Self Help

Most closets are too small. However, if you look at your closet you will see a lot of wasted space, usually below the clothes and above the clothes rod.

The logical solution is to put two bars one above the other, thus making better use of more space in the closet. To put in two bars, the top bar needs to be raised. You can do this by taking out all the wood shelves and bars and replacing them with plastic-coated, ventilated wire shelving.

There are three advantages to this type of shelving. One is that you can see what is on the high shelf more easily through the spaces between the wire. Another is that it requires less dusting since there is no solid shelf. A third is that if you wish to buy shelving without a bar, the shelf holds the clothes hangers apart evenly.

Now suppose you say, “That’s too big a job for right now. What can I do with my closet the way it is?” Let me tell you my situation. If it requires a hammer and nails and takes more than five minutes to do, I don’t do it. Neither my husband nor I are handy with building things and the few occasions when I have had someone do it for me have been unsatisfactory. So I look for easy-to-install “ready-builts”. In this case, add another shelf to the top of the closet with boxes and a board in order to make use of the empty space up there.

Of course, that shelf will be pretty much out of reach so you should use it to store only seldom used things. The unused space at the bottom of the closet can be utilized as a basket storage system. Look in department stores for suitable baskets. An easy-to-install lower bar can be hung from the one above by two chains. Look in catalogs for this. A low bar in the closet helps the children get in the hanging-up habit, too.

Now comes what I think is the most chronic problem of the clothes closet - shoes. If they are left on the floor, even if they are on a wire floor rack with a hump for each shoe, they are unsightly, gather dust, and make it impossible to dust easily. There are several solutions. I keep the boxes the shoes come in and stack them with the shoes in the bottom of the closet.

I write in large letters on the outside of the box a description of the shoes. When I get my shoes out I leave the top ajar and the box pulled out a little so I will know where to put them back. It works well for me.