My Closet: The Naked Truth

I couldn’t sleep last night because I cleaned my closet.

For a lot of people, that might actually contribute to a restful night’s sleep.

Not for me.

Was it the excitement of finding my jammies on a designated hook, rather than on the floor among the detritus of quick changes, gym shoes and the container-of-toiletries-looking-for-a-permanent-home-since-we-moved-in-December 21, 2016?

Compelling, but I don’t think that was all of it.

If we were to do a quick walk through, and trust me - it’s a ‘reach in’, not a ‘walk-in’ - quick would be the operative word, you’d conclude that it’s a designer closet only by virtue of the facts that, A) I am a designer and B) it is a closet. No Instagram love, no crazy pinning, nobody checking my bio for how to shop my IG account. There is nothing compelling about this closet. Save the fact you can now see the floor that was so beautifully refinished last November.

Anyway, some context so you can keep up: We decided to relocate to our hometown. I found this house online. Dan looked at it. I looked at it. Five minutes later we bought it. Dan had the dumpster in the driveway before the ink was dry on the papers. He’s wicked smart, excels at a lot of stuff, including demo, and is really good about trusting me to put a design together.

There was a lot of design happening in a very short time, as our multi-generational household packed up and shifted states. We’ve done major renovations on four houses in the past several years, with twenty some closets before we got to the ones herein. I’ve also worked on more than a few for clients, so configuring a few more at easyclosets.com and waiting for the UPS truck to fill the garage wasn’t an issue for me. I was more focused on making sure there were toilets and a kitchen sink than customizing closets.

We’re blessed with plenty of closets in the #newoldhouse and while they’re spacious, none of them are candidates for a photo spread, because they’re…closets. Functional. Utilitarian. Also, I’m not a clothes horse. I don’t need a walk-in with dressing room. I just need a place to put my stuff. A hook to hang my jammies. When we moved in, after living out of a duffle bag in a rental for four months (with most of our clothing stored in a POD for half the year) I just shoved my stuff in, forced the door closed and hoped for the best. And that’s how it remained, causing me no small amount of anxiety when I need to find something to wear besides the yoga pants with the hex shaped grout lines embedded in the knees. There’s always so much other stuff to do, I just throw stuff in and close the door quickly before anything falls out.

Am I alone?

Yesterday I’d reached my limit, so using equal parts Swedish Death Cleaning and Marie Kondo, with the voices of my mother and my Use What You HaveTM mentor, Lauri Ward echoing in my head, I took everything out, tried, tested, tossed and then regrouped what remained into something I can keep organized.

I found some hooks in the basement and a towel bar I’d salvaged from one of the bathrooms we demo’d and mounted them inside the closet door. I hung some command hooks on the walls, and ordered some clear boxes for the shoes worn so infrequently they require dusting. Inexpensive solutions I can tweak, if necessary, and perhaps upgrade at some point. As I worked, it occurred to me that there are probably more closets like mine in this world, than there are the aspirational spaces found on Pinterest and Houzz – the palatial spaces lined with wallpaper, coordinated storage solutions and Anthropologie hardware.

While they are lovely things to aspire to, they’re not really me. And while I confess to a bout of closet envy now and again when I see them, the investment in such a space doesn’t make sense for me. Having an organized and functional space is more important, and it doesn’t have to be an expensive build out - it’s something anyone can manage with some careful thought.

I had been waiting for the perfect time to ‘do’ the closet…like when I’m at the ‘perfect’ weight, with the ‘perfect’ clothes. But what has become a recurring theme for me of late, is that perfection is the enemy of good. It’s not friends with ‘finished’, either.

I couldn’t sleep, because of the excitement of this life changing exercise - simple organization and the perfectly imperfect are enough. My closet isn’t perfect, but I think it will work. And at the end of the day, I know right where to find my jammies.