel bigger. This would create more floor space, which is a big part of what I want in my van. 

    Even if I do not end up putting my closet in a drawer under my bed, I still hope that I will be able to maximize the open space in the middle of my van. 

Shoe Storage

 Even though I will already have a closet space in my van, I still want a place to put shoes in my van when you are just coming in. A big part of feeling comfortable in a space for me is keeping it clean, so I do not want me or my guests to be wearing their dirty shoes in the inside of my van. 

    There will be a small section of my closet where I can store shoes, such as winter boots or extra sandals, things like that. I want to be able to store shoes that I do not wear all the time under my bed so I have more spaces open for shoes next to the main door. 

    The shoe storage next to the main door will be a small shelf that is no more than two feet high, with several spots for shoes. I really like this idea, and I think it would be really easy to implement. I also think that when I have people over to my van, it will make them feel more at home because there is already going to be a place for their shoes, and they do not have to just leave them on the floor somewhere. 

    I think this is also going to make it easier to ask people to take their shoes off, because there is already a place for them. I do not really want to ask people to take their shoes off and then ask them to leave them by the door or something vague. I want to minimize the amount of dirt that gets in my van as much as possible. 

    This would also be helpful for shoes that I need to put on quickly every once in a while, like sandals for running outside of the van if something needs to get done, or my sneakers for going to exercise. I like the fact that this easy access storage is not hard to get to, like the closet under my bed will be, relatively. 

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    That is the end of this post! There will definitely be more of these kinds of posts coming in the future, since I have a lot more cool ideas for things to put inside of my van when I start to design and build it out. I have a few more of these planned, and more are on the way when I start to brainstorm more ideas. If you guys have any ideas of what to put in my van, please leave it down in the comments, so I can research it more!

    Thank you all so much for reading my blog post and supporting my journey! I really hope you guys enjoyed this post, and if you have any ideas for different kinds of posts, please leave them down in the comments so I can add them to the list!