I have been working on an apartment in Manhattan where it is essentially a "soup to nuts" project -- everything from purchasing appliances, dishes, etc. to organizing closets to finding the perfect pillows for the couch. A couple weekends ago I went up and among other things worked on organizing the closets.
I'm not sure what we did before The Container Store {maybe we were just unorganized??!} but there is nothing like strolling the aisles there and looking at all the products they have and thinking how could that wall mounted whatever revolutionize my life {in my corporate law life in Manhattan I used to roam the aisles and enjoy the peace and organization of The Container Store!! Not joking...}. In this specific case shelf organizers and shoe bins revolutionized this closet.
Here is the before.
Not too bad. We had already tossed out a ton of those dry cleaning hangers and replaced them with wood hangers and the clothes had already been edited so we didn't need to go through that step. What we did need to do was to create a functional closet. Where if one shirt was taken out of the pile, the whole pile didn't come with it. And where you could easily find the mate to your favorite black heels as you are running out the door to work.
After a trip to the Container Store and Bed Bath and Beyond and purchasing the following:
Much better! I first took clothes out of the closet by groups -- sweaters, then dresses, etc. -- and rehung everything on the appropriate hangers -- ones that fit in the space and the clothes didn't fall off of. Then I grouped the folded clothes by category -- beach tank tops, going out shirts, cool graphic Ts, long sleeve plain Ts, etc. And then went to town on the shoes -- these bins are fantastic since they fit the space just perfectly and are clear so don't clutter or distract from the clothes. There are no lids on these boxes so no need to pull a box out of a massive stack and then have to put it all back together -- you just grab the shoes you want and go.
Just like it makes a huge difference to have the right black shoes to wear with that black dress {okay black shoes are okay with that black dress, but not "it"}, I think it makes a huge difference to have the right accouterments to outfit your closet in a way that makes it easy to use. While some closets really may require a whole Elfa installation others just need a cohesive set of hangers and a way to divide the clothes in a usable way.
I need to do this! thanks for a look at some of those organizing hangers and containers!
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