It’s almost the end of summer, and that means a wardrobe transition will be happening in the next month or two (depending on how long the hot weather holds out). If you find yourself looking at your closet and dreading that transition every single season, perhaps it’s because you are guilty of one of these ten closet crimes:
1) Disorderly conduct: You can’t complain it’s too hard to find stuff in your closet if you’re not taking the time to properly store items therein. If your closet always looks like a Tasmanian devil just passed through it, you need to
work on creating, and then maintaining, order.
2) Forcible entry: Is your closet so jam-packed that you have to bodily wrestle with your closet doors to open them? Does your closet rival Fibber McGee’s, with its contents spilling out and onto the floor like an avalanche when you DO manage to get the door open? Is it like putting together a very complicated and precise three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle to return said items to the closet in just the right configuration so that you can fully close the closet door again?
3) Mayhem: Has your closet mate ever been injured by said items falling out of the closet? (May also fall under “Assault and Battery.”)
4) Criminal negligence: Do you continue in your dangerous closet storage habits in spite of the ongoing risk it poses to your closet mate?
5) Terrorism: Do you regularly harass and/or threaten your spouse, partner or roommate with retaliation because his or her half of the closet continually encroaches on yours? Do you constantly nag him or her to pare down their wardrobe, stop collecting and storing “junk” (parenthesized because one man’s junk is another’s treasure) and generally to quit being a total slob?
6) Invasion of privacy: Do you go through your closet-mate’s possessions behind his or her back and arbitrarily decide what your closet mate should or shouldn’t keep in their half of the closet? Do you ever get rid of those items without telling him or her (see Theft, next)?
7) Theft: Do you surreptitiously remove and give away, donate, sell or otherwise discard said items to try to make more room in the closet?
8) Fraud: Do you then lie and say “Honestly honey, I have no idea where your oil-stained, holey, ugly green flannel shirt went.”
9) Seditious libel: Do you complain to your friends and family about how slovenly, disheveled or chaotic your partner’s half of the closet is?
10) Disturbing the peace: Have you ever pitched a tantrum over the state of your closet? Have you ever slammed your closet door out of utter frustration, cursed or thrown things out of sheer indignation?
11) Corruption of a minor: Have you ever looked inside your children’s closets and realized with dismay that they have picked up on your closet crimes and are destined for a life of self-imposed storage imprisonment if some serious intervention doesn’t occur, and fast?
While this blog has been written tongue-in-cheek, living with a closet that you hate is no laughing matter. The good news is that, while you probably can’t change the size of your closet and make it bigger, there are certain things you do have control over. Taking back that control is the first step toward rehabilitation and release from the prison that has become your closet.
The first step is to purge, even if you have to take everything out of your closet and start from scratch. (No one ever said that the road to living a crime-free life was easy!) We’ve written a number of articles and blogs previously that offer some excellent advice and tips on how to purge, how to decide what to keep and what to discard, and where to take both usable and unusable items you’re getting rid of. Again, and not to sugar-coat it: this could end up being an onerous task, depending on how serious and cumulative your closet crimes have been over the years. However, the results will be well-worth the effort that it requires.
The next step will be to take stock of what is left after your purge and begin planning on how to put it back, and whether some of it needs to be kept in your closet at all, or could be better stored elsewhere in your home. (This would free up even more space in your closet.) Again, we’ve published a number of different articles on how to arrange things in your closet in a way that maximizes available space.
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If it’s within your budget to do a complete closet overhaul (and it’s probably not as expensive as you might think), Tailored Living has hundreds of products and accessories (which can be mixed, matched and configured into an almost unlimited number of customized designs) to make all the space in your closet into useable space. In fact, we can actually increase the storage capacity of this space by 30 percent or more. With many of our clients we have been able to double it. Even just adding a few strategically-placed shelves, cubbies or drawers and a few clever accessories can make a significant difference, and cost under $1000.
If a custom closet remodel isn’t in your budget, there are still inexpensive things that you can do that will make better use of your closet space. Check out Mike’s web article, Seven of the Most Common Closet Problems That Are Super Easy to Fix for some very practical, easy-to-implement ideas that are also cheap.
Tailored Living (Burnaby, Coquitlam, Maple Ridge, Pitt Meadows, BC) 