I remember first seeing thin velvet hangers (you know the hangers I’m talking about – they are super thin covered in velvet) during one of my surreptitious visits to the QVC channel. (Once in a while I just like to see what they are selling! I’ve gotten a few good gift ideas by doing this). I have to say the presentations about these hangers turned me off.  They would show a closet overflowing with clothes then compare it to a closet that clearly had less than half of the same items hanging on the new super thin hangers. I snorted in outrage and changed the channel. It was pretty obvious the hangers were not creating a lot of change.

One of the most crammed closets in our house is the coat closet in the front hall. In fact, when guests come, we just lay their coats on the hope chest in the hall instead of trying to make room in the closet. Moving coats in that closet is an athletic event. You have to lean in, insert half of your body between two coats, then lean with all of your strength to get them to scootch over. We often cannot find the coat we need simply because they’re all falling off the hangers and smushed in too tightly.

After my parents came for Thanksgiving and getting their coats hung up was an Olympic event, I decided something had to be done. I really looked hard at what was happening in that closet. With four people, four seasons, and a daughter with a wardrobe hoarding problem (said in my most loving tone), we have way too many coats. I was able to weed out a couple to donate, but there is really no real thinning out to be done. Then I noticed that almost all of the coats are on big wooden or plastic suit hangers. The fat ones – at least an inch wide and if you take into account that they are curved, they actually take up several inches each. I started wondering if replacing these hangers could make a difference. I’m not going back to wire hangers and while we have some white plastic tubular hangers around I decided to try the new thin velvet hangers.

The package of 50 arrived from Amazon and the box was pretty small for 50 hangers. I got to work swapping them out. I was impressed. They are super thin. The velvet means nothing slips off of them.

They did make a difference in our crazy closet. No, it did not make it appear as spacious and empty as the QVC presentations imply. They make it easier to move the coats across the rack and now we can definitely squeeze in a couple more for guests more easily. I felt more organized with these in place – everything is uniform and it is easier to move the coats around the closet. The bottom line is if you have too many clothes in too small a space this is not going to solve your problem. It will however make it a bit easier to move things around and will give you a little extra space, particularly if you are replacing big nasty hangers.

I did break one hanger as I tried to reach around to squeeze the last coat in the very back of the closet. It just was not willing to bend to get there.

I’m going to buy another box of them to use in my clothes closet mostly because I just like them and they will prevent things from slipping off the hangers. I don’t have a ton of big fat hangers there, but these are thinner than the ones I am using now so it will give me some space.

Have you tried these hangers? What did you think?

I remember first seeing thin velvet hangers (you know the hangers I’m talking about – they are super thin covered in velvet) during one of my surreptitious visits to the QVC channel. (Once in a while I just like to see what they are selling! I’ve gotten a few good gift ideas by doing this). … Read more →

I’ve won one storage battle. The kids’ bathroom has a little narrow closet I use to store medications and supplements, as well as first aid supplies and any potion or lotion you can name. I’m a bit of a hoarder when it comes to this stuff. While I do regularly purge and toss expired prescriptions, I have managed to gather a pretty large A to Z collection of vitamins and supplements as well as OTC meds. The ones that are taken regularly live in a drawer in the kitchen. The rest were in this closet. Yes, it was ugly. I am loathe to throw them out since we seem to cycle back through ailments pretty regularly. However, even though I KNOW I have, say, ginger, or stinging nettle, I’m usually damned if I can actually find it when needed. I’ve been saying for a long time that what I need is a supplement library, where I could store everything alphabetically, so that I could find it when I need it.

It occurred to me that although this closet is tiny, the

shelves are set in pretty far and there is room to put shelves on the backs of the doors. Genius moment. I Googled to find shelving.  Here is what I  ordered from DrawerSlides.com. It was hard to find shelving narrow enough for this tiny door, so these were a bit pricey. We ordered three of them so we could outfit the door from top to bottom.

We installed the shelving (simple job with a power drill) and I got to work. First it was time for another purge, so I sorted through everything and filled a garbage bag. Next I organized supplements and OTCs that we would be mostly likely to use on the door. This was a challenge since some of the shelves were not very wide. I had only three shelves that would hold big bottles.

I organized it in roughly alphabetical order so I can find things. The shelves are so narrow that there is just one row per shelf, so there’s no chance of anything getting lost. Then I organized what was didn’t fit on the door. Prescription meds went into one plastic bin. OTCs went in another. Big bottles stood on shelves. First aid supplies went into two smaller plastic boxes.

I also tackled the job of the top shelf of this closet which holds extra shampoo (people and dog!) as well as sunscreen and bug spray. I tossed a lot of almost empty bottles and used a plastic shoebox to put all the sunscreen together in one place so I can just pull it out instead of rummaging in the closet for it.

Total time for this project: about an hour. Total cost: $90

Satisfaction level: Priceless!

I’m so happy with how this worked out that I’m ordering more of this shelving to put inside a similar closet in the master bath.

Check your house for backs of doors where you can add some extra storage. I’ve done this in my pantry. The doors under your kitchen and bathroom sinks are usually a good spot to add some extra storage if you don’t have a closet like this!

I’ve won one storage battle. The kids’ bathroom has a little narrow closet I use to store medications and supplements, as well as first aid supplies and any potion or lotion you can name. I’m a bit of a hoarder when it comes to this stuff. While I do regularly purge and toss expired prescriptions, … Read more →

I’d been ignoring it all summer. The closet. It was totally out of control.  My daughter wedged in there with me recently and I showed her blouses and suits from when I practiced law (15 years ago) and a dress from before she was born (20 years ago). I was shocked that I still had all this stuff AND that it was so friggin’ old. So I took an afternoon and purged. It was painful, but I did it and filled two garbage bags to donate. Here are my tips for how to get yours under control.

1. Count. How many t-shirts do you have? How many sweat pants? How many pairs of black pants? I was shocked to realize I had enough t-shirts to wear one a day without doing laundry for more than a month. Counting how many I had of each item made me feel more comfortable about giving some away because I would never ever need the 15 t-shirts I ditched, not when there were 20 more at the ready.

2. Fight stains. How many digging in the garden, painting, stripping wallpaper outfits do you need? I kept one. The rest were just taking up space I needed.

3. If it doesn’t fit, you must donate. You know those things you buy and they seem like a good idea in the dressing room, but then they look not quite right at home, and you never wear them? Why are you saving them? They aren’t going to magically become suitable. Yes, you wasted some cash on them, but you’re wasting space by keeping them. Donate and know they’ve clothed someone else.

4. No pain. Shoes, bras, waistbands that cut in, anything that makes you uncomfortable is bad closet karma. You feel miserable when you wear it. So just stop the insanity and let it go. It’s never going to feel any better on your body.

5. Stragglers. Somehow I had managed to keep a sleeveless shell from a sweater set from which I no longer had the actual sweater. I kept it thinking it might someday match something else. 10 years later, I can say I was wrong! Out it went. Don’t keep halves of sets like this.

6. Too big to fail. We all have those “just in case I gain it all back clothes.” And I can admit in the past I’ve ditched them and then gained the weight back and regretted it. My solution is to keep the really good pieces but take them out of the closet and store them somewhere else (under the bed, in the attic, etc.) until you are certain your weight loss is not temporary.

7. Out of synch. I will never take a job that requires me to wear a suit every day, so why am I keeping my lawyer suits? If you have clothes from a job, hobby, type of exercise or other lifestyle you aren’t going back to, get rid of them. I kept 2 suits that I could wear to a funeral, but the rest went out the door.

Other ways to make sense of the closet madness:

– Rotate. Put seasonal clothes in front and out of season things in back. This makes your space more functional.

– Fold and stack. If you have shelves in your closet, you might have the tendency I do to just stuff things on them. If you take a few minutes and neatly fold and stack everything you will fit more on the shelf and you’ll be able to easily see and access what you have there.

– Put extra hangers elsewhere. I keep all of my extra hangers hanging from the edge of a shelf up high. This leaves more room for clothes. When I take clothes out, I put the hanger up there. When I hang clothes up, I take a hanger.

– Hang shoes. Buy a shoe organizer and put it on the back of your closet door.

– Assess non-clothing items. My closet has extra blankets, tote bags, and old throw pillows lurking in the nether regions. Purge! Put the ones you really want in plastic zipped bags and get rid of the rest.

– Keep the “I’m going to fit into that someday” clothes, but separate them out so that you aren’t grabbing them, putting them on and then chucking them across the room in a fury. Stuff them in a bag and put them in the back of the closet. If you lose the weight, they will be there.

– If donating doesn’t make you feel excited enough, take your stuff to a resale or consignment shop. My kids LOVE taking old clothes to Plato’s Closet and it is a huge motivator to get them to get rid of things that no longer fit.

Now it is time for confessions. I kept the 20 year old dress because it is beautiful. I doubt it will ever fit but I’m allowed one non-functional item. I also kept a few of the lawyer blouses because they are classic and will work with the funeral outfits.

When was the last time you cleaned your closet?

 

I’d been ignoring it all summer. The closet. It was totally out of control.  My daughter wedged in there with me recently and I showed her blouses and suits from when I practiced law (15 years ago) and a dress from before she was born (20 years ago). I was shocked that I still had … Read more →

Martha has a gorgeous feature about closet organization starting on page 74 of Martha Stewart Living (Jan. issue). I read this eagerly because our bedroom closet was stuffed to the gills.

The biggest problem with closets, in my opinion is the amount of stuff you have in them! If you look at Martha’s photos, you’ll see there are just a few things hanging or stacked on the drawers. I don’t know about you, but I’ve got more clothes than that!

Ok, so maybe it’s a tad disorganized in this photo. When we moved in, we redid this closet and installedwire drawers, shelves and three different heights of rods.

I also bought a shoe cube, which really helped. There is also a shoe rack on the inside of the closet door, which holds a lot of shoes as well.

And this big plastic drawer unit holds all my jewelry and scarves.

Despite those organizational systems already in place, you can see we needed some help.

So I sat down with the magazine and read Martha’s advice.  I have to say a lot of it was not very useful. Installing custom made wooden drawers and pull out shoe racks is really beyond what I can afford at this point. There isn’t a speck of wall space in this closet to hand belts or scarves, let along a message station!

I did like the idea of folding tshirts and standing them up. It didn’t really work out for me, so instead I tried rolling them and standing them on end and I’m pleased with that result. It makes it so much easier to find things because you can see them all.

In this after picture you can see how much neater it all looks. I did get rid of a pretty big pile. I also discovered I had about 20 turtlenecks which I never ever wear anymore (but can’t help thinking I might want someday), so I took those out and stuck them in a drawer somewhere else.

The biggest challenge for me is always keeping the closet neat. I have trouble with the stacks of sweaters and shirts – they always end up jumbled and messy. Now that I have some more space though, maybe I can manage!

I liked the tips about putting things in garment bags. I have some suits that I really need to do that with, so I’ll buy some of those when I go out.

Getting rid of the tangle of extra hangers made a big difference in this section. I kept some and tried to organize them so I could actually remove them one at a time.

SIDE NOTE: Tonight I’m going to be cooking part of the Inaugural Luncheon menu for dinner. Martha showed all of the dishes on her show yesterday, made one, and spoke with the head chef. I’m excited to be making some of the menu myself and will be posting it tomorrow. Happy Inauguration everyone!

Martha has a gorgeous feature about closet organization starting on page 74 of Martha Stewart Living (Jan. issue). I read this eagerly because our bedroom closet was stuffed to the gills. The biggest problem with closets, in my opinion is the amount of stuff you have in them! If you look at Martha’s photos, you’ll … Read more →