Free Clothes!
OK, I’ve hit a bit of a writing road block this week. It has rained for the past month, and I was busy building an arc. After ‘cashing out’ I was picturing me taking the summer off, lying on a raft in our pool enjoying a cool beverage under the perfect blue sky…. not so much. All of this rain has lead to me organizing every room and closet in the house to such specifications that the child that Martha Steward and Tim Gunn would have had an orgasm beholding these works of art.
So let’s talk about that. Yes…I have a little closet fetish. Don’t hate me! I know it seems a bit exhausting, but it actually is quite easy to keep perfect once it’s set up. That’s right… I LOVE an absolutely over the top closet. It’s a happier place than Disney to me. My own little happy world! And I’ve had crazy organized closets for the last 10+ years. So, in the spirit of sharing… let me give you a few of my secrets.
A. Hanging items: ”Form Follows Function” - this is true for every design element. Whether it’s a home, a building, or a process… this is a secret to success. With a closet, the question to ask yourself is “what setting will I use this for?” If you organize your closet in this way, it literally will take you all of 15 seconds to pick out an outfit. Just categorize each piece of clothing by how you’ll use it. A few ideas:
- Business Excellence: you’re ‘go to’ suits if you have an interview or a meeting with the CEO. These are your power suits. Hung from light to dark colors, left to right.
- Business Regular: these are your meet and potato suits. Hung from light to dark colors, left to right.
- Business Casual: these are suit jackets you wear for a meeting or casual Friday or a weekend get together. Trust me, you want to be casual, but you’ll need a jacket, because invariably the room will be 27 degrees. Hung left to right, light to dark.
- Dress Pants: hang them long (no one wants to see a crease!) left to right, light to dark.
- Casual Pants: hang them long (no one wants to see a crease in these either!) left to right, light to dark.
- Shirts that go under a dress suit: hang them left to right, light to dark and no sleeves to long sleeves.
- Shirts that I wear alone: shirts that I wear with jeans or casual pants. I hang them by sleeve length first (sleeveless on left to long sleeves on right) and from light to dark.
- Casual Dresses: light to dark from left to right.
- Formal Dresses: light to dark, from left to right.
- I know this is a little over the top, but for a wonderful indulgence, treat yourself to matching wooden hangers for your entire closet. It helps the visual uniformity and actually helps maintain your high quality clothes. Straight wooden hangers (as apposed to curved ones) make for more room.
B. Shelves:
- Sweaters: folded by color, on shelves above hanging clothes. If you hang a knit or sweater, it will stretch out of shape.
- Shoes: separate by function (business excellence, business, rainy day business, business casual, casual, athletic/functional). Floor to ceiling shelves are optimal for this. But if you don’t have room, you can do double or triple floor shelves, or behind the door “pockets” that hold LOTS of shoes.
- Behind shelves with doors: Books and receipts. Something that is really helpful for receipts to keep them in order is a bankers stake. You can take receipts out of your pocket or pocket book and ’stab’ them onto the stake. It keeps them neat and in order. A change sorter is also great to have here when you empty your bag or pockets.
- For a little extra fun, put a plug on a shelf with doors. Then charge your cell phone, camera, and have an iPod speaker plugged in. Charge as you sleep and listen to jams as you get dressed. When done, close the doors and wha-la! Nice and organized and clean.
C. As for drawers, and oh my WORD, I love drawers. I find it’s best to have separate drawers for each kind of undergarment, with individual separators (do I even need to mention at this point go from left to right, light to dark?). Here are a few ideas for drawers:
- Undies
- Bras
- Sox (casual and suit)
- Stockings
- Shorts
- T-Shirts - more dressy, sleeveless
- T-Shirts - causal, with sleeves
- Work-out clothes
- Dry cleaning / special care laundry - to be cleaned
- Jewelry (every day…. fine jewelry should be kept in a safe, bolted to the floor)
- Eye glasses - if you have multiple eyeglasses, label the cases and put them in a drawer for easy access.
D. For an extra special little something, add a wall with commercial type metal hangers for your hand bags. The wall hangers are adjustable to accomodate your ever changing size/shape needs. And the only other option is to have your bag sit on a shelf… believe me, they will fall over and collapse. This is much better.
Wether your closet is somewhat small or over the top, having everything organized and by functional usage makes it a breeze to know what you have in there! And in these days of belt tightening (no pun really necessary), why not shop in your closet? The first step is a bit of cleaning, clearing and organizing… you’ll be amazed what you have in there…for FREE!
OK so all this talk about 
