An Organized Closet is More Than Half the Battle in Effective Time Management.
By Bridgette Raes
My business has been full of closet cleanings this past week. After cleaning five closets in one week, I see that it may be necessary for me to re-visit this topic. Many of the clients I met with this past week told me that the one thing they struggle with is getting out of the house on time in the morning. One of the reasons they struggle is because their closets are chaotic disasters, absolutely without order.
I have walked into many clients' closets to find my worst nightmare staring back at me - dry cleaning bags hanging over their clothing!! It is one thing to be unaware of the detrimental effects of keeping clothing stored in dry cleaning bags; however, some of my clients who are committing this sin have been readers of this newsletter for some time. My readers already know how bad it is for your clothing to be suffocated by dry cleaning bags. In addition to that, who can find anything when their clothes are stored away in plastic covers?
I saw so many mistakes in closets this past week that I believe a little refresher tutorial on some of the crucial basics of closet management is in order. So pay attention, ladies.
#1 - Get the dry cleaning bags outta there!!!
Plastic doesn’t allow for breathing, and clothing needs to breathe. So get those darn dry cleaning bags off your clothing. Why? Over time, if you suffocate your clothing the lack of oxygen will break down the fibers, eventually causing your clothing to fall apart! The sad thing about doing this is that we are inclined to store our most precious things in dry cleaning bags to protect them, but ultimately we are doing just the opposite.
What are some alternatives? The first is cloth garment bags or garment bags with air holes. A second alternative is cheap and somewhat effective - puncture air holes in the dry cleaning bags. The third alternative is to cut off the top half of a dry cleaning bag and place it over the shoulders of your precious clothes. This will ensure that the shoulders stay clear of dust.
#2 - DO NOT HANG A SWEATER. EVER!
This is one of my biggest closet pet peeves, and one that I see all the time. A sad wake-up call came this past week for one of my clients when I showed her the damage that was happening to a sweater on a hanger. Because the sweater that she liked very much had been hanging, the shoulder area had become misshapen and bulges from the corners of the wire hanger had started to develop. When I showed my client the damage that the hanger had caused, she looked at me and flippantly replied that she was certain her dry cleaner could fix it for her.
I looked back at her sadly and said it was unlikely that this was something her dry cleaner could repair. Unfortunately, the sweater was ruined. I told her she could try, but I was doubtful that anything could be done. My client was devastated and immediately removed her sweaters from their hangers. The other thing she noticed was that as a result of hanging, her sweaters’ sleeves had grown and many of her sweaters were all stretched out.
If you do anything with your closet after reading this article, get your sweaters off hangers and fold them! If you don’t have free space for folded storage and you must hang, then fold them over the bottom half of the hanger, similar to the way they are returned from the dry cleaner. Never hang a sweater the way you would hang a shirt - you are just asking for trouble.
#3 - Organize by classification
Another client this week told me that she really struggled with time management, and once she took me through her closet I knew why. There was absolutely no sense to her arrangement. A blouse hung next to a pair of cheap khaki pants, which were next to a $700 suit. The other thing I noticed was that some of her suits were separated. She needed to dig through several sections of her very large walk-in-closet just to locate all of a suit's components - what an enormous waste of time!
I advised her that her assignment was to organize her closet space by classification. For someone like this, it is one of the most important pieces of advice I could have given. No matter how much we add onto her wardrobe, if she doesn’t get this part under control she will never get out the door to work on time.
By classification I mean keeping all your pants together, shirts, skirts etc. Don’t break up your suits; instead, keep all the pieces together. Digging around for all the components of a suit can become time consuming - especially if it is a three-piece coordinate, like a skirt, pants and a jacket.
#4 - Go from light to dark
The other suggestion is to organize your classifications from light to dark. This ensures that you always get a clear sense of what you have, per classification. You may not be surprised to find that you have way too many black pants in there.
#5 - Get a Valet Hook
One simple addition to a closet that can make a world of difference is the valet hook placed somewhere on the inside or outside of your closet. When you get home from the dry cleaner you may not have time to take your clothing out of the bags and hang it up immediately. Hanging clothing on a temporary hook is a better alternative to draping these freshly pressed items over a chair or somewhere else where they might get wrinkled. Secondly, when choosing your clothing in the evening you can use the hook to hang the items you plan on wearing the next day. Lastly, outfit creation works so much better when you can hang your pieces and look at them.
#6 - Mommy Dearest said it best, “No Wire Hangers!”
I am not so “Mommy Dearest” about this rule as many would think. But my blood does boil when I see jackets worth hundreds and hundreds of dollars draped carelessly over wire hangers. Over time the same bulging effect that occurs with sweaters will occur with your jackets, especially if the fabric is precious or the jacket does not have shoulder pads.
Think about what you are doing when you use wire hangers - you are taking an investment garment and ruining it. Would you put your muddy shoes on your new couch? I don’t think so. Give your investment pieces a fighting chance and get some hangers that will help you keep your precious items around for some time to come. Jacket hangers work best if they have an ample width to them and are slightly curved to resemble the shape of your shoulders.
Where I do get a bit lax on the whole wire hanger topic is with pants. I actually like the wire hangers with the sticky cardboard rollers for my pants. I fold my pants over these hangers and the slightly tacky adhesive keeps my pants in place, especially when they are made from a slippery fabric.
#7 - Start out organized and cleaning up a mess is a whole lot easier
It is rare that I see clients from my home office; normally, I make house calls. But I had one client who came to my home this week and I must divulge a little secret: my closet isn’t always as neat as a pin. Heck, I am human and my life can get a bit hectic too.
So the evening before my client came over, I peeked into the closet in my bedroom (which can be easily viewed from my living room) and realized that my own closet was in need of some slight organization. But because I had a structured closet plan already in place, my quick organizing spree took no more than thirty minutes.
On average, a client’s closet cleaning can take up to three hours, but the longest closet cleaning I ever did with a client took eight hours, likely because this client had never implemented any organization in her closet space in the first place. Conversely, if you have some sort of an organized structure in place for your closet it is always a much quicker task to get it re-organized. If you have never organized your closet space before, acknowledge that the first pass at this task will probably take some time, but once it is complete the management of it will take much less time.
#8 - How to hang pants
While helping clients clean their closets, I give little tutorials on how to properly fold a sweater or hang a pair of pants. There are many different ways to hang pants. Some people prefer to hang them length-wise on a clip hanger, but I actually prefer to use those dry cleaning hangers with the cardboard rollers that I mentioned above. Many people do not have the luxury of a closet with room for hanging pants full-length, so folding them over a hanger instead will shorten the pants and give the closet more breathing room. In addition, if the pants are creased, folding them on the crease-line will help keep the crease in place.
How do you fold pants properly? If your pants have belt loops and button in the front, match the first two belt loops with each other. This will fold the fly area in on itself. Next, if the pants are creased, match the crease lines on each pant leg.
If your pants have no belt loops or creases simply estimate where they would be on your pants. After you have aligned the top of your pant area, next flip your pants upside down and grab the bottom openings and then line up and match all four seams at the hem. If you do this correctly, both the inseams will be up against each other.
Holding the hems of both pant legs with the four seams matched and aligned, give the pants a bit of a shake and then slip your pants over the cardboard roller of a wire hanger, again ensuring that if the pants are creased, the crease lines are laying flat. After you have hung the pants this way, take a moment to check that the bottom leg of the pant over the hanger is laying flat. There is nothing worse than taking your pants out for the next wearing and realizing that one of the pant legs got crushed and wrinkled.
#9- Keep a little space between the stuff
After loading a newly-organized closet, the last, slightly military thing I do with hanging garment is space each hanger with a finger’s distance between them. This gives each garment breathing room and just makes for a better presentation than having all the clothes jammed up against one another.
You don’t have to be as strict as keeping a finger’s distance between each of the hangers, but do give your clothing some breathing room. After you hang all of your clothing in your closet, run your hand down each of the garments to make sure that nothing is getting inadvertently wrinkled from not having enough breathing room. Your clothing should never be jammed in, because you will find that your clothes will be wrinkled from not hanging properly, and this can really drain your valuable morning time.
#10 - How to find things quickly
Many times I go into a client’s closet and practically kill myself tripping over the mountain of shoes in the bottom on the closet. Talk about a time-drain - rummaging though Mt. St. Shoe-pile to find matching shoes!
Personally, I am a shoe-box girl. I like to keep my shoes in their original boxes. I also like to mark the name of the shoes that are in each box so that I don’t have to rummage through each box to find the right pair. I write something simple like “brown mules” or “red slides” on the box.
Another solution is to buy clear shoe bins, take photos of your shoes and clearly display a photo on each box. Some people like those shoe cubbies for their closet, or a shoe bag organizational system. I am not a huge fan of either because I feel that we women are such shoe hoarders that eventually we will have more shoes than cubby space. After all the holes in the cubby are filled, you may wind up tossing the superfluous shoes on the ground anyway. Unless you are someone who keeps only a few shoes in their collection, an alternate organizing route may be a better way to go.
Shoes are also better protected in shoe boxes than in a clear container. After a shoe is worn, you never want to store it in an airtight container because that is how bacteria (and odor!) can grow in your shoes. If you do use airtight clear containers, always keep your shoes out of the container for at least 24 hours so that any perspiration can dry before sealing them away.
Disorganized jewelry is also another time drain. Your valuables deserve better than to be tossed into a box where they can become tangled. I learned this lesson the hard way when I wound up breaking one of my favorite necklaces. If you are someone who keeps your jewelry in a basic box, try to keep your necklaces and bracelets in small jewelry bags to protect them. And if you have any silver jewelry, keep it in a bag to prevent tarnishing.
(c) 2005 Bridgette Raes Style Group
My business has been full of closet cleanings this past week. After cleaning five closets in one week, I see that it may be necessary for me to re-visit this topic. Many of the clients I met with this past week told me that the one thing they struggle with is getting out of the house on time in the morning. One of the reasons they struggle is because their closets are chaotic disasters, absolutely without order.
I have walked into many clients' closets to find my worst nightmare staring back at me - dry cleaning bags hanging over their clothing!! It is one thing to be unaware of the detrimental effects of keeping clothing stored in dry cleaning bags; however, some of my clients who are committing this sin have been readers of this newsletter for some time. My readers already know how bad it is for your clothing to be suffocated by dry cleaning bags. In addition to that, who can find anything when their clothes are stored away in plastic covers?
I saw so many mistakes in closets this past week that I believe a little refresher tutorial on some of the crucial basics of closet management is in order. So pay attention, ladies.
#1 - Get the dry cleaning bags outta there!!!
Plastic doesn’t allow for breathing, and clothing needs to breathe. So get those darn dry cleaning bags off your clothing. Why? Over time, if you suffocate your clothing the lack of oxygen will break down the fibers, eventually causing your clothing to fall apart! The sad thing about doing this is that we are inclined to store our most precious things in dry cleaning bags to protect them, but ultimately we are doing just the opposite.
What are some alternatives? The first is cloth garment bags or garment bags with air holes. A second alternative is cheap and somewhat effective - puncture air holes in the dry cleaning bags. The third alternative is to cut off the top half of a dry cleaning bag and place it over the shoulders of your precious clothes. This will ensure that the shoulders stay clear of dust.
#2 - DO NOT HANG A SWEATER. EVER!
This is one of my biggest closet pet peeves, and one that I see all the time. A sad wake-up call came this past week for one of my clients when I showed her the damage that was happening to a sweater on a hanger. Because the sweater that she liked very much had been hanging, the shoulder area had become misshapen and bulges from the corners of the wire hanger had started to develop. When I showed my client the damage that the hanger had caused, she looked at me and flippantly replied that she was certain her dry cleaner could fix it for her.
I looked back at her sadly and said it was unlikely that this was something her dry cleaner could repair. Unfortunately, the sweater was ruined. I told her she could try, but I was doubtful that anything could be done. My client was devastated and immediately removed her sweaters from their hangers. The other thing she noticed was that as a result of hanging, her sweaters’ sleeves had grown and many of her sweaters were all stretched out.
If you do anything with your closet after reading this article, get your sweaters off hangers and fold them! If you don’t have free space for folded storage and you must hang, then fold them over the bottom half of the hanger, similar to the way they are returned from the dry cleaner. Never hang a sweater the way you would hang a shirt - you are just asking for trouble.
#3 - Organize by classification
Another client this week told me that she really struggled with time management, and once she took me through her closet I knew why. There was absolutely no sense to her arrangement. A blouse hung next to a pair of cheap khaki pants, which were next to a $700 suit. The other thing I noticed was that some of her suits were separated. She needed to dig through several sections of her very large walk-in-closet just to locate all of a suit's components - what an enormous waste of time!
I advised her that her assignment was to organize her closet space by classification. For someone like this, it is one of the most important pieces of advice I could have given. No matter how much we add onto her wardrobe, if she doesn’t get this part under control she will never get out the door to work on time.
By classification I mean keeping all your pants together, shirts, skirts etc. Don’t break up your suits; instead, keep all the pieces together. Digging around for all the components of a suit can become time consuming - especially if it is a three-piece coordinate, like a skirt, pants and a jacket.
#4 - Go from light to dark
The other suggestion is to organize your classifications from light to dark. This ensures that you always get a clear sense of what you have, per classification. You may not be surprised to find that you have way too many black pants in there.
#5 - Get a Valet Hook
One simple addition to a closet that can make a world of difference is the valet hook placed somewhere on the inside or outside of your closet. When you get home from the dry cleaner you may not have time to take your clothing out of the bags and hang it up immediately. Hanging clothing on a temporary hook is a better alternative to draping these freshly pressed items over a chair or somewhere else where they might get wrinkled. Secondly, when choosing your clothing in the evening you can use the hook to hang the items you plan on wearing the next day. Lastly, outfit creation works so much better when you can hang your pieces and look at them.
#6 - Mommy Dearest said it best, “No Wire Hangers!”
I am not so “Mommy Dearest” about this rule as many would think. But my blood does boil when I see jackets worth hundreds and hundreds of dollars draped carelessly over wire hangers. Over time the same bulging effect that occurs with sweaters will occur with your jackets, especially if the fabric is precious or the jacket does not have shoulder pads.
Think about what you are doing when you use wire hangers - you are taking an investment garment and ruining it. Would you put your muddy shoes on your new couch? I don’t think so. Give your investment pieces a fighting chance and get some hangers that will help you keep your precious items around for some time to come. Jacket hangers work best if they have an ample width to them and are slightly curved to resemble the shape of your shoulders.
Where I do get a bit lax on the whole wire hanger topic is with pants. I actually like the wire hangers with the sticky cardboard rollers for my pants. I fold my pants over these hangers and the slightly tacky adhesive keeps my pants in place, especially when they are made from a slippery fabric.
#7 - Start out organized and cleaning up a mess is a whole lot easier
It is rare that I see clients from my home office; normally, I make house calls. But I had one client who came to my home this week and I must divulge a little secret: my closet isn’t always as neat as a pin. Heck, I am human and my life can get a bit hectic too.
So the evening before my client came over, I peeked into the closet in my bedroom (which can be easily viewed from my living room) and realized that my own closet was in need of some slight organization. But because I had a structured closet plan already in place, my quick organizing spree took no more than thirty minutes.
On average, a client’s closet cleaning can take up to three hours, but the longest closet cleaning I ever did with a client took eight hours, likely because this client had never implemented any organization in her closet space in the first place. Conversely, if you have some sort of an organized structure in place for your closet it is always a much quicker task to get it re-organized. If you have never organized your closet space before, acknowledge that the first pass at this task will probably take some time, but once it is complete the management of it will take much less time.
#8 - How to hang pants
While helping clients clean their closets, I give little tutorials on how to properly fold a sweater or hang a pair of pants. There are many different ways to hang pants. Some people prefer to hang them length-wise on a clip hanger, but I actually prefer to use those dry cleaning hangers with the cardboard rollers that I mentioned above. Many people do not have the luxury of a closet with room for hanging pants full-length, so folding them over a hanger instead will shorten the pants and give the closet more breathing room. In addition, if the pants are creased, folding them on the crease-line will help keep the crease in place.
How do you fold pants properly? If your pants have belt loops and button in the front, match the first two belt loops with each other. This will fold the fly area in on itself. Next, if the pants are creased, match the crease lines on each pant leg.
If your pants have no belt loops or creases simply estimate where they would be on your pants. After you have aligned the top of your pant area, next flip your pants upside down and grab the bottom openings and then line up and match all four seams at the hem. If you do this correctly, both the inseams will be up against each other.
Holding the hems of both pant legs with the four seams matched and aligned, give the pants a bit of a shake and then slip your pants over the cardboard roller of a wire hanger, again ensuring that if the pants are creased, the crease lines are laying flat. After you have hung the pants this way, take a moment to check that the bottom leg of the pant over the hanger is laying flat. There is nothing worse than taking your pants out for the next wearing and realizing that one of the pant legs got crushed and wrinkled.
#9- Keep a little space between the stuff
After loading a newly-organized closet, the last, slightly military thing I do with hanging garment is space each hanger with a finger’s distance between them. This gives each garment breathing room and just makes for a better presentation than having all the clothes jammed up against one another.
You don’t have to be as strict as keeping a finger’s distance between each of the hangers, but do give your clothing some breathing room. After you hang all of your clothing in your closet, run your hand down each of the garments to make sure that nothing is getting inadvertently wrinkled from not having enough breathing room. Your clothing should never be jammed in, because you will find that your clothes will be wrinkled from not hanging properly, and this can really drain your valuable morning time.
#10 - How to find things quickly
Many times I go into a client’s closet and practically kill myself tripping over the mountain of shoes in the bottom on the closet. Talk about a time-drain - rummaging though Mt. St. Shoe-pile to find matching shoes!
Personally, I am a shoe-box girl. I like to keep my shoes in their original boxes. I also like to mark the name of the shoes that are in each box so that I don’t have to rummage through each box to find the right pair. I write something simple like “brown mules” or “red slides” on the box.
Another solution is to buy clear shoe bins, take photos of your shoes and clearly display a photo on each box. Some people like those shoe cubbies for their closet, or a shoe bag organizational system. I am not a huge fan of either because I feel that we women are such shoe hoarders that eventually we will have more shoes than cubby space. After all the holes in the cubby are filled, you may wind up tossing the superfluous shoes on the ground anyway. Unless you are someone who keeps only a few shoes in their collection, an alternate organizing route may be a better way to go.
Shoes are also better protected in shoe boxes than in a clear container. After a shoe is worn, you never want to store it in an airtight container because that is how bacteria (and odor!) can grow in your shoes. If you do use airtight clear containers, always keep your shoes out of the container for at least 24 hours so that any perspiration can dry before sealing them away.
Disorganized jewelry is also another time drain. Your valuables deserve better than to be tossed into a box where they can become tangled. I learned this lesson the hard way when I wound up breaking one of my favorite necklaces. If you are someone who keeps your jewelry in a basic box, try to keep your necklaces and bracelets in small jewelry bags to protect them. And if you have any silver jewelry, keep it in a bag to prevent tarnishing.
(c) 2005 Bridgette Raes Style Group
posted by Unknown @ 3:14 PM
