A Well Informed Guide to My Closet

Several of you asked me for a tour of my closet. My first thought was I would do just a short reel and then post it.

Unlike Carrie Bradshaw’s dream closet, my closet is much less impressive -- then again Carrie’s closet didn’t have a happy ending and I’ve been married for 36 years and we still like each other. Most days. 

When Mr. Herr and I met, I was living in one of those great Philadelphia apartment buildings built before World War II. It was more than I could afford, but it had 12 foot ceilings and oodles of closets. Lots of closets. 

I had a walk-in closet in my bedroom and another large closet in the hallway.  Did I mention this place was closet Heaven?

That was 1987. It wasn’t until 2014 -- 27 years later – that I finally came close to that kind of closet space again.   

When we married, our first house in Lambertville was a nineteenth century brick townhouse built before the Civil War. If you know anything about houses from that era, they didn’t have a lot of closets (mostly because they didn’t have a lot of store-bought clothes). 

113 North Clinton had one closet which we shared. We also had an armoire in the guest bedroom.  I was very brave, sharing one closet with my husband. I’m not even sure how I managed. 

Our next house in Hopewell, did have more closets, one in each of the three bedrooms. 

They weren’t big closets; in 1910 when the house was built, Americans still didn’t have the wardrobes they do now, but there were three closets and our children were very small – four under the age of six. Pure chaos. 

I wasn’t close to Carrie Bradshaw, but I had enough clothing to make me be smart about how I managed my clothes, the kids’ clothes and Mr. Herr’s clothes. In those days, men still wore suits to work, so I faced closet competition from a lot of grey, blue, and grey and blue pinstripe suits (the man has a big color palette. Not).

Hopewell forced me to invent my closet system. That house had a walk up attic and one of my solutions was to keep all of our off-season clothes up there. 

Then we moved to the Money Pit in 1997, also known as the place I live in today. 

That house started out in the 1820s as a three bedroom farmhouse.  The Money Pit is worth at least one post all by itself, but for now what you need to know is even though we’d stepped up to four closets, two of them were shallow and not designed for modern clothing or hangers.  It was back to the attic for my off-season clothing. 

The attic was something out of the Halloween movie franchise, poorly lit, ceilings so low even I had to stoop and protruding nails which I regularly ran into.  The kids were bigger and had real clothing now, so we had six bona fide people living in this under-closeted house. The armoire from Lambertvlle had traveled to the new house and I imported two sets of steel shelves.  Think Home Depot meets French Imperial in a too-small bedroom with more doors than in Noises Off.   Here are a couple of photos of our old bedroom.

Paradise by the Closet Light was to arrive in 2014, when we finally added on.

Time for a quick digression. We moved to the house because it was in a town with great public schools, Princeton, and we could afford it. The house was also 1000 feet from the private school rink where our kids played hockey. Win-win, right?

We weren’t afraid of an old house – this was our third – what could go wrong?

In a word, virtually everything. The Money Pit doesn’t do it justice. Think the Money pit meets Green Acres.

Then our kids started getting into expensive private schools. The addition – and the promise of a bounty of closetage – was like one of those desert mirages of oases. Every time I thought I was close, it turned out to be just that, a mirage. 

The happy day finally came 15 years later than we had planned(who knew that educating 4 children would be soooo expensive– not us; we were young and still had theories).

My dream closet was a huge walk-in closet for me and a smaller regular closet for Mr. Herr. 

When Mr.  Herr saw the plans, he pointed out that the closet was as big as the bedroom and put his foot down.  He doesn’t do that often and he pointed out that our adult children, with apartments of their own, wouldn’t need the closets in their bedrooms. 

I still got a walk-in, but it was no longer going to be bigger than a Manhattan studio. It’s a healthy-sized closet. 

The problem is, like traffic when they build new highway lanes, my clothing always seems to exceed the available closet space.

For this I blame (but not too much because I love the clothes), Mr. Herr, who sees things and decides I need them and buys them. You can’t get mad at a man who knows every one of your sizes, even your glove size.   I also was taught by my mother and grandmother the importance of buying clothing that is high quality and timeless.   I have clothing I’ve owned for over 30 years.  About 20 years ago my daughters started shopping in my closet.   The best example of this is a Laura Ashley dress that I bought for New Year’s Eve 1988 which my younger daughter wore for Winter Formal in 2011.

Unfortunately, because we were a long way from smartphones in 1988, I don’t have a picture of myself in this dress. The twice a year switch is also a great opportunity to review my clothes.  What did I wear this season, what didn’t I wear?  Is it time for me to say goodbye to something?  I know that the official rule is “if you haven’t worn it in the last 12 months, it should go”, but I don’t agree.   I try to buy clothing that is timeless, so even if I didn't wear it this season because the right occasion didn’t come along, that doesn’t mean I won’t wear it next year.  Sometimes, I find that I have two things that are similar, then I’ll pass one on to one of my daughters.  Things that I think won’t work for any of us I either donate or sell.  

I also keep my hanging clothing sorted by type, dresses together, pants together, etc and then sorted by color.  It makes it easier to find things and to put outfits together.  I keep cocktail dresses and gowns together in a closet upstairs.  

And I do have a second closet, just outside the bedroom, the Narnia Closet, where I keep my coats.   We’ll talk about coats another day.

For the overflow, I’m back to the seasonal rotation system. I don’t have to go to the dreaded attic. The kids’ have moved most of their clothing to their own apartments (although my sons still have way too much stuff here) so now my rotation is more humane. 

Forget springing forward and falling back. Mr. Herr knows the seasons are changing when the summer clothing goes to the upstairs bedroom closets and the winter clothing comes downstairs and vice versa. 

Here are some pictures of the switch in progress.

Here is my downstairs closet midway through the process.

Here is the closet after the switch!

The shirts and pants on the upper rack in the first photo are Mr. Herr’s.   I keep all but one of his suits in one of the upstairs closets.  I switch his sport coats when I switch my clothes, otherwise Mr. Herr, who doesn’t pay much attention to his clothes, would be in danger of wearing Harris Tweed in June or Madras in January!  You can also see my trusty steamer.   A good steamer is absolutely worth the investment.

I keep my sweaters, belts, scarves and shawls in plastic boxes sorted by color and type.  This helps make it easier to get dressed in the morning and prevents moths.  I keep Lavender Sachets in the tubs as a further preventative.