Closet Fan

I grew up in a tri-level house built in the 1970s. One of its best features were its closets. They were large, especially the one in the front hall, and had wooden bi-fold doors painted white. What made them especially functional is what my father did with them. What had been wide open spaces with a bar and one long shelf he turned into customized shelves and hanging spaces that made the very most of every square inch of space. He did this from his own mind and with his own hands. I don't even know if pre-made closet organizing systems existed in the marketplace at the time.

But even though we had big closets, we still had some strange configurations. Dad's many suits were in the front hall closet, though the bedrooms were all upstairs. Mom and Dad's closet was filled with dad's dress shirts and mom's dressier clothes, stuff they couldn't fold and put in drawers without wrinkling it. My sister had her closet filled with her clothes. And my closet was about 1/3rd my clothes and 2/3rds Mom's other clothes—you know, the stuff that didn't fit at the moment but was too nice to get rid of. I'm sure many of you women readers have a similar area of your house, be it a closet, under a bed, or in the attic. My huge stash of clothes I'm still too big for is in the attic.

Any of you who live in older homes probably have limited closet space, as I do now. Though our bedroom has a walk-in closet, it's full of all of my things. My husband's clothes are in the tiny closet under the eaves in our son's room. And Zach's suits are down on the main floor in the tiny closet that is supposed to belong to the master bedroom (the room which actually acts as our office and my sewing room). We don't hang any of our son's clothes up. What two-year-old boy needs hangers anyway? Doesn't the little boy uniform consist essentially of jeans and t-shirts?

One of the first things I really loved about our house when we were walking through it as prospective buyers is our front closet. "It's a little room!" I said with glee. "With a window!" True it's about 1/4 the size of our front closet growing up, but it's a little room for crying out loud!

I make the most of that little space with some extra shelving. Above the coats I put our old shoe rack from our apartment days and put shoes, purses, and hats on it.

That blue can of Lysol is for when Zach comes home from visiting someone at the hospital. He sprays the bottoms of his shoes so he doesn't trail supergerms into our house. Isn't he thoughtful?

And against the back wall I have a nice little wooden cubby that used to be in my grandmother's bathroom, filled with guest towels. When I would use my grandmother's bathroom, I would think about what pets I would put in that cubby if it was mine. A bunny in each. Or a turtle and a couple snakes. Now it is mine and all I have in it are hats, scarves, and gloves.

Each of us gets our own cubby. Not as fun as small animals, but far less messy.