Luxury Found in an Organized Closet

NEED

Luxury is anything you don't need, right? I mean, you need food, water, clothing, shelter . . . but good wine, good food, beautiful interiors, nice clothes; those aren't necessities, they are luxuries - it's all luxury.

- Marc Jacobs

We need to surround ourselves with beautiful things to appreciate and nurture the beauty in the world. If your closets are a mess and you are annoyed because you can't find what you want without rifling through the entire length of your closet, your annoyance affects your mood and ultimately your attitude to life; at least life for that day. When you do finally find what you were looking for, you discover a stain or a missing button or a hem that has ravelled. Now, you are not only annoyed, you are angry. Your mood affects everything you continue doing and consequently everyone you meet. "I'm having a bad day," you proclaim, in hopes that you will be pardoned for any bad behaviour. 

There's something to be said about stopping and smelling the roses and straightening out your closet. Roses are beautiful, a luxury. Buy some and put them in full view on the first day that you decide to attack the closet and take time to go and take a whiff.

The first thing you should not do is take out everything in your closet and throw it on the bed. Please, do not do that. Approach the closet in tiny steps. Make organizing your closet, a week-long, or even a month-long project. If it's been a mess for awhile, what's another few days?

Here are some general recommendations that you can interpret in a way that makes you comfortable and productive.

1. Categorize. Pants together, sweaters, tops, dresses, shirts, skirts - don't worry about sub-categories yet, just get everything that is the same together. Once that is done, then you can separate into colours within the clothing type. 

2. Get rid of wire hangers. Buy several packages of hangers that are all the same. For some reason, the same white, blue or beige plastic or decorator hangers bring a cohesive backdrop to the closet.

3. Sort by Function & Need. Now that you have everything looking organized, it's time to sort into another sub-category - function. If you have not worn something for over a year, put it aside. One more set of sub-categories for the stuff you haven't worn - garbage, give away, re-sale via consignment or Kijiji. 

4. Clean & Fix. The last thing to do is - clean, iron and mend. Those clothes that you have set aside for re-sale need this attention before you truck them to the consignment shop or post them online. Again this is something that could take you the next month or have someone else do it. Drycleaners and seamstresses need your business too.

For those of you who have perfectly organized closets - bravo! However, for the others, depending on whether you assign an hour a day or an hour a week to this project, it will feel good just to get started. You'll get it done - one small step at a time. And the result is pure luxury translated into time and temperament. You definitely will appreciate the luxury a well-organized closet affords and smelling the roses becomes more of a pleasure.

I am going to make everything around me beautiful - that will be my life.

- Elsie de Wolf