by Eileen Roth
1.Dress down your wardrobe. Fashion changes each year, so go through every item in your closet, from shoes to suits and everything in between, and purge anything you haven’t worn in the last 12 months or won’t be able to squeeze into soon. This is a great opportunity to figure out what flatters you and jettison the deadweight. Grab a couple of friends and put on a fashion show, asking their honest but kindly couched opinion regarding what looks good and fits the current style.
2.Move your off-season duds offsite. Even if you live in a warm climate, you probably have at least a spring/summer and fall/winter wardrobe. Relocate your off-season clothes to a closet in the guest bedroom, attic, or basement, or into storage area boxes. See how much more space seasonal management provides?
3.Double tier or layer. If you have one closet rod and many short garments such as shirts, blouses, jackets, and skirts, adding a second rod underneath can double your storage space. Home improvement people can install rod number two directly into closet walls; those less inclined can opt for an add-a-rod that simply hangs from the one you have. Layering is another space expander if you have a long-hanging area. Here you hang a bar with holes for additional hangers from the rod. Keep a single color of garment on a bar so that you know just where to look for what. Consult Figure 6-3 to see how easy double-tiering or layering can be.
4.Organize like with like. Think occasion first, and then type of garment. Dressing for work is always a time-sensitive affair, so put all your professional clothes in the place most accessible when you open the door. You can delve deeper for casual clothes, when you have more time. If you’re sharing a closet and have two double-tiered sections, each spouse takes one for short clothes and the rest of the closet can be split between the two. If there’s only one tiered section, the taller person gets the higher rod. Devote this section to shirts — dress, and then casual. Within your work and casual categories, divide by garment type, and then style. See Table 6-1.
Figure 6-3: An adjust-able second rod doubles closet space in a snap — or try layering garments by tiering them down a vertical hanging bar.
Table 6-1Great Garment Groupings Type Styles Notes
Suits Business Keep men’s suits together on a suit hanger
that keeps the jacket in shape. Women’s suits
are more likely to be worn as mix and match
and so can be split into skirts and jackets.
Skirts Suits and separates Use six-tiered hangers, separating by suit and
other styles.
Pants Dress, casual, jeans Hang upside-down from the cuffs so the bulky
waist is down near the floor. Forget the over
sized wooden pants hangers; compact little
metal clip models will do.
Jackets, Suits and separates Use jacket hangers to retain the shape.
blazers
5. Light fades into dark. Within each section, work from the lightest to darkest color for easy matching — white at one end, black at the other. Exception: Putting navy blue and black together invites chromatic confusion, so separate these two colors with the red/pink family, or put multicolored garments in between them.
If your closet lacks good lighting, install a battery-operated light so you can spare yourself the squint and get the right garment the first time.
6. Stock the shelves. The more shelves the merrier (or at least the more organized you can be), so if you have a walk-in closet short on shelves with room to spare, build them in! Here’s what to put on them:
•Sweaters: Hangers can ruin sweaters’ shape, so fold them up and store them flat, grouped by color and season.
•T-shirts: If you’re short on hanging space. I prefer to hang T-shirts if there’s room because it saves the work of folding them, keeps them easy to spot, and gives them a chance to dry if they come out of the dryer damp. In either case, sort them by color.
•Shoes: Store them in boxes or directly on shelves.
•Purses
•Scarves
•Extra blankets, comforters, and pillows
•Ladies’ hats
High, hard-to-reach shelves are a good place to store off-season items, such as blankets and sweaters during the summer and white shoes during the winter. You can also keep extra packages of nylons up here. (Buy in bulk on sale; they cost enough anyway!) Clamp dividers onto top shelves to section them off and keep things from falling over. See Figure 6-4 for this bookending trick.
Figure 6-4: Clamp-on dividers keep things straight on top shelves without sides.
Photo courtesy of Lillian Vernon.
Keep a vented plastic laundry hamper in the closet to hold dirty clothes until washing day, when you can carry the whole thing directly to the machine.
Calling all fashionistas: Shoes
Do you really need so many shoes? Simplify your life by paring down your pairs. Every woman in the world should be able to get dressed with a pair each of heels and flats in black, brown, navy, white, and perhaps red, along with a pair or two of sandals, exercise shoes, and a few special items such as hiking boots or beach thongs.
The sheer number of shoe organizers available suggests what a time it is keeping pairs from spilling everywhere. The Container Store alone boasts 17 different types of shoe organizers in stock! They range from rounded hooks for hanging shoes to zippered cardboard shelves that protect the shoes from dust, but who wants to unzip every time you need a shoe? The best shoe organizer for you is the one that works with your shoes and your space. Here are a few tips you can peruse:
If you have a free wall, use stackable units for vertical height. Wooden shelving is my top pick because it has flat surfaces for heels or flats. The metal units often require hanging heels over the back and so take a little more effort and time. Figure 6-5 illustrates the wooden kind.
Pick number two: Open wooden cubes — still stackable; still work.
Figure 6-5: Wooden shoe shelves.
Photo courtesy of Stacks & Stacks.
A hanging rack or pockets on the back of the closet door can do the trick if you don’t have sliding doors or more than a door’s worth of shoes. Pockets don’t hold heels well, though — they stick out at you like weapons.
If you have shelf space available to store shoes, stack them in boxes. You can get clear plastic boxes that let you see your choices, but don’t store suede shoes this way; the suede can stick to the plastic. A low-tech option is to leave shoes in their store boxes, clearly labeling the end —for instance, “black heels with bow” so you can pull the right black heels box. Another idea: Take a color picture and tape it to the box front.
For those with floor space in the closet, you can get a rack that stacks flats on top and heels underneath. Lacking a rack, arrange your shoes in two to three rows, placing each pair heel-to-toe to save additional space.
If you’re very serious about your shoes, you may want a tilt-down shoe rack that holds 20 to 30 pairs. You can even get a shoe armoire that stands outside the closet!
No matter what storage system you use, arrange your shoes as you do your clothes: by color and moving from light to dark. (Sorting shoes by style is tricky, so stick to color to keep things simple.)
Do some of your shoes cramp your style or at least your toes? Stretch them out with a shoe tree. It’s like getting a new pair without spending a penny! Prevent the too-small syndrome by wearing new shoes for a few hours on the carpet at home and taking them back if they don’t feel good.
Accessories
Fashion experts tell us that accessories make the outfit. From bracelets to feather boas, belts to ties to baseball caps, accessories express your personal style. Unfortunately, the things that top off an outfit really tangle up the closet. Here’s how to contain them and relieve accessory angst:
Ties and belts: Racks are the rule for sorting out belts and ties, and you can find them in formats from flat to revolving. Measure your closet wall space before shopping. Again, sort by
color, going by the main or background color in mixed-color ties.
Scarves: If you have a free drawer or shelf, fold your scarves and lay them flat, layered 1/4-inch apart so you can see the edge of each one. Angle the fold toward you so it’s easy to pull. If you’d rather hang your scarves, drape them over a pants hanger or buy a special hanger with holes through which you thread each one. The sort criterion? Color!
Purses: Start by considering: Do you really need more than a black, brown, navy, white, and dress purse? If so, store off-season purses as you do clothes and sort the rest by color. Arrange them on a shelf in the closet.
Caps: If you’ve got just a few caps, put some self-adhesive hooks inside the closet door and hang them there. For a larger cap collection, see Figure 4-1 in Chapter 4 for a high-capacity rack to hang in your front or bedroom closet.
Trying to sneak some extra storage space for off-season items? When I was in college, we used to prop our beds up on cement bricks to make more room to stow stuff underneath. The grown-up version of this trick is bed risers that increase clearance for storage underneath (see Figure 6-6; don’t those look better than blocks?). Use clear plastic boxes or rolling cabinets on wheels to take advantage of the extra space.
Figure 6-6: Bed risers update an old college trick to increase under-bed storage space.
Children’s Bedrooms
Kids’ bedrooms are multipurpose spaces, sort of a small person’s living room, family room, and office all wrapped up in one. Children may play, listen to music or watch TV, do homework, or entertain friends for hours on end in their rooms, so it’s important to have a setup that serves all these purposes without ending up a mess. Hey, it doesn’t hurt to dream!
Kid-friendly furniture
Children grow quickly, and many parents fail to plan far enough ahead when furnishing their bedrooms. Spare yourself replacing big pieces as often as you do overalls by keeping the future in mind. As toddlers move out of cribs and into a regular bed, bypass the cutesy options and invest in a nice bedroom set, including a desk and bookcase that will last through the teen years. Make sure the desk can accommodate a computer and printer, because kids seem to practically be using them in kindergarten these days and even if you don’t anticipate such a purchase now, you don’t want to have to buy a new desk too should you succumb somewhere down the line.
Wide open space is at the top of kids’ priority lists, so line up beds and furniture along the walls to leave plenty of room to play. Some children outgrow this need and will want to rearrange the furniture for a different look later but my daughters, who have both loved to dance since they were 2, were still looking for central dance space when choosing college dorm rooms.
Bunk beds or trundle beds can maximize floor space in a shared room.
For dressers and night tables, apply the same general principles you used in the master bedroom. If two siblings share a room, it’s best to have separate tables and dressers situated near their owner’s bed.
Books and toys
I think every child’s bedroom should include a bookcase. Not only does it help keep everything in its place, but books in the bedroom can make reading a daily habit from the get-go. Bookcase needs may expand as a child grows and goes from a small collection of picture books to popular series, novels, reference books, and texts. If you’re planning ahead as I recommend, you may begin with a bigger bookcase than you need; just put current books on a lower shelf the child can easily access, and use the upper shelves for stuffed animals or knickknacks.
If there are so many toys in your child’s bedroom that you have a hard time spotting the human being among them, it’s time for a cleanup. Start with a purge of outgrown or redundant toys, which you may conduct in partnership with your child depending on age. Next, relocate what you can, using the playroom, if you have one, for primary toy storage and putting games with your family game center in the basement, hall closet, or family room. Then, contain what’s left. See Chapter 10 for ideas on toy storage.
Is your child in toy overload? Explain that some kids aren’t as lucky, and donating the extras to charity will make other children happy while still leaving plenty of fun things to play with. The section on toy garage sales in Chapter 24 provides additional housecleaning ideas.
Now, are you wrestling with 20 to 30 stuffed animals when dusting or making the bed? Tame the wild menagerie with a mesh net that drapes between two wall corners, or a plastic clip chain that hangs straight down from the ceiling. As you can see in Figure 6-7, the net needs a clear corner with no windows or closets in the way.
Figure 6-7: One way to tame your stuffed animal zoo.
Don’t ever leave toys requiring adult supervision in the bedroom, whether it’s crayons and markers for a 3-year-old or a chemistry set for a second-grader. See Chapter 10 for more about safely storing arts, crafts, and toys.
From gold stars to watercolors: Papers
Kids become papermaking machines much earlier than you may think, and you need to exercise the same vigilance with their artwork, compositions, and stories that you do with your own paper flood. My main point here is that children’s papers should not be stored in their bedrooms so clear them out, and see Chapter 14 for a complete explanation of paper management —kid style.
One good place for papers in the bedroom is a bulletin board for junior high students on up. Juggling school calendars and snapshots of friends, kids can benefit from a bulletin board that serves as a personal information center and a place to put visual mementos of the moment. Don’t use metal thumbtacks that can land tack up. The colored plastic ones always fall sideways and are easier to find on the floor. Office supply stores also sell jumbo tacks, 1-inch- plus, that you can spot a mile away. Get your children thinking clear early on by limiting bulletin board contents to what fits without overlapping. If you want to add something new, something old must come down!
Superhero and school clothes: Closet
Ah, for a grown-up size closet in a small fry’s room! Closet space can get scarce outside the master bedroom of many homes, leaving the kidsand their wardrobesno room to grow. Most children’s closets are small, so make the best of the situation with smart systems such as the following:
Double tier. If you want your children to learn to dress themselves before they’re preteens, you need a half-height closet rod that they can reach. Refer to Figure 6-4 in the master bedroom for an add-a-rod that double-tiers without tears.
Group garments by like type and color. Use the same system that I describe earlier in the chapter in the master bedroom section to make sense of children’s clothes. Depending on your school’s dress code and your child’s style, it may be useful to start with two groups, school and play, and then subdivide from there.
Shelve. If the closet has built-in shelves, use them to store toys and games for little kids, and then sweaters as the children grow up. Don’t build shelves into a small closet, though; it’s better to use freestanding shelves or a chest of drawers that can be removed as a child’s clothes-hanging requirements grow.
Guest Bedroom
Having a guest bedroom is a hospitable gesture, but this room can be a waste of space if you don’t put it to double duty. Set up right, the guest bedroom can make friends and family comfortable when they visit and serve other functions all the other days of the year. The guest bedroom closet may be storing your off-season clothes, but leave enough space for visitors to hang their things, too, and have some spare hangers at the ready. It’s also thoughtful to provide a place to put nonhanging items such as underwear, pj’s, and swimsuits. A small chest of drawers does the trick; leave the top two drawers empty and dedicate the rest to the room’s other use. Another alternative to free up floor space is to place a stack of plastic drawers in the closet. Skip the cardboard type; they won’t last long.
Additional uses for your guest bedroom might include
Entertainment or reading room
Playroom
Exercise room
Sewing room
Hobby room
Home office
If you’re using the room in other ways, a sofa bed saves space and provides a nice place to sit. Make sure there’s room to open up the bed without moving furniture. No heavy coffee tables in front, please! Here are a few other ways to use the guest room:
Entertainment or reading room: Add a bookcase and/or media unit to make your spare room more stimulating. Keep it organized so you don’t have to straighten up when guests come to stay. Closed cabinets can contain games and media, while a folding card table and chairs can accommodate gamers and be folded up into the closet when company comes. See Chapter 9 for more tips on organizing entertainment and media.
Playroom: Use containers, along with shelves in the closet or closed cabinets, to organize toys and games. Chapter 10 provides more practical playroom tactics.
Exercise room: The convenience of an exercise room right next to the bedrooms may be just the impetus you need to get moving! (You don’t want to burn any extra calories walking downstairs, do you?) If you store equipment in here, arrange places to put it away when guests come, such as crates or shelves in the closet. Big equipment such as a treadmill, rower, or bike may or may not work depending upon your space and guest traffic. Weigh the room’s best use against what you see on the scale. You can read more on setting up your exercise area in Chapter 12.
Sewing room: A sewing machine with its own cabinet keeps itself out of sight and accessories besides; otherwise store the machine in the closet when not in use, along with containers for threads, needles, buttons, sewing scissors, and feet. Fabric and patterns can go into drawers, plastic containers in the closet, or a closed wicker basket placed neatly in a corner of the room. Clean up between sessions, especially if you have small children who could get into the scissors, needles, or sewing machine.