Good afternoon! It's a new month, we keep hearing rumors about something called "spring," and we're knee-deep in organizing and refining, so we decided to dedicate this month to spring cleaning. Mondays shall henceforth be known as closet days, as we tackle each of our closets and make them work harder for us.

When we first moved in, we decided which closet would hold what, shoved stuff in there accordingly, and did very little beyond that. I'm a fan of a two-step organizing process, which I've talked about a bunch, so partly we were just exploring whether our initial placements made sense, and figuring out if we needed to purge or invest in any fancy organizing equipment, and partly we were just busy making the rest of the house into something that did not resemble a maze of boxes, so closets fell on the back burner. But now: Now it's time to tackle these bad boys. Starting with Lou and Bret's closet.

I know it's unorthodox for a guy and his daughter to share a closet, but we like to live on the edge. Also, there was zero chance I was sharing my closet with anybody, so by default, they ended up together. They're actually super cute about it. If you recall, none of our bedrooms have closets, so all of our clothes are kept in the Hall of Closets, which is at the back end of the apartment, and leads to the bathroom. Here's a quick floor plan reminder:

See those three doors along the back of the place? That's our Hall of Closets. And the first one you hit is Bret and Lou's.

It's definitely a little hard to see what's going on here, thanks in part to the sliding doors, and in part to the hot mess. Basically, Bret had the closet rod and top shelf, and we hung Lou's clothes on her little free closet rod, and used shoe racks and clear shoe boxes to hold the stuff that would normally go in drawers. And, obviously, made liberal use of the floor.

As far as things go, this actually wasn't the very worst system ever. Their stuff certainly fit in here, though we could have used a bit more space for extraneous things. I liked the clear shoe boxes-cum-drawers, but I hadn't labeled them, so putting away laundry and picking out outfits was a slight pain. Those bins aren't so clear that a reminder of what's in there isn't helpful. And Lou would, good naturedly, complain if stuff ended up in the wrong bin: "Who put a short-sleeved shirt in the long-sleeved bin! That's so silly!" Like okay, chica, we're doing the best we can over here.  Plus, while Lou has gotten great at picking out clothes and getting them off hangers, she still has trouble hanging things (five rejected outfits every morning, omg that child is her mother's daughter) back up, so I wanted to increase the use of drawers and minimize the hanging stuff. And those sliding doors were killing me. You couldn't ever get into the whole closet at once, and they would get jammed on Lou's bedroom door. So.

We started out by getting rid of the sliding doors. Good riddance. Then, using hot pink, gold-flecked wrapping paper, we lined the back wall, because we agreed that Lou could really use a little more pink in her life. We did a little meta-organizing, dedicating one half of the closet to each person, rather than the mish-mash it was before. To increase Lou's "drawer" storage, I brought in more of the shoe organizer shelves (I had them in my closet, where they really weren't doing me any favors). I had enough shoe organizers to provide a place for all of Bret's shoes, which freed the top shelf for other stuff.

Based on what was and wasn't working before, we developed a system that now works really well. This is not to say that it always looks like a vision of pristine beauty. Lou is in charge of dressing herself and putting everything away, so there's some... cramming. But the fact that she can do it, all by herself, is precisely what makes the whole thing so awesome. Similarly, though Bret's clothes come back from the dry cleaner encased in plastic on hideous metal wire hangers, there's now plenty of room for them, and a good basic system for keeping things tidy. 

Here're the MVPs of this closet.

1 (and 5). Maximize the space. By getting rid of the lower closet rod, which wasn't working well, and by bringing in extra shelves, which were (and are) working well, we freed the whole top shelf for stuff that we really needed space for. The three wire baskets hold Bret's socks, organized by color, the flowered box holds extra hangers, (only the velvet and pants hangers we use - no dry cleaning or cheap plastic mojo-ruiners) and there's even room for Lou's extra blankets.

2. Make it easy to keep things pruned. These too boxes are labeled "too big" and "too small," and they are a lifesaver. Since I buy things off-season, Lou's summer wardrobe is already waiting in the wings, in a compartment underneath her storage bed. But, and I don't think this is true for just kids, things change fast even for the in-season clothes we have in this closet. What you thought fit your child, or would sometime this season, maybe just doesn't. And rather than putting it back into circulation, clogging up your closet, I think you've got to have a place to easily get rid of such things. Having these boxes here makes a world of difference in keeping things tidy, and in reducing the amount of getting-dressed time wasted on clothes that no longer work.

3. Do what works for you. As I say, the clear shoe boxes were working for us, but the little closet rod really wasn't. So we increased the boxes and decreased the hanging space. Now Lou's special occasion dresses hang up here, but nothing else, and it's great. I don't mind helping her get those when she needs them, and, as a bonus, having them up high prevents her from putting on her party dress every single day.

4. Laaaaaabel. I don't think that everything, ever, has to be labeled. I definitely think Pinterest and the blogoshere and Organize-It magazine have contributed to an over-labelization in our culture. But man, any time you have a) a child, or b) more than one person using a system, or c) any difficulty seeing the contents of your system, I think labels are worth every last minute you will spend creating them. So, your own jeans drawer? Doesn't need a label. Your opaque holiday decorations bins you keep on the highest shelf? Do need a label. For Lou, who has a precise sense of order (again, my poor child, I'm sorry for the neuroses I've passed on), and for just generally allowing her to deal with things on her own, which is a big goal, we needed a dual-label system: words plus pictures. I used Publisher and free images to create our labels. Though everyone's labeling needs are different, if you'd like them for your non-commericial use, I'll send you these files; just email me. Anyway, these labels are, actually, life-changing. Little Lou is just so cute getting herself ready in the morning (which I need to remember more when I'm shouting/begging to please hurry up as we are late AGAIN), and now she is completely self-sufficient in that regard. Putting away laundry is a breeze compared to the guessing game that required us to take out all of the bins before. And keeping things organized is so much easier. Even for grown-ups, I really can't say enough about (appropriate) labeling as a way of keeping things organized, and for kids, it's a game-changer. Just do it.

5. Use your space wisely. A couple shoe organizers here allowed us to take advantage of what would have been wasted space beneath Bret's hanging clothes, which is what freed up more space for more stuff. If there's a blank space in your closet, you can probably use it - whether it's vertical space above the rod, or space below the shorter hanging stuff, or on the back of the door.

6. Have a place for everything you need a place for. The clothes hamper (you can barely see) here is for Bret's dry cleaning. You may need a space for clothes that need repairing, or to dry sweaty workout clothes, or a hook to hang outfits you plan for the next day, whatever -- if it's something you need on a constant basis, do your best to incorporate it. In fact, we don't currently have a box for dry cleaning hangers because I just move them to the recycling bin every now and again, but I think it's worth putting one back there as a way to keep things looking nice without effort. Effortlessness is the key to all things organized.

7. Arrange things so they are easy to see and as accessible as possible. Bret's clothes are organized by color and level of formality. Like I say, things still get a little out of order on dry cleaning day, but that's life. In general, everything is highly visible and easy to get to. We're about to head to Colombia, where we'll need both Bret's tux and his (ridiculously large for an NYC-based lawyer) collection of guayaberas, and it's all there and easy to see. No wondering if we even still own that crap/treasure or having to dig for it. Everything in this closet is easy to get to. Before, some of Lou's shoes were in dark recesses, under her hanging clothes and hard to see. Now, they're right there, in one layer, easy to get. We were keeping some of Bret's workout clothes in the pink boxes before, and they weren't easy to see or get to on a regular basis. Now, those boxes house the stuff we no longer need to access (and are labeled so we know what's in there) and everything we do need is easily retrieved. Effortlessness. It's the only way.

Finally, for folded clothes, use the file system. It is so much easier to see and put away "filed" clothes. I talk more about it here, and it's how we get Lou's wardrobe into those little shoe boxes. I've also got tips about purging and organizing from our last apartment's closet redo, here.

So, that's closet number one. We're doing them all. Next week is mine, then the front hall, then the "baby" closet and the "miscellaneous" closet, for both of which we actually hold our breath and cover our heads when we open the doors. Fun! Let me know if you'd like the labels and please share this if you find it helpful. See you tomorrow!

Sam