The label promised eighteen inches of clearance. The space between my bed and the wall? Seventeen and three-quarter inches give or take.
Let me paint you a picture of my life right then: Me. Despair. And way too many dressers for such a small bedroom.
I had been looking for a long time. Like genuinely start-panic-shopping-if-I-see-another-dresser-in-target kind of long.
I was cramming jumpers under my bed, hanging clothes I didn’t care about on a chair that was supposed to be for sitting, and storing all my “nice” clothes in the living room closet because they were too long to hang up with the rest of my things.
Looked sloppy. Was sloppy. Wasn’t cute.
Was eco-friendly living at its finest. My issue wasn’t that small dressers didn’t exist. Small bedroom furniture is one of the easiest styles to find these days.
My issue was finding one that would fit the shallow space beside my bed, not cover my heat vent (hello weird dude’s thrift store bookshelf I bought before I knew any better), and have enough storage to make investing in bedroom furniture worthwhile. All while still being cheaper than buying a brand spankin’ new shoebox dresser from IKEA. I checked all the boxes.
The super tall and skinny version that leaned forward every time I pulled out the top drawer. The vintage version I purchased off Facebook marketplace that smelled like old lady perfume and wasn’t vintage at all (more like returned-by-the-buyer-after-one-day-old). The crap I built from Target that only lasted me one season before the bottom drawer started sagging.
And then I found the winner. At a local consignment shop I literally walked past every day to get to the bus stop. Side note: I didn’t even go into the store intending to look at dressers.
I was catching up with a friend and needed to kill twenty minutes of downpour so I ducked inside out of the rain. And there it was: hiding behind a thrift lamp and large box of random picture frames. So this “dresser” is what I would classify as borderline rustic/early metro moderne if we’re being generous.
Dark walnut veneer, four knobs, three drawers that glide effortlessly on their tracks. But what really sold me wasn’t the style. It was the dimensions.
32 inches wide x 16 inches deep x 30 inches tall. Those measurements are what allowed this beauty into my room. See while the width and height were in the perfect range for my limited space, the 16″ depth was what set it apart from every other candidate.
That, and the hardware barely sticks out from the face of the dresser. Sold. For forty-five dollars.
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I laughed out loud, which isn’t great customer negotiation technique but the lady laughed with me and assured me it had been sitting in her store for months. Nobody else was interested in such a small dresser. Small?!
How could something so small make a difference? Simple. It holds way more than my bifuqitous storage options.
Bear with me while I explain why. Like I said before, the real game changer here is the depth. Most dressers I looked at weren’t deep enough to fit much more than tank tops and underwear.
But with drawers this deep I can fit: folded jumpers AND jeans AND workout clothes AND all my underwear AND have room to spare. Organisation game strong with this one. I keep my heavier items on the bottom: jeans, bulky jumpers, etc.
My day-to-day clothes on the middle drawer: t- shirts, workout clothes, pj’s you name it. Delicates and accessories on top. Oh and I toss in a cheap wooden tray I found at Target for $15 that helps keep my jewellery from turning into a big knot (I also manage to fit that on here somehow).
BUT, what really made my room was adding something on top. Now hear me out I’m not having a quarter life crisis and buying all the stuff to furnish my grown up bedroom. I simply added something on top of the dresser that didn’t feel like clutter.
A small lamp (BRILLIANCE bathed my face in soft light at night instead of the cold white glare of my ceiling light), a small ceramic dish I picked up at a pottery sale years ago for easy access to earrings I tend to take off before bed, and my pothos plant that thrives on nothing lives on top. It may not look like much, but those few inches on top of my dresser changed the entire vibe of my room. Literally.
My bed now fits flush against the wall. Instead of a “closet” corner of thrown together furniture and piles of clothes I have half of my dresser and actual chair legs to sit on. Here’s the thing about small spaces- when you find the right furniture that fits inside them weird miracles happen.
It looks and feels like a cohesive part of my room. Here’s what else I learned: When decorating a small space, and maximising your storage, the key is making sure whatever you choose to store things in fits the scale of your room. Not only does my dresser match the scale of my room, but it actually matches how I live inside my room.
I used to struggle to put away clean laundry because I just didn’t have the space.
I went from this: Clothes everywhere. To this: Inside a dresser and available when I need them!
The drawers are split into categories that make sense with how I like to get dressed in the morning. I finally have surface storage on top of my dresser without it looking cluttered. My dresser isn’t smashing into my bed when I try to close the drawer.
It just works. Total cost? Forty-five for the dresser, fifteen for the tray, thirty-five for the lamp, twelve for the plant.
Less than a hundred bucks to fix a problem I had been googling “how to maximise clothes storage in a small bedroom” about 867571 times. Spend some time considering what you actually need and you’ll be surprised what you can find. You probably already own.
