I’ve been to Chris’ place more times than I can count, so I had an idea of what was going on in his closet. He’s already a very organized person, so I was excited by the challenge of the unexpected. While the pre-consult plan was for me to help him work on organizing his drawers, during the consult, it was clear to me that we could change how he was storing and organizing in his drawers and closet to meet his goal of maximizing efficiency. I started going through his bedroom closet, and realized there were things that made more sense in his bathroom linen closet. Before we knew it, we were knee deep in a full wardrobe overhaul. How was it, I wondered, that someone so organized actually needed this type of work?
Chris’ Closet Hang-Ups
Blank Space. Our first task was organizing Chris’ pants drawer. Once we got it in tip top shape, he had room for 3-4 more pairs of pants. His response? “What are we supposed to do with this blank space?” As someone who has a deep seated dislike of TayTay (but can also begrudgingly acknowledge and appreciate her songwriting talent and catchy hooks), it pained me to realize that she was Chris’ pop culture diagnosis.
Teaching Chris the Process
Chris’ question about blank space gave me a better understanding of his (very well-written) closet goal: Maximizing efficiency while ensuring optimal aesthetics. He was organized, but not using the space efficiently, and more focused on things “looking uniform” and “matching” than actually managing the space in a functional way.
See all those boxes in the closet? Lovely. Looks great. Terribly inefficient use of storage space. Even after we rearranged the drawers and closet, Chris was still hung up on things looking just so. Don’t get me wrong, I like everything to look a certain way, too, but Chris’ hang up really threw me for a loop. But hey, at the end of the day, he’s the one who has to live there. If he would rather have empty, but very pretty, boxes in his closet because he likes how it looks, that’s up to him. [Bitchy note: I’m convinced he’ll get sick of it and change his mind.]
His drawers were another story. Aside from his socks and skivvies drawer, which looked pretty good, all things considered, the rest of the drawers were a lot to handle. They were packed to the gills with things kind of haphazardly stacked on top of each other. As Chris does not like folding and finds keeping his drawers in order a real chore, these bad boys took the most work.
His bathroom closet also looks pretty good, right?
Except it wasn’t functioning for him, and he was having trouble finding what was in there. Chris was pretty committed to his black totes to hold everything, despite their annoying him. We took everything out of the drawers, as well as the boxes in his closet, and channelled our inner Tim Gunn, and figured out how to make it work.