Happy Mother's Day!

I hope all of you mothers are doing something special today. I'm feeling nostalgic about all the wonderful times I've had with my own mother, and wish she weren't quite so far away.

I was inspired by Angie's recent post about the influence her mother had on her own sense of style to reflect on how my mother influenced me.

First of all, she and I have very different tastes, like apples and oranges, so tracking influence was difficult for me. She likes neutrals and earth tones. I like loud colors. She likes loose shapes. I am drawn to more fitted silhouettes.

She is an accomplished seamstress, however, and taught me a lot about construction and quality. We share a love of beautiful fabric...silks and wools and high count cottons make us swoon.

You can see I came by my love of polka dots naturally. No one, however, is going to get me back into a plaid suit or a sailor suit.

My mother is fun and quirky in all the best ways. Everyone loves her and my kids are her biggest fans (after me).

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My Little Closet - Part II

I'm exhausted. I worked all afternoon on cleaning up my closet. Right now, I'm not sure it's much better. It still looks crowded, but I can move the hangers back and forth a little bit, so that's good.

What I did:

1. Replaced most of my fat plastic hangers with Real Simple Slimline hangers. I like these a lot so far and would like to get enough to replace all of my old hangers. They made a significant difference in the "move-ability" of my clothes along the rod, since things weren't crammed together so much.

2. I hung most of my skirts on special linking skirt hangers. I would like to get two more sets so all of my skirts are on them. They're a great space-saving device.

3. I hung my belts on a belt hanger.

4. I hung my scarves on a butterfly scarf hanger. This is great, because you can put a lot of scarves on one hanger and they're easy to get to. They don't fall off either.

5. I put my summer shoes in a vinyl space-saver bag designed for going under the bed. It's kind of like this. I'm not crazy about it and will be looking for something better.

6. I tried using a hanging sweater organizer, but it took up too much space in my closet. I stuffed all of my sweaters back in the storage bin which sits on the floor of my closet.

7. I installed a heavyweight double hanger rod from Bed Bath and Beyond. Since my top rod is lower than average, some of my clothes touch the floor, which is not ideal. However, this $14 investment made the biggest difference in my clean-up effort.

THE SHELF: As much as I would like to put more on the shelf, it's not possible due to the ceiling which slants down sharply over it. For example, the space is too small to put a regular shoe box on the shelf.

I still have to figure out how/where to store my tall boots and my purses.

I think that's it! I hope this might help someone else deal with a stuffed closet.

None of this would have been possible if it weren't for the excellent advice I received from YLF. Thanks everyone!!!

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Help Me Obi Wan. My closet needs your help.

Is there any hope of managing a closet of this size? Have any of you with small closets found any good ways of storing all of your treasures?

This is all I have available to me for clothes storage in my very tiny house. We don't have room for a dresser or wardrobe.

This is what it looks like AFTER the great purge of 2011. I like 99% of what's in there right now.

We're renting, so no major construction is allowed.

Looking at this makes me feel bad, like I'm a wastefully materialistic person. I'm also embarrassed at how messy it is.

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