Bitch Basics: Your Closet Is Not A Kardashian

Bitches, I get it.  Having a closet that looks like this is the dream:

Image via Buzzfeed.

I don’t want to be a dream killer.  I would rather call myself a reality consultant.  We don’t all have closets like this.  We can’t all have closets like this.  And if I’m being honest, we probably shouldn’t all have closets like this.  (Look, I love stuff.  But do we all really need all that stuff?  Probably not.)

In the last few years, magnificent closets on TV and in movies seem to be bombarding us and warping our sense of reality.  The first really fabulous closet I remember seeing and loving and wanting belonged to Cher Horowitz.  After that, Mariah Carey.  And then, the housewives (Sweet baby Jesus, the housewives!).  And the Kardashians. And the closet that Big built for Carrie.  These are all fantastic closets to fantasize about, just like it’s ok to fantasize about Aaron Tveit or Charlie Hunnam being your boyfriend.  All totally normal things.  All not necessarily grounded in reality. 

Since they seem to be TV and closet royalty, we’ll use the Kardashians as our case study (or should it be kase study?) for today's lesson, and we'll talk through the problems these aspirational closets have inflicted upon us.

First of all, it’s a space thing.  I’m fairly certain the Kardashian closets are the size of my junior one-bedroom apartment.  Even if they’re not that large, they have closets that are the size of an entire room.  I have two closets in my entire apartment and they wouldn’t take up half of my bathroom.  I doubt you have that kind of space, either.  (Although, if you do, you are very lucky and I both envy and hate you.  Moving on.) The point is, if you have the space, you have more flexibility.  If you don't, you have to be realistic and get creative.

There’s also the issue of upkeep.  The Kardashians’ closets are styled like a Bergdorf’s showroom.  Racks of color-coordinated, backlit shoes.  Pull out drawers for perfectly folded scarves and jewels.  Clothing meticulously pressed and hung.  Handbags displayed like they’re at the Smithsonian.  It’s magnificent.  But just like in the Smithsonian, things out on display are going to get dusty.  I'm sure the Kardashians have someone dedicated to keeping their closets spotless and sparkling (and even if they don't, I wouldn't blame them if they did).  But your closet is not a Kardashian kloset.  You, my friend, have to do the upkeep.  Not ideal.

Finally, there's the all-around issue of practicality.  Who is going to see your closet other than you, your partner or roommate, and anyone you allow to see it?  Don't get it twisted:  I am all for a neat, clean, uniform, organized closet.  I'm not for stressing out because your closet doesn't look like what you see on TV or in the movies.  It's all about coming to terms with expectations.  If you have one small closet in your rental, you're not going to open the door to a wardrobe wonderland.  But, you can make what you have wonderful and work for you.

Bitch Basics: The Case Against Built-Ins

Ladies and Gents, we’ve been duped.  Pop culture has given us unrealistic closet expectations.  From MTV Cribs to Sex & the City to HGTV, we’ve been made to think that a closet with built-in shelving will solve all our problems, and that if we had a walk-in closet with built in shelving, we’ve found the holy grail. 

Exhibit A:  Carrie's reaction to the closet Big built for her.

That’s not wrong.  It’s just not realistic.

Look, give me enough space and enough money, and I’ll build myself a closet the size of my current apartment or larger.  But that’s the problem:  most of us lack the space and money.  If you’re a renter like me, you get whatever closet space they give you.  Mine happens to come with a few built-in units.  And I hate them.  Why?  Because they don’t work for me.  The space isn’t being efficiently used for the amount and type of stuff that I have.  If I were diagnosing my own closet hang-up, it would be a BSB classic:  I Want It That Way.  Or maybe it would be the unparalleled Frank Sinatra anthem:  My Way.  In any event, that’s how I feel about built-ins.  I want it that way, and that way is my way. 

Allow me to explain.

Your closet needs to work for you, not against you.  The best way to get it to work for you is to tell it what you want (what you really really want).  If you’re renting, you can’t really do that; but, you can figure out how to work with the closet and get it to a place where it works for you anyway.  If you own, maybe it’s easier; at a minimum, you don’t have to ask for permission to change the configuration.  But maybe you can’t afford to convert a room into a walk-in, or even to add some elfa shelving to the space you’ve got.  Or maybe you bought a home with what appears to be a perfect walk-in with fantastic built-ins, and then you start unpacking and realize, oh crap, this does not work for what you're working with.

Here’s my point.

Built-ins aren’t evil, but they’re evil-adjacent.  They look great and make you think they’re going to change your whole world, but unless you’ve thought them out and planned them relative to your stuff and how you’re going to use them, they’re going to disappoint you in some way.  And they’re going to make you work harder to make your closet what you want it to be.  But there’s a happy ending:  with some thought and some time, you and the built-ins that were forced upon you can get to a good place.  If, however, you’re one of those lucky bitches who actually has the holy grail in sight, and can customize your built-in unit, I bow to you and hate you all at once.

Bitch Basics: Folding Fears

Confession time:  I hate drawers.  If I had it my way, I’d hang everything up in my closet.  I hate folding stuff.  I’ve never worked in clothing retail for a reason.  I find folding tedious, and I’m not particularly good at it, and something about it stresses me out.  I wasn’t good at origami in seventh grade art class and I’m not good at folding a shirt, ok?  I am flawed.

Unfortunately, I need drawers.  Most of us need drawers.  So I had to figure out how to make peace with them.  It’s really more the fault of the clothes than the drawers, and it’s not even the clothes’ fault:  it’s the folding.  F*ck folding.  Except don’t.  It’s important.  It keeps your clothes in better shape, and keeps your life organized.  Have you seen Wet Hot American Summer?  (If you haven’t, you must; if you have and you didn’t like it, I’m not sure how I feel about you as a person.  Do you hate laughter?)  Take a cue from Gene, the cafeteria worker, and fondle your sweaters.  I mean don’t get all weird about it, but learn to love the process.

I was in a sorority in college, and had multiple drawers full of Greek life t-shirts.  On Tuesdays we wore letter shirts; on Thursdays we wore other sorority-specific shirts; the other days of the week, we could wear whatever we wanted, but at least one other day of the week involved some sort of Greek life couture.  Ok, it’s a little Mean Girls, but it really made getting dressed easier, especially after a night at the bar.  But I could never seem to find the t-shirt I wanted when I wanted it. You know how when you go to J. Crew and inevitably the sweater you want in your size is somewhere in the middle of the pile, and you pull it out and mess up the whole pile?  Yeah, I didn’t want that to be my life every morning as I got dressed.

One day, I got fed up, and decided I needed to re-organize my shirt drawers.  I took everything out, and spent a lot of time thinking about how I could get all my shirts in there in a way that I knew where everything was, and that I didn’t mess up everything that was folded. So I came up with a different way of folding and putting things away.  And it worked.  Ta-da!

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Look at that!  They’re all lined up like little soldiers.  It’s magnificent!  I can see it all!  And, I’m told there is some other closet guru out there who recommends a similar thing.  Well, mazel tov to you, my sister in organizational arms, fighting the good fight.  If only I had started blogging about folding t-shirts in college, as opposed to studying for the LSAT and going to sorority meetings, the world might be a different place right now.  But here we are, and I think there’s room in the organizing world for both of us.

Bitch Basics: Hanger Hang-Ups

I have a Goldilocks-like relationship with hangers.  In my years of moving, I've always been looking for something juuuuuuust right to keep things in their place and keep my closet organized and looking good.  In college, I had matching pink plastic hangers.  They were uniform and didn’t take up a ton of space, but things fell off of them all the time.   After I graduated from law school, I decided to be fancy and start using wooden hangers.  Wooden hangers were uniform and held things up better than my pink plastics, but took up way too much space in my tiny closet, and cost more than was reasonable on my public service salary and student loan budget.  For a while, my closet was a mishmash of pink plastic and wood, and I was constantly frustrated by the lack of space and things falling on the floor.

One day, on a whim, I picked up a 10 pack of velvet hangers at TJ Maxx.  “Hrmm,” I thought, “I wonder how these will work with my stuff?”  Fast forward a half hour:  my closet was ripped apart, and I was back at TJ Maxx buying every velvet hanger I could find.  A few hours later, it felt like my closet had doubled in size.  I had so much more space!  Dresses weren't falling on the floor!  I could hang up stuff that otherwise had to fit in drawers!  Victory was mine.  Three years and two moves later, velvet hangers and I are still going strong.  #TrueLove

Not everybody has the same strong feelings I have about velvet hangers, or hangers in general.  (I don’t get it, but I accept it.)  However, when trying to overhaul your closet, hangers are a great place to start thinking about how you can change the space.  On my Goldilocks journey to velvet hangers, I realized I had some specific requirements for my hangers:

• They need to look uniform so that everything hangs at the same level;
• Clothes need to stay on them, not fall off;
• They need to conserve space since closet real estate is at a premium;
• They can’t break the bank.

For me, velvet hangers are it.  For you, it might be wooden hangers.  Or plastic.  Or those silky padded ones that my grandma uses to hang her nighties.  But I think we can all agree on one thing; in terms of keeping our closets in tip top shape, Mommie Dearest Joan Crawford was on to something:

Bitch Basics: Movin' Out and the Pre-Move Purge

I hate moving.  Since moving away to college when I was 18, I’ve lived in 12 different places.  12 different moves.  When I did the math on that, I had to do it thrice just to be sure I wasn’t crazy.  How did I move 12 times?  And how did it never get any easier?

Part of why it never felt easier is because I never made the time to purge my place before packing.  Moving is overwhelming, and thinking about editing down your possessions while at the same time packing them up and taking them elsewhere is daunting.  However, before my latest move, I took a long, hard look at everything in my apartment.  Part of this was to be more efficient; part of it was because I had to put my things in storage for eight weeks, and I didn’t want to pay more than I had to.  Some may call it cheap; I’m choosing to call it practical.  Whatever you call it, it totally changed the way I look at prepping to move.

Normally, like I’m sure most people do when moving, I basically throw everything into boxes (albeit in a very organized fashion), tossing things in the trash here or there, but not really thinking about why I’m putting it in that box, and why more isn’t going to the trash.  Never again. 

Would that we could all look as fierce as Peggy Olson when movin' out.

Why do a pre-move purge?  There are a lot of reasons, but here are those that I think are best:

• It means you have less stuff to move!  Moving already sucks, so why move more?
• It also means you have less stuff to unpack!  See above.  Why make it suck more?
• If you’re putting things into storage, it can end up saving you money.  The more you store, the more you pay.  Why spend money storing things about which you no longer care?
• If you’ve hired movers, it can also save you money.  The more stuff they have to move, the longer the move will take.  Save yourself the money, honey!
• You might be able to consign or donate things you decide to purge.  Consignment is cold hard cash; donations are tax write-offs.  Get that money, honey!

When I thought about packing and purging in terms of my paycheck, it forced me to get serious.  And boy did I.  I tackled the purge the same way I tackle a routine closet edit:  I started with the why. When I spent the time to stop and think about why I was moving things, it made me realize that I was packing things because it was easier to put them in a box than it was to think about them.  That, to me, was a stupid reason to spend money that could be put toward something more worthwhile, such as my student loans, or shoes, or brunch. 

Nothing sounded less appealing to me than doing something in addition to packing to move, and then tacking on potentially consigning or donating on top of that.  But, I realized the little extra time would be worth it.  It would definitely save me money, and also had the potential to help other people via donation, and make me money via consignment.  Ultimately most of what I ended up purging didn’t wind up being consigned, but I made a little bit of money, and saved myself a lot.  I ended up getting rid of 5 or 6 moving boxes worth of items (both clothing and home goods).  That meant 5 or 6 boxes that didn’t have to be stored and moved.  That’s how it’s done, bitches.

Bitch Basics: Closet Tips for Basic Bitches

Let’s get something straight:  the term “basic bitch” need not be a pejorative.  If we can take the term “bitch” back (which goodness knows I’m trying to do), so too can we reclaim the “basic bitch.”  So what if you like UGGs and pumpkin spice lattes?  There are worse things in the world.  But when I say we need to reclaim the term, I think maybe we need to redefine it.  In the world of B&W, basic bitches are bitches who just want to get back to basics, to get down to brass tacks, to get stuff done. With that definition in mind, I hereby declare myself a basic bitch.

Bitch Basics are going to be exactly what they sound like:  basic tips and tricks for tidying up your space and keeping it that way.  I’ll tackle riveting topics, such as:

• Velvet vs. wooden hangers
• The deceptive cruelty of built-in shelving
• Superior shoe storage
• Fabulous folding techniques
• And much, much more!

I know, you can hardly contain your excitement.  Have a glass of wine to take the edge off.  Calm?  Great.  Bitch Basics will also talk about wild and crazy things like:

• Consignment
• Donation
• Maintenance of shoes and handbags

The bottom line is that all of this stuff seems like it’s common sense, but that’s the thing about common sense:  it’s not all that common.  And if these things were all common sense, then I wouldn’t have worked on 5 friends’ closets in the past 3 months (highlights coming soon!), and there wouldn’t be boards devoted to this sort of stuff on Pinterest.  Bitch Basics are  my way of organizing all these issues and their potential solutions in one helpful place for you, because as we all know: