By Gene and Katie Hamilton

Keeping closets orderly and uncluttered is an ongoing challenge for most of us, even those who are tidy by nature. Like a garden, when a closet becomes overgrown with stuff a little selective pruning is required. While a closet with a single shelf and rod makes it difficult to stay organized, one with multiple shelves and rods makes it easy.

You'll find a number of local retailers who specialize in customizing closets and most home centers offer the installation service as well. But if you're handy and want to do it yourself, you can find Web sites like www.easyclosets.com that make it easy to design and install shelving components to fit your storage needs.

Don't want to tackle this job? Click here to get to Home Advisor and it will open in a new tab and you’ll have to answer some basic questions about your job followed by Carpenters in your area.

No matter who does the work, your job begins with removing what's inside the closet and defining exactly what you want to store there in the future. That determines the amount of hanging and shelving space that's needed.

A closet shop will charge $462 to design and install shelving, rods and dividers in a 6-foot wide closet. You can buy the components for $325 and do it yourself and pocket a 29 percent saving.

Now you know the average cost to install solid closet shelves, which includes the labor and material, and what’s involved, so you can decide to do it yourself or hire a contractor. Don’t forget to adjust the cost to where you live by adding your ZIP Code.

Improvement and Repair Cost Updated 2019

The cost and time data is generated by averaging labor and material data from annually updated cost books used by contractors and refined by the authors' experience remodeling 13 houses. They are authors of 20 home improvement books and Do It Yourself or Not, a weekly column syndicated by Tribune Content Agency. The national cost can be adjusted by ZIP Code.