I agree with both Annz and Patty Cakes' suggestions. I don't have a dedicated linen closet, but instead have built-in linen cabinets in our two main bathrooms. Neither have drawers, just shelves. But, I do have a similar set up to the one you've pictured, on one side of our guest room's walk-in closet that I'm using to store extra sheets, blankets and comforters. In there, my upper doors are double ones, making access to the shelves easy. But the drawers, deep as they are, are not working very well at all for storing my comforters in. I'm going to try Patty's roll & tie idea with them. instead. The drawers do hold sheet sets, neatly folded inside one pillow case fairly well, though. I can set them on end ( like books) in the drawers for easy access. The problem, up until Patty's idea, is that the comforters folded on the shelves are so puffy that my cabinet doors won't stay closed. Anyhoo, just more food for thought. But, how wonderful to be getting ANY type of extra storage, so I'm happy for you! Don't forget to post After pics of us. Lynn

so bring the shelves *most* of the way out (and put the trim on the inside BEFORE you install the shelves--shelves are usually the "afterthought") The access to the top shelf is a problem, true. What if you made the bottom half of the closet 16 inches or so, and the top half 12 inches? It would mean that you couldn't STAND that close to the upper shelf, and that your step ladder wouldn't be that close, but you would *probably* be close enough. And don't plan on keeping too much up there on that top shelf. At least, not anything you want often. Oh--one other "top shelf of the closet behind the header" idea--I found that SHORTER boxes are easier to use up there. I put my DH's out-of-season clothes in two under-bed boxes, and stacked them. before that, I had really struggled to get a full-height box in and out of that closet, but once I switched to a short box, I found it would slide between the shelf (and its contents) and the header much more easily (of course, I needed some EXTRA room above the box so I can tip the box...)

What you store is totally personal. I have three IKEA Pax 36" wardrobes (in the white, raised panel design) and love them. I have 2 deep ones for my clothes (there's only one closet in the master bd, and it's 4' wide) and one shallow one for linens. Few halls will be able to take a deep cabinet. Ours is 6' wide, and because of the door layout, a 2' deep closet would be claustrophobic. We do not have many linens, but our shallow cabinet is FULL with just linens for our family of four, plus some dirty clothes space at the bottom. The nice thing about the depth, though, is that everything is very accessible. We keep our meds, tp, etc. in the bathroom. Triage everything BEFORE investing in more storage. How many towels do you really need? How many meds are old? How many are duplicates? Lots of people have Nyquil AND Mucinex AND Sudafed without realizing that there is only ONE effective OTC decongestant, ONE effective OTC expectorant, and ONE effective OTC cough suppressant. Have a small bottle of decongestant/expectorant for the day (cough suppressant optional), one expectorant only for night plus Afrin for night use in emergencies, and that's it. With a bottle of pain killers and a swig of the alcohol of your choice, and you can recreate whatever branded blend you desire with a lot less total space. The basic rule is to learn to check ingredients before buying and make sure you don't duplicate products.

Assuming this closet is for storing clothes, here’s a rough idea of what you can do with an Ikea pax system 40”wide x 14” deep + 20”wide x 14”deep (customizable to suit your needs of course). Hopefully you have at least 14” to the right of the door frame to the wall, otherwise the cabinets will stick out a bit. That will leave 30” of space at the back to allow for hanging clothes. On the back wall you can do double rods and shelves. (unless you have a lot of dresses to hang then just do a single rod.)