Raise your hand if you have small closets. Ooh, better yet, raise your hand if you have small closets and a lot of clothes. And shoes. And scarves. And pants. And dresses….. Well, this week’s client falls into that category. When she contacted me, she explained that she and her husband have a small closet in the master bedroom and most of ‘the mess’ was hers—her husband wasn’t taking up very much room. The state of the closet was causing her a lot of anxiety. He has a daughter who stays with them part-time. In that room, the closet is being used for some of his clothes and happens to be where this client stores a few dresses, so there was work to be done there too.
Let’s talk about their goals for a minute. Like most organizing projects, they wanted the ability to see what was in the space and access items easily. Okay, easy enough. They also wanted the ability to open the door completely and move around freely. Yes, this was documented in our project summary document as a goal. Wait a minute, you say? ‘The ability to open the door completely and move around freely’? You got it–they couldn’t get the door open more than about 50%. In a small closet, that has a huge impact. So yes, we definitely needed to find a way to get the door all the way open. Remember how I mentioned earlier that the husband and the wife share the daughter’s closet with her? In reality they were sharing it between themselves, and there was little room for her clothes when she was there. I loved that this client made that one of her goals. It’s important for every member of the household, permanent or not, to have their own space to feel at home.
Remember earlier that I mentioned her husband wasn’t taking up much room in their closet? Well, that was the perception they both held. But as we pulled things out, she was pretty darn surprised by how much he actually did have. His contribution to the state of the closet was more significant than either of them realized. This, my friends, is why it’s important to pull like things out and see ‘the lot of it’ en masse. This increases awareness and facilitates understanding of how things are, as opposed to relying on your perception of how things are. As in this case, it can be a real eye opener.
One of my first priorities was to allow the door to fully open. In an effort to create space, they installed shelves on the wall behind the door, which unfortunately resulted in the door banging into the shelves and eliminating any chance of getting into the closet without doing a sideways shimmy into her hanging clothes. For this reason, it made sense to go through the stuff on those shelves first. Once those shelves were emptied and the ‘keep’ items were put into a kind of triage area, I was able to take down those intrusive shelves. Just by allowing the door to fully open, it seemed twice as big and somehow, was even brighter! And, if they want, there’s room above the door on that same wall to put the shelves and still allow the door to fully open. I also pulled everything off the floor at the beginning, to avoid tripping hazards and make the space feel bigger right away.
We went about the task of going through every clothing item, hat, and pair of shoes in the master closet, as well as her dresses in the daughter’s closet. For his things, she facetimed with her hubby when there were decisions for him to make. We tried to keep those to a minimum since he was on the other side of the globe at the time. Once they finished editing(aka-discarding things they no longer wanted or needed), we planned and completed a new configuration to better utilize the existing shelves and vertical space. To keep space in his daughter’s closet for her things, we placed the seasonal and special occasion dresses that were pulled out of there into the basement closet on an existing hanging rod. We organized scarves on scarf holders and used cascading hangers to take full advantage of the vertical space on her side. We reconfigured the shelves so that we could use the existing shoe shelves, which were hidden and frankly, in the way, when the project started. Did I mention the sweet 4-month-old baby girl? She would not be excluded, refusing to take naps and demanding to be ‘included’. She helped every step of the way.
He has a lot of pants, and his side had better opportunity to use shelves, so we paired these together and used new woven baskets from At Home for his pants and shorts. We folded them vertically, so he doesn’t have to dig to get to the dreaded ‘bottom of the stack.’ We installed tie and valet hanger components of their existing Rubbermaid closet system for belts, ties, and similar accessories. The simple reality is that combined, they just have too much for it all to comfortably fit in that one closet. To ensure the closet isn’t over-full going forward, we decided to use a seasonal rotation approach and store the off-season clothes in stackable sturdy tubs with big ole labels. She also intends to use command hooks to store handbags on the wall behind the closet door, which is a smart use of that space. The overall product cost was $240. That’s a worthwhile investment to reclaim their space and their sanity!
I recommended that she set a calendar reminder on her phone or whatever calendar she uses, to rotate the seasonal clothing in late Summer or early Fall. I also encouraged her to take a long look at the cold weather clothes when she’s doing that rotation, since she may be able to reduce her collection further and, since Fall and Winter clothes take up more space than what’s currently there, it will naturally be more crowded.
What’s exciting to me is that this isn’t the end of her organizing journey; it’s the beginning of what is hopefully a time of building awareness and creating new habits for the couple–healthy habits that will improve their overall wellbeing. Here’s what she had to say, “I’m really impressed that I donated that many items … and I’m sure I’ll be able to donate more in the future! Thank you so much for working so closely with me on this project. I feel like I really grew during this whole process.”
I also wanted to send a big thank you to this client and her husband for being on the front lines every day. She is a nurse, and he is in the military. They are a front-line heroes power team and I’m proud to be able to serve them!
By the numbers: The closet size in this project is around 5’ x 5’ x 8’ high. We spent around 21 hours working together, and this girl rocked the homework between visits! From start to finish it took about 4 weeks. I estimate that we sorted through around 500 items, of which she donated or sold 86.
