Tame your Jumbled Wardrobe with some Handy Closet Organizers

On one end of the spectrum is the uber-organized person who organizes his closet first by clothing type and second by colors. You will not find a shirt out of place or a cheap wire hanger on the clothing rod.On the other hand is the person who uses the closet for a big clothing dump. They shove and stuff everything into the closet and then quickly close the doors so no one is ever the wiser.In between these two extremes are most people. And most people can use some help bringing some order to their closets.

One of the quickest ways to do that is with handy closet organizers. What these organizers can do for you is bring some breathing room into your closet. Breathing room means you can actually see what is in there. Gone are the days when you pull a sweater out from the back of your closet and think to yourself: “Wow. I forgot I had this!”While any organizing system can help, there are plenty of closet organizing tools that help you create useful space out of what you thought was wasted space.

Shoes

If you have run out floor space in your closet to store your shoes, you need to go up. Try a hanging shoe organizer. One model actually hooks over the back of a door and stores 30 pairs of shoes. The 66-inch long organizer has a clear vinyl front, so you can quickly find the shoes you want. It has metal hanging brackets that hook over the door, as well as four self-adhesive hook and loop strips that attach to the door for extra stability.

Another option for shoes is to take them out of the closet and put them under the bed in a Shoes Under case. One case holds up to 12 pairs of shoes. Put the shoes in their slot, zip close the clear vinyl cover, and slide it under your bed. In the winter, your summer sandals will not accumulate on the bottom of the closet and during the winter, your snow boots will not collect dust. This nylon and vinyl case measures 29 by 23 inches and is 6 inches deep.

Hanging Organizers

One of the funny things about closet space is there is plenty of vertical space. It’s the horizontal space, spreading out across the clothing rod, that is limited. With that in mind, try some organizers that go up and down – not out. Non-slip Cascading Hangers can hold up to 12 shirts or blouses at a time. Or each can hold eight skirts or eight pairs of pants in the same space as a single hanger. The top hanger hooks over the clothing rod.

The second hanger hooks into the top hanger. The third hanger hooks into the second hanger, and so on and so. The result is that your clothes hang down, not across, creating more room than you ever thought possible.There are variations on this theme, with vertically hanging hangers for slacks and skirts. About the only clothing that does not work well on vertical hangers are dresses.

Care for Clothes

Some of the best closet organizers actually help you care for your clothing, such as soft grip hangers, which keep even the silkiest clothing in place. Another creative hanger is the Bend A Hanger. This foam hanger can be bent into a soft upside down U and used to hang sweaters and blouses where you do not want the points created by a stiff hanger.

Turn the foam ends up and you have a soft hanger that will not let spaghetti straps slip off the hanger.Another option is a perfectly spaced hanger, which keeps clothing from bumping right up into the next hanger. Called Perfectly Hung, it is a flexible plastic strip that fastens to any clothing rod. On the strip are evenly placed notches that force hangers to space out evenly. Each set comes with three 24-inch sections of spaced strips.

When there is No Closet

You are guaranteed to have closet issues when there is not a closet in your room. This happens a lot with 100-year-old homes, and when you carve out a room somewhere like the basement. If there is not a closet in your room, you need an instant closet – one made with a steel frame and a fabric cover. It has a clothing rack for your hanging clothes and a 24-shoe compartment for your footwear.There are also four accessory pockets for extra space.

These instant closets also come in handy for those with little storage space. They can be set up in an out-of-the-way space (like the basement) and used to store out-of-season clothing, seldom-worn formal clothing or holiday wear. Because there is a fabric cover that zips closed, you can keep your clothing looking fresh. This closet measures 36 inches wide by 19½ inches deep by 62¾ inches high.If your closet has been in need of some serious rearranging, consider these helpful products in your quest for order!

Nick Nunez is a freelance writer who writes about home maintenance topics and products such as closet organizers.