Monthly Archives: May 2010

Coat Closet Creative Ideas

The coat closet is a very important part of your house. It is generally the first organizational area that you utilize whenever you enter or leave your home. We use our coat closets for a lot more than coats. This is where we generally keep shoes, backpacks, school supplies, and more. The coat closet is a great place to store things that we use often. Problems generally arise when we don’t plan for all of the things that we will keep in the coat closet.

Getting the coat closet cleaned out can help you to determine what type of storage you need. Pull everything out and separate like items so that you can visualize the amount of space that you’ll need for each thing. If there are things in there that you don’t use fairly often, go ahead and try to move them to another closet or storage area. Dedicate the coat closet to your everyday things.

When you get the items sorted out, try to rank them in order of what you use the most. The things that are used most often should be easily accessible when you open the closet. The less often you use something, the higher up or further back you can store it. For example, a shelf for keys, wallets, cell phones and work badges should be near the front so that everyone using it can easily get what they need in a hurry.

Now that you have your most important things in mind, figure out ways to store them that makes the most sense for the item. You could use a shelf for keys and wallets, but would it be easier to use hooks for keys and work badges and then use separate shallow bins for each person’s wallet or other important accessories? Making a specialized place for each person to store their things can help keep clutter under control.

Using a variety of shelves, hooks, bins and baskets can make your coat closet a great place for keeping lots of things organized, easy to access, and normally out of sight. A dry erase board on the inside of the door can also help you and your family to keep appointments, soccer practices, school meetings, and other important dates in mind. You can leave reminders for your family that you are sure they’ll see because they’ll have to go to a certain place to retrieve their keys, wallets, purses, etc.

Let’s not forget what the coat closet is actually for. Your coats should be kept safe in the coat closet. Use high quality clothes hangers that are designed especially for coats. Flimsy hangers can break and damage coats. Coat hangers help coats, blazers and suits to keep their shape in the shoulders.

Getting your coat closet under control can help you to keep your life and your family’s lives under control.

About the Author: Charlie Hafter is on the staff of Closet Hanger Factory, a leading online resource for clothes hangers. Get all of the closet and clothes hanger accessories you could need at http://www.closethangerfactory.com, which is recognized worldwide for their excellent quality hangers.

How to Save Time with Closet Organization

With today’s lifestyles, saving time is a must. It can be difficult to meet the demands of your busy schedule when your closet is hard to manage. Clothing that is wrinkled can force you to spend extra time ironing. Clothes that fall off the hanger can be damaged and may need to be washed again before you can wear them. Shoes can get scuffed and crushed if they’re not organized. You probably waste a lot of time every day simply trying to find something to wear. Here we will give you some simple tips for getting your closet in order. The goal of this organizational lesson is to quickly organize and arrange things in a way that help you save time when putting away laundry and while getting ready in the morning.

1) I know you don’t have much time, but try to set aside a couple of hours for accomplishing this task. Pick a time when you are most alert so that the job goes quickly. Get your coffee and get ready to work! Turn on some dance music to motivate you to move quickly.

2) Start pulling things out of your closet and tossing them into three piles. One pile is for things you will keep. You may want to put this pile on your bed or use a rolling garment rack so that you don’t wrinkle the things that are going back into the closet. The second pile is simply for trash. Throw away things that are stained or damaged. Also try to throw away other things that you’ve been keeping forever but will never use. The third pile is your give-away pile. Donate items to friends, family, or a charity if they can be used by someone else. If you have enough, you may even decide to have a garage sale.

3) Now is the time to bag up your trash pile. Take it out right away. You don’t want to run out of time and end up leaving the mound there to get scattered. Bag or box up your donations and seal them off. Put them into the trunk of your car or out on the porch for clothing donation pick-up. If you leave your give-away pile lying around, you might change your mind about getting rid of everything that you should. Remember, out of sight, out of mind.

4) Put everything that you will keep back into the closet in the order that you think would be most efficient. Some people line things up by length, shortest to longest. Some find it easier to find what they’re looking for if they hang things according to color. You may decide to put the things that you use most often in the center and work your way out from there.

5) Think about using specialty clothes hangers. Some hangers have clips or loops for coordinating outfits onto one hanger. This can be really helpful when you’re running late in the morning. Some save space and help you keep things from getting crowded. Coat hangers, like wood hangers, are curved just right and keep your suits and coats perfectly spaced while supporting tailored shoulders.

About the Author: Charlie Hafter is on the staff of Closet Hanger Factory, a leading online resource for clothes hangers. Get all of the closet and clothes hanger accessories you could need at http://www.closethangerfactory.com, which is recognized worldwide for their excellent quality hangers.

5 Steps to an Organized Closet

1) Become charitable, have a garage sale, or give your clothes to family and friends. Most of us keep way too many clothes in our closets. How many times have you switched out winter for summer clothes only to realize that you didn’t wear half of them? The first step to organizing your closet, or any other part of your home for that matter, is to get rid of junk. Start looking at extra things as “space stealers” instead of “things that I might eventually need”. Now that the excess is cleared out, you can work on the next phase of organization; categorizing.

2) Categorizing is probably the most important step in the organization process. If you can’t figure out what category something should go in, then it will inevitably become junk or clutter. Everything needs a place and before you can assign it one, it has to fit in with other things that you keep. If it’s pens and pencils, categorize it with office or school supplies. If it’s your son’s precious handprint mold or finger painting, categorize it as a keepsake. You can create categories and sub-categories to keep things organized. Depending on what you have, you may have an entire dresser dedicated to keepsakes, souvenirs, and memorabilia. One drawer could be things made by one child, another drawer for the other child, one for your husband’s keepsakes, and one for yours. The dresser top can be used to rotate things that you would like to look at into and out of storage.

3) The next step is to measure out how much space you will need to get your closet organized. Let’s say that you have a big stack of t-shirts. You can hang them and measure how much space they take up, or fold them and see how much of a shelf they will occupy. Write it down and then come back to it later. Do the same for your pants, dresses, skirts, shorts, socks, etc. Then you will have all of the data that you need to figure out which combination of bins, drawers, shelves and hanging rods will best accommodate your wardrobe. You may be amazed how much space you can save simply by swapping out a shelf designated for holding your shorts for a couple of cascading hangers that keep them wrinkle free and easy to access in a fraction of the space.

4) Now that you’ve figured out the most efficient arrangement for your clothing and accessories, think about what you use most. Most professional closet organizers will tell you to place the things that you use most front and center. If you store your socks up high on a shelf, you’re not very likely to keep putting your socks in there. You’ll end up making another pile somewhere that is more convenient. The key to staying organized is to make it as easy as possible to put things back where they go. You don’t want baskets with latching lids, for example. It’s much easier to toss things in without having to put everything down in order to open the lid.

5) You can make even more space and protect the investment that you have in your wardrobe by selecting the right clothes hangers for the job. You should always hang coats and suits on coat hangers or wood hangers that are curved to keep the shape of the shoulders. Your hangers should fit the space and the style of your closet. Choose ones that help you keep things organized. This could mean getting a few different types of specialty hangers for organizing belts and ties, cascading clothing, or simply choosing the ones that inspire you to keep the closet neat.

About the Author: Charlie Hafter is on the staff of Closet Hanger Factory, a leading online resource for clothes hangers. Get all of the closet and clothes hanger accessories you could need at http://www.closethangerfactory.com, which is recognized worldwide for their excellent quality hangers.