Monday, May 19, 2014
Friday, May 25, 2012
Closet Palooza: Inspiration
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Exhibit-Put something personal in your closet that inspires you
(1) Artwork, Photographs, Quotes, Rugs, Polaroids of favorite outfits
(2) Add your favorite Scent, Play your favorite music
how to
accessories pinboard
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Contact Dimitri at 800-910-0129 ext.104
Closet Palooza: Closet Aesthetic
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Display your wardrobe like art
Backdrop
Closets shan’t be an exercise in camouflage. There needs to be a strong contrast between your clothing and your wardrobe. White is a great starting point but a graphic pattern can also volunteer.
a) Old posters as wallpaper, or maps, book pages
This would customize your closet very easily. It might take a little bit of time and a lot of wallpaper glue, but it would produce a very unique end result.
Hanging Structures
Straight sideways rods aren’t the only solution. Expose your closet or just a few of your favorite pieces on non-traditional layouts. Expose your industrial, natural, eclectic leanings.
Lighting
a) Whenever possible pursue natural light to illuminate your reflection, but keep this color sapping thief away from your clothes. Wall sconces around your mirror to avoid shadowing your complexion.
b) To illuminate your clothes, you want true color bulbs that provide sharp, clean, distributed lighting.
c) Chandeliers offer ambiance, but you may want to supplement with recessed downlights for directional light on your items.
d) If you have a small space, ensure you have recessed, closed, or covered lighting. Flames have only fleeting, though contagious beauty.
Mirrors
a) Ensure you have access to every angle of your figure. You should be able to make well informed decisions.
(1) A standard full length mirror is an obvious solution
(2) But consider creative solutions
(a) A collection of smaller mirrors grouped together
(b) Reflective ceilings, walls, or closet doors
(c) Shiny furniture can also be used to check
(3) Nothing beats the power of the three way mirror
Sponsored by:
follow EasyClosets.com, a division of the Stow Company
Contact Dimitri at 800-910-0129 ext.104
Closet-Palooza: Organizational Strategy
Create space out of nothing at all.
a) If you can not see it, you will not wear it.
a) Bring your starting players to the front of the lineup
b) Only currently fitting, seasonably appropriate items should be presented for your daily fashion evaluation. Wool sweaters should not clutter July diurnal dressings nor should gladiator sandals muddle January’s daily dandification. Switch your clothes, shoes, and other accessories out every season. If your abode does not accommodate a separate closet, section off your available space so only the most relevant items are directly in front of you, dominating your attention.
(1) Up High, clean plastic bins, garment bags, vacuum bags, etc.
(2) And do not let me catch you with maternity garb in your daily mix when your baby is more than three months old.
b) Fold knits to avoid stretching them out, but keep the entire pile visible. If they roost in a drawer, stand fold them so you can see each player, not just the top fold. If they nest on a shelf, make sure there are no more than ten inches of items per pile and put the heaviest items at the bottom of the pile.
(Folding Exercise)
c) If it isn’t given boundaries it will spread. Clothing piles are like jello they must be given molds.
d) Shun wire hangers like Tineid moths. These clothing predators will create shoulder nipples in the favorite wears. Even plastic, tubular hangers are an inferior choice as they lack the power to hold a wide neck top or heavy denim. Instead opt for a crystal dress hanger, wooden hanger, quilted hanger (made by loving grannies everywhere), or my favorite huggie hangers. All should offer slip, crease, and snag-free protection.
e) Class you closet out by life roles initially: casual pants and casual tops, professional trousers and professional blouses, social dresses and social layers. After your roles are zoned, you can pretty it up by category and color: group like items together; color sort from dark to light, solid to pattern. When a specific occasion arises you’ll know exactly where to reach.
f) Indulge your inner OCD with labels. Take pains to express what is hidden beneath folds (ie cuts of jeans, sleeve lengths, etc.)
-screen capture video of easyclosets tool
highlight smart uses of space and organization
a) If you can not see it, you will not wear it.
a) Bring your starting players to the front of the lineup
b) Only currently fitting, seasonably appropriate items should be presented for your daily fashion evaluation. Wool sweaters should not clutter July diurnal dressings nor should gladiator sandals muddle January’s daily dandification. Switch your clothes, shoes, and other accessories out every season. If your abode does not accommodate a separate closet, section off your available space so only the most relevant items are directly in front of you, dominating your attention.
(1) Up High, clean plastic bins, garment bags, vacuum bags, etc.
(2) And do not let me catch you with maternity garb in your daily mix when your baby is more than three months old.
b) Fold knits to avoid stretching them out, but keep the entire pile visible. If they roost in a drawer, stand fold them so you can see each player, not just the top fold. If they nest on a shelf, make sure there are no more than ten inches of items per pile and put the heaviest items at the bottom of the pile.
(Folding Exercise)
c) If it isn’t given boundaries it will spread. Clothing piles are like jello they must be given molds.
d) Shun wire hangers like Tineid moths. These clothing predators will create shoulder nipples in the favorite wears. Even plastic, tubular hangers are an inferior choice as they lack the power to hold a wide neck top or heavy denim. Instead opt for a crystal dress hanger, wooden hanger, quilted hanger (made by loving grannies everywhere), or my favorite huggie hangers. All should offer slip, crease, and snag-free protection.
e) Class you closet out by life roles initially: casual pants and casual tops, professional trousers and professional blouses, social dresses and social layers. After your roles are zoned, you can pretty it up by category and color: group like items together; color sort from dark to light, solid to pattern. When a specific occasion arises you’ll know exactly where to reach.
f) Indulge your inner OCD with labels. Take pains to express what is hidden beneath folds (ie cuts of jeans, sleeve lengths, etc.)
highlight smart uses of space and organization
Sponsored by:
follow EasyClosets.com, a division of the Stow Company
Source: browse.realsimple.com via Reachel on Pinterest
Contact Dimitri at 800-910-0129 ext.104
Closet-Palooza: Closet Cleaning
-video of five piles exercise-
Closet cleanses should be undertaken somberly and consistently. As a new season is budding, as a new life calling is dawning, as you find yourself glazing over at the threshold of your wardrobe's abyss, all of these indicate optimal conditions for a purging.
Below are specifics to ensure a safe, successful procedure:
Dedicate a large portion of ante meridian to it, mornings with the blinds drawn provide ample natural light, but if you must use post meridian, ensure you have sharp, clean, distributed lighting. Either way, find a thicket of uninterrupted hours.
Although closet cleanings can be done in intervals, an uninterrupted push actually aids your ability to purge. First seeing all the clothes in one day allows you to quickly rank the best and worst. Second, seeing all your clothes in a single day may induce a little emotional nausea. Hopefully this disgust is stronger than any emotional attachment, allowing you to purge what is poisoning your closet.
As this is a somewhat intense procedure, let's do what we can to make it as lovely as possible. Wash and style your hair, but leave off the makeup. That way it won't induce unnecessary dry cleaning and you'll be able to see how different chromatics affect your complexion. Finally slip your best dainties, including any shapers that you regularly wear, under some loungers.
Once you're ready, prepare your environment. Allow the melodies of a dewy fresh anthem to twinkle around you. Fix yourself a refreshing tonic: sparkling water, ginger lemonade, minted honeydew juice. Personally I prefer listening to Madeleine Peyroux with a dainty cup of herbal egyptian licorice.
While you pour your beverage, fill a second glass, because you'll need a friend. Not that really nice friend who praises everything you do. No, we want the chronically honest friend, the teenage daughter, or the opinionated mother. Spouses can be good with the honesty, but they lack patience. And occasionally the process can result in temporary marital malaise. If friends are not readily available, make sure you have, at the least, a full length mirror positioned adjacent to your closet, capable of capturing anterior, profile, and posterior views.
Make a list of all the roles in your life: mrs. mother, madame wife, dr. professional, and how you would ideally like to feel in each of these roles. When I enter my workplace, I want everyone to assume I spellcheck my e-mails. Or I want my children to perceive that my household is not the kind of place where clearing your nose on the furniture is proper. Or I want to feel pretty enough for passé civilities like opened doors, extracted chairs, gloves, and handkerchiefs.
Get five bins, trashbags, or wheelbarrows, tomorrow we will show live footage of the actual dissection, analysis, and cleansing of a closet.
The 5 Piles
1. Keep: When you walk by the mirror in these items, it should compel a brief pause, during which a smile flutters across your face. It doesn't have to be fancy, but it does have to flatter.
2. Archive: Are your winter boots currently residing in company with your flip flops? For shame, keeping seasonally distinct items in a single closet (even in Arizona) not only makes for fashion overwhelm, but it also makes your clothes very sad. It's like serving tuna with peanut butter, it just isn't right. Now for those items that you loved upon purchased, proceeded to wear for a straight fortnight, and in consequence is now prematurely jaded, I suggest archival. Archive all that is tired, seasonally inappropriate, or just inconclusive. Then reassess in 3-6 months, and ditch anything you're still not ready to wear immediately. Don't underestimate the thrill of fashion reunion.
This is not however a dumping ground for fashion memorabilia. If you don't plan to wear it within the calendar year, take a picture of it and donate it.
3. Repair: You have exactly five days to go to the dry cleaner, cobbler, or tailor with these items. If it's not urgent, it's not important enough to fix.
4. Give-Away: Donate items that don't fit your body or style but are in good condition. If you are having a difficult time parting with an item that no longer flatters your figure, find a specific friend to give it to. Or better yet, organize a clothing exchange, in which friends can bring all their items that are in good condition, but no longer employed by their closets.
5. Throw-Away: Items that are stained, torn, or otherwise beyond repair. Enough said.
Removal tips
Closet cleanses should be undertaken somberly and consistently. As a new season is budding, as a new life calling is dawning, as you find yourself glazing over at the threshold of your wardrobe's abyss, all of these indicate optimal conditions for a purging.
Below are specifics to ensure a safe, successful procedure:
Dedicate a large portion of ante meridian to it, mornings with the blinds drawn provide ample natural light, but if you must use post meridian, ensure you have sharp, clean, distributed lighting. Either way, find a thicket of uninterrupted hours.
Although closet cleanings can be done in intervals, an uninterrupted push actually aids your ability to purge. First seeing all the clothes in one day allows you to quickly rank the best and worst. Second, seeing all your clothes in a single day may induce a little emotional nausea. Hopefully this disgust is stronger than any emotional attachment, allowing you to purge what is poisoning your closet.
As this is a somewhat intense procedure, let's do what we can to make it as lovely as possible. Wash and style your hair, but leave off the makeup. That way it won't induce unnecessary dry cleaning and you'll be able to see how different chromatics affect your complexion. Finally slip your best dainties, including any shapers that you regularly wear, under some loungers.
Once you're ready, prepare your environment. Allow the melodies of a dewy fresh anthem to twinkle around you. Fix yourself a refreshing tonic: sparkling water, ginger lemonade, minted honeydew juice. Personally I prefer listening to Madeleine Peyroux with a dainty cup of herbal egyptian licorice.
While you pour your beverage, fill a second glass, because you'll need a friend. Not that really nice friend who praises everything you do. No, we want the chronically honest friend, the teenage daughter, or the opinionated mother. Spouses can be good with the honesty, but they lack patience. And occasionally the process can result in temporary marital malaise. If friends are not readily available, make sure you have, at the least, a full length mirror positioned adjacent to your closet, capable of capturing anterior, profile, and posterior views.
Make a list of all the roles in your life: mrs. mother, madame wife, dr. professional, and how you would ideally like to feel in each of these roles. When I enter my workplace, I want everyone to assume I spellcheck my e-mails. Or I want my children to perceive that my household is not the kind of place where clearing your nose on the furniture is proper. Or I want to feel pretty enough for passé civilities like opened doors, extracted chairs, gloves, and handkerchiefs.
Get five bins, trashbags, or wheelbarrows, tomorrow we will show live footage of the actual dissection, analysis, and cleansing of a closet.
The 5 Piles
1. Keep: When you walk by the mirror in these items, it should compel a brief pause, during which a smile flutters across your face. It doesn't have to be fancy, but it does have to flatter.
2. Archive: Are your winter boots currently residing in company with your flip flops? For shame, keeping seasonally distinct items in a single closet (even in Arizona) not only makes for fashion overwhelm, but it also makes your clothes very sad. It's like serving tuna with peanut butter, it just isn't right. Now for those items that you loved upon purchased, proceeded to wear for a straight fortnight, and in consequence is now prematurely jaded, I suggest archival. Archive all that is tired, seasonally inappropriate, or just inconclusive. Then reassess in 3-6 months, and ditch anything you're still not ready to wear immediately. Don't underestimate the thrill of fashion reunion.
This is not however a dumping ground for fashion memorabilia. If you don't plan to wear it within the calendar year, take a picture of it and donate it.
3. Repair: You have exactly five days to go to the dry cleaner, cobbler, or tailor with these items. If it's not urgent, it's not important enough to fix.
4. Give-Away: Donate items that don't fit your body or style but are in good condition. If you are having a difficult time parting with an item that no longer flatters your figure, find a specific friend to give it to. Or better yet, organize a clothing exchange, in which friends can bring all their items that are in good condition, but no longer employed by their closets.
5. Throw-Away: Items that are stained, torn, or otherwise beyond repair. Enough said.
Removal tips
- Hang all your garments backwards (with the hook facing open towards you.) As you wear a garment replace it in the closet in the reverse direction. If you have transposed hangers at the end of twelve months, item extermination should be executed.
- If you struggle to part with a well-loved, but useless item of attire, take a picture of it. Write a story to accompany the image, draw therapeutic hearts and stars around it if it helps, but abandon the actual item.
- Immediately place items that are soiled, torn, de-buttoned, or otherwise injured in a fashion ambulance. If they have not been hemmed, cleaned, or repaired within a week, consider how much these items mean to you.
- Find a home for items, which are in good repair, but do not match your current size, style, or fashion goals. Gift what is mismatched to a fashion deprived family member, friend, or charity. Host a clothing swap social.
Sponsored by:
follow EasyClosets.com, a division of the Stow Company
Contact Dimitri at 800-910-0129 ext.104
Thursday, May 24, 2012
Closet-Palooza: Dressing Room Dysfunctions
For "what is your closet but the different personas we have auditioned and discarded? Hanging there in our closets are reminders, both good and bad, of who we are, who we've been, and who we've hoped to be." Tim Gunn
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| my closet's blank slate |
Before we can pursue the solution, let us address the problem. Below are some stereotypical closets, which require immediate intervention.
Diagnosis-the torture chamber
Inside this ambry lie items endowed with the powers of self-flagellation and holy glorification. Items are distinguished primarily by size: smallish, mediumish, largish. If the body is enrobed in smallish clothes with minimal wrestling, the day is deemed good and the wearer is appraised acceptable. Her closet exists to punish and reward her.
Prescription-editing
Back up sizes should be either be removed completely or hidden from the forefront of your personal showroom.
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Diagnosis: the museum
Inside this cold storage lies a rich, tangible history. The frock worn when eyes were first laid on Romeo hangs next to her cheerleader's glory guise, her wedding ensemble is pressed beside the blouse donned during the debut of her most favorite episode of Northanger Abby. Her closet is sentimental rather than functional.
Prescription-archive
This closet needs to relocate to the basement. If items are kept they need to remain out of site, in protective bags. Better yet, take a picture and donate the actual item.
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This rumpled receptacle vomits when opened. In the refuse there may be well-made trousers in need of hemming, scuffed designer leather boots, a favorite silk shell stained with soy sauce, a cashmere sweater dined on by moths. This closet lacks discipline and sanitation.
Start with a clothing ambulance in which all injured items are either repaired or taken to the clothing morgue. Continue convalescence in a boundary intensive wardrobe sanatarium.
-----------------
Trends from all different directions exist here. There are many items lying dormant and undisturbed, brooding with the irritation of their un-removed price tags. Sometimes this disorder is caused by a simple split personality: work is straightforward and boring, personal life is over the top to make up for the difference. Two different languages are unable to blend and conjugate a single look. Other times it's ugly clothism evidenced in the un-equal representation of anemic bottoms against plentiful tops. It's as if there are only nouns without any verbs or prepositions. Whatever the cause, this schizophrenic wardrobe is unable to communicate a cohesive outfit.
Prescription-Unification
Mend the sartorial union by declaring an official signature style. This cooperative lexicon will help you your clothing to converse. Next make sure your vocabulary is rich with equal representation from each of the clothing categories.
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Diagnosis-The RepeatThis sideboard encloses one style of twin set in five different colors, the only visible pattern is vertical stripes, and the floor is veiled with a colony of sensible black shoes. This area acts as a mechanical uniform dispenser.
Prescription-Inspiration
Install a pin board and collage aspirations from magazines, catalogs, blogs, and your own successes.
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Whether you wardrobe represents one or many of these examples, we will be purging them, psychological dispositions and all. Next up is your 5 step closet recovery program. In the end you'll have a wardrobe you can actually wear.
Sponsored by:
follow EasyClosets.com, a division of the Stow Company
Contact Dimitri at 800-910-0129 ext.104
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| the interim make shift, looking very nigh the rubbish bin |
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Closet-Palooza: Your Personal Clothing Boutique
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| A few sneaky peaks into the upcoming grand reveal |
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First, your wardrobe is, or should be, a carefully curated collection: the perfect ikat pencil skirt that you fished from between velour hot pants and a brocade tapestry jacket at the discount outlet, the immaculate fit jeans you discovered after three hours of slipping your thighs in and out of denim, the quilted handbag you watched until two in the morning until the eBay auction ended with your winning bid. You have sought these pieces out. You waited for them to blossom into sale. You altered them to your exact measurements. The collection of garments cooperates as a team, the sum more than any one part, confiding in one another their flattering secrets. Having a custom closet allows you to create a space specifically tailored to your collection, showcasing each and every masterpiece. Rods set at exactly the right height, shelves of the appropriate depth, and enough storage for every item in your collection.
This is not the realm of storage but display. Your closet is a demi-temple of peace and sanctuary. A space harmonizing yourself and your body. An opportunity to shroud your external self with your internal desires, free from anxiety or conflict.
A personalized boutique where each piece offers a comfortable fit, a blush inducing hue, a style that unifies your internal and external being. Hunting should be done on the sales rack, closets are for efficient decadence. If you cannot fit your fingers between hangers, if you hang wool next to eyelet, if you can identify a range of 6 sizes on a single rod, it is time for a closet makeover.
I've been in hundreds of closets from the catacombed bays of retail establishments to voluptuously decadent celebrity closets as large as small cottages ornamented with walnut and marble while evaluating dainty apartment models with plastic and wire in the same day. The best closets offer efficient organization, they make exquisite use of space. Just as a competent wardrobe will be selected based on your figure's genetics, and proper closet accounts for your dressing room's architecture. Custom closets are not just for dressing rooms the size of Rhode Island. Custom closets employ every tiny nook and cranny. Particularly if you're tight on storage space, consider going custom.
And just in case your still prioritizing your outdoor dining set, remember that a perfectly poised closet adds value not only to yourself, but also to the future buyer of your castle. After the kitchen, bathrooms, flooring and lighting, luxury upgrades like strategic storage make your home ever more alluring to prospective buyers.
And just in case your still prioritizing your outdoor dining set, remember that a perfectly poised closet adds value not only to yourself, but also to the future buyer of your castle. After the kitchen, bathrooms, flooring and lighting, luxury upgrades like strategic storage make your home ever more alluring to prospective buyers.
Welcome to the Cardigan Empire Closet-Palooza!
Open the doors to closet organizing tools, creative inspiration, and how-to tutorials to tailor your closet to your your wardrobe, home and lifestyle
Sponsored by:
follow EasyClosets.com, a division of the Stow Company
Contact Dimitri at 800-910-0129 ext.104
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