The time has come, the wind-up walrus said.  Talking about decluttering and organizing is all well and good, but it has nothing on actually doing it.  One of the most useful general tips I’ve seen was the suggestion that you pick one particular area at a time so as not to get overwhelmed by the magnitude of the task.  I’ve decided to start in the bedroom, and specifically to start with my closet.  I will admit, I’m starting here partly because I’ve done some work on the closet already and have a better feeling for what I need to do.  I’m also starting here because it’s one of the most pressing issues from the make-room-for-the-boy standpoint.  Winter is coming on, and he’s going to need to have space for some bulkier clothing.  Heaven forbid he should freeze to death because I have too many t-shirts.

In some ways, this is also a challenging place to start.  Closet decluttering can be a more emotionally fraught process than cleaning out the kitchen.  For most of us, there’s a certain amount of sentiment and personal image caught up in our clothing, present and past.  You’re clearly never going to get any use out of your high school prom dress ten years later, but throwing it away can feel like you’re leaving part of your life behind.  (I am not personally disturbed by the idea of high school fading into the past, largely unremembered and unregretted, but I know some people are.)  However, if you shop regularly, at some point you have to admit that you can’t possibly keep all that stuff without making your current life way more difficult than it needs to be.

Luckily for me, I am mostly embarrassed by the stuff that I used to think was wearable (ah, the pink glittery top of my dreams — there’s a reason that was on sale), but even so, there were some sentimental items I hated to trash.  I was also helped by the fact that most of my REALLY old clothes were at home with my parents until they moved, when my mother summarily threw it all away.  So much for sentiment.

I read a couple dozen articles about closet organization before I started.  Here are some of the more useful tips:

Try everything on.  If it no longer fits or doesn’t look good on you, it’s a candidate for the trash or the donation box.  This includes clothing that’s too small for you unless its smallness is of very recent vintage and you can reasonably expect to lose any weight you’ve put on in the next few months.  If it’s been a few years, get rid of it — it’s only going to make you feel bad about yourself anyway.

If there is anything needing repair, take it to the tailor NOW. There’s no point in having room occupied by clothes that aren’t wearable, and if you’re never going to repair something, it’s time to get rid of it.  Ditto anything that needs to be hemmed or taken in.  Anything that you’re not wearing because it needs work is just sucking up room.  Regardless of how much you may like a pair of shoes, they are trash unless you are planning to take them to the cobbler now.

Get rid of anything you’re not wearing. The rule that you’re always hearing is to get rid of anything you haven’t worn in a year.  I’ll modify that.  If you haven’t worn it in a year, get rid of it unless it’s the kind of classic that you’ll have utility for in the future and that won’t go out of style, and you still like it.  Even if you haven’t had a cocktail party in the last year, the perfect little black dress is still a keeper.  If you’re on maternity leave and expect to go back to work in a year, throwing away all your suits isn’t really that great a space-saver.  If you can find out-of-the-way storage for that stuff (underbed boxes, the back of inaccessible closets), perfect.  I’ll also add an exemption for serious fashionistas who own good-quality pieces that are out of style but are likely to come back into style in a few years.  Nobody throws away the Chanel.  If you’re doing that, coming up with good long-term storage options that will keep your clothes in good condition should be a priority.  This only counts for pieces that constitute an actual investment of money, though — don’t keep out of style pieces unless they’re really worth the storage space.

Restructure your closet. Install hanging rods at different heights so that you can use all of the space for shirts, dresses, etc.  This isn’t actually useful to me since I don’t own my apartment and am thus hesitant to install anything permanent, but I can see how it would be useful for other people.  Consider adding stackable drawers, etc., to make more room.

Consolidate. I bought four four-skirt hangers and a 12-belt hanger to deal with the pile of belts and the really appalling number of individual skirt hangers taking up room in my closet.   These things are gold.  They let you take up a lot less room with your clothes without actually having to get rid of anything.  Yes, maybe it’s the cheater’s route to decluttering, but come on.  I love clothes.  Making it possible to keep a full wardrobe in here along with the boy’s clothes is key.  I also bought six cedar shoe racks to put in the top of the closet.  They don’t actually make room for more shoes, as you can put a surprising number of shoes in a disorganized three-foot heap, but they make it a LOT easier for me to access them, and look much better.  Collectively, it all makes me look like much less of a fashion-addict catastrophe to the boy, which is also nice.

Fold or roll neatly. This is a bit of a pain on an ongoing basis, but neatly folded sweaters take up a lot less room than messily folded ones.  They also come out of the closet looking rather better.

Boxes, boxes! A lot of the advice sites suggest getting boxes and labeling each with a destination (sale, trash, donate, keep), and not letting go of an item except to put it into a box.  This idea, for whatever reason, irritates me enormously and strikes me as pointless given that I already donated the majority of the donatable stuff I had.  Possibly I will try this with another closet.  I can, however, see how it would be helpful keeping people who are easily distracted on track.

My closet is not actually as bad as it might be, because I went through it last fall and got rid of a lot of stuff (rest in peace, top that looked like a Mylar balloon!).  A whole slew of suits from the time when I thought I was two sizes larger than I actually am went to the Salvation Army, and the more ridiculous of my sweatshirts and sweaters, ditto.  That said, though, the closet is still full.

So, here’s what I did.  I encountered a bit of a dilemma on the not-worn-in-a-year front with regard to business casual clothing.  I’m not currently working in an office and have not for the last year, but it would be disingenuous of me to pretend that I will never need those clothes again.  Since I would prefer not to have to buy a whole new office wardrobe when I do, I removed anything I won’t wear unless I’m in an office to underbed boxes.  The suits I swapped onto good hangers and put  in the back of the closet.  (The hanger swapping is an important step to take before putting stuff out of sight.  I discovered my best suit jacket was on a wire hanger and has been on a wire hanger for longer than I’d like to admit.  Now it’s properly stored for the long haul.)  The less stylish or less useful pieces of workwear went for donation.

I had something of a surplus in the scruffier side of the closet.  First was a whole collection of the big t-shirts that I wear to sleep in.  Given that I wear them only to sleep in, I don’t need anything like as many as I had, but I still didn’t want to give them up entirely.  Everyone wants to be sloppy from time to time, right?  I went through and threw away about two thirds of them, starting with old race t-shirts.  Do I have the finisher’s medal?  Clearly don’t need the t-shirt, then.  I also had some camping-appropriate clothing that I am obviously never going to wear in Manhattan.  I haven’t been camping in some years, but that was partly due to circumstances, and, well, I like camping.  I decided to compromise and get rid of half of the camping clothes so that I don’t have to buy new clothes if I decide to camp but am not keeping a week’s worth of clothes for roughing it for a hypothetical weekend.

Most of the shoes and clothing that was in bad condition was already gone, but I found shirt that had a half-unraveled seam and a white blazer whose sleeves needed shortening, and took them to the tailor.  Taking a ruthlessly realistic view, I trashed a really cute top whose lace was probably not repairable. Ruthlessness is key in a really good declutter.  I also removed from the top shelf and threw away four score and seven safety pins that came from the dry cleaners (two or three are handy; eighty-seven, not so much).

So where does that leave us?  Admittedly, the boy’s half of the closet is still not anything like half.  Still, there’s a lot more room in there than there once was, more room than he is actually using.  Once I’ve been through the underbed boxes full of other stuff (see e.g. the half-done afghan), there will hopefully be enough room for me to put the rest of my summer clothes into storage.

Next up is the closet floor.  There is a reason I did not do this first.  It’s full of, well, stuff.  I’m going in, folks!  If I’m not back in a week, send in the National Guard.

Tags: closets, clutter, home organization, organization

This entry was posted on Monday, November 23rd, 2009 at 1:46 pm and is filed under Et alia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.