If all else fails, you can always try this!
One of the dilemmas of the modern woman comes down to one word: storage.
From the mall to the web, there are more places to buy clothes than ever before, at lower prices than ever before.
Is it any wonder that we keep running out of places to store our wardrobes?
There are solutions, luckily, and one or more of them may work for you.
Ultimately, all of the options fall under one of these main strategies to make your clothes fit in your closet.
- Reduce the size of your wardrobe. This is always my first recommendation. Do you really need all your stuff? Do you really wear all of it? Does all of it really fit and flatter you? If you can’t bear the thought of a wardrobe edit right now, use the change of seasons in the fall to prune out some of your summer things before you store them away.
- Increase your storage space. No, I’m not advocating adding on to your house, or somehow obtaining a magic wand. But there may be other places in your living space where you can tuck more clothes. (Which you will have less of after you clean out your closets first, right?) Try under the bed, in another closet, or in the basement.
- Reduce the size of your clothes. This doesn’t mean your clothing size (and perhaps you’ll recall what I think of that number anyway). I’m talking about physically shrinking your garments down to store them, such as one of those vacuum-pack storage bag gadgets, or at least packing them tightly. You’d be surprised how many more knit shirts you could fit in a drawer if you rolled them instead of folded them–or possibly vice versa, depending on the depth and width of your drawers. And I’m a big fan of Huggable Hangers; they greatly increase the number of shirts you can hang in the same space.
I’ll confess that I’ve turned to all of these strategies at one time or another over the years as my wardrobe has changed, and as I’ve moved through a variety of living spaces with small and even oddly shaped closets, a side effect of living in an area with lots of older homes.
But my most successful move is always to keep the total number of garments in check. Having done a more thorough edit already, I try to maintain equilibrium with a couple of strategies.
One is a rule of threes; before I buy something, I ask myself whether I own at least 3 other things I can wear it with. The other is a “one in, one out” rule: for everything new I bring in, I eliminate one older thing.
Now, about the shoe storage …
Your Turn
- Do you find yourself struggling with clothes storage?
- Do you use any of these options, or have you found another solution?
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Could you wear one of his ties with your white button-down shirt? Or steal his white button-down to wear with your scarf?
Before there even were closets, people hung their clothes in armoires, and they still do. I have a dual set from IKEA; one side is folded clothing (T-shirts, lightweight sweaters, tank tops and camisoles, exercise clothing) in the baskets with wallets and small leather goods on the top shelf, and the other is shoes + hats. See? You don’t have to be Paris Hilton or Mariah Carey to have a shoe closet!
