Drawers
What Season Is It Today?
It’s hard to know how to dress when the weather can’t make up its mind what season we’re in. I did my laundry yesterday, and I observed that over the past week, I wore one turtleneck, three long-sleeved shirts, and three short-sleeved shirts. There were two pairs of shorts in the load as well. We went from winter to summer (with a short stop at spring) in less than a week. And today we are back at winter.
I feel very fortunate that I have easy access to all of my clothing, regardless of the weather. That enables me to pivot from cashmere and boots on Sunday to shorts and sandals on Wednesday. But this doesn’t happen by accident.
I decided that I wanted to write an organizing tip about this, but I knew I had written about it in the past. I searched the archives on my web site and then I found it: “Making Our Closets Work Year Round.” I wrote that post on April 5, 2010, which was a surprise to me. I thought the seesawing weather was a more recent phenomenon but apparently it was common enough 16 years ago that I was motivated to write about it.
In that post, I gave some advice that I think is still sound: “As you make your spring transition this year, I recommend that you spend some time reviewing all of your clothes and getting rid of those that you seldom wear. This will free up space for the items of clothing that will help us through the awkward transitions between seasons. Identify which winter clothes you didn’t wear at all, or wore but didn’t enjoy, as well as the summer clothes that you forgot you had and really aren’t looking forward to wearing. Give those away, and use that empty space to keep more of your off-season clothes accessible.”
You can read the post to learn strategies about what to do if you still don’t have enough space to keep everything at your fingertips. Some apartments really are too small to keep all of your clothes available at the same time. But having fewer clothes helps a lot. The less you have, the more you can keep accessible — and the easier it is to find what you are looking for every time you get dressed. Having too many choices really doesn’t make you happier.
The Ghost Bowl
I have long been of the opinion that we own more than we ever use. In my last post, I provided a possible solution to that dilemma with regard to clothes: wear your clothes in order (see Are You Wearing All Those Clothes?) The same principle can be applied to other possessions of which we have multiples, such as items in the kitchen.
It’s common for dishes, flatware, and drinking glasses to come in packages of 6 or 8. But when we use them, we always take the one off the top of the pile or from the front of the cabinet, right? How often are you using the ones in the back or at the bottom of the pile?
This phenomenon became obvious to me recently when I took a good look at my salad bowl. Ever since I worked with a nutritionist 11 years ago and lost 40 pounds (see Lightening the Load), I have had a salad with my lunch every day. While I occasionally rotate my plates so that the ones on the bottom of the pile get used, I apparently had not been doing this with my bowls.
Thanks to its daily excursion through the dishwasher, the salad bowl I use every day has been completely stripped of its decorative design. For comparison, I pulled out the bowl from the bottom of the pile, which demonstrates the pattern. Interestingly, the places where the pattern used to be are whiter than the rest of the bowl, turning it into a sort of palimpsest (great word — look it up!) I have named this piece of dishware The Ghost Bowl.
I rarely have the opportunity to view so clearly how we use the same items over and over again. I’m not suggesting that I should get rid of all the rest of my bowls, as they are often needed at other meals. However, The Ghost Bowl illustrates that I need to pay attention to what I’m not using so that I can consider reducing what I own.
We recently had a flood on an upper floor of our building, and water flowed into my kitchen. Cleaning it up required me to remove all of the mugs, glasses, and stemware from one cabinet where the water came in. After cleaning them and putting them back a few days later, I ended up giving away three pieces of mismatched stemware (which were happily scooped up on Buy Nothing) and three commemorative mugs (which were given to a friend).
If your kitchen cabinets don’t feel too crowded, then there’s no need to take any action. But if you are feeling crowded out of your kitchen, empty the offending shelf and then put back only what you know you are using. Give away the rest.
Now I’m off to eat my lunch and put The Ghost Bowl into action.
Are You Wearing All Those Clothes?
When the season changes, I am always excited to rediscover the clothes I haven’t worn in many months. For the summer, that means short-sleeved and sleeveless tops, as well as shorts. (I have a few dresses for when I have to get fancy, but otherwise I’m not a dress kind of gal.)
At the start of this summer, I found myself gravitating towards my favorite summer tops. I went for the ones that were the most comfortable and the most flattering. After a while, I started wondering why I still had some of the others, because I wasn’t wearing them. So decided to wear all of my tops in order and make a decision about whether to keep them.
My summer shirts live in two places. Most of them are folded and stored one of my dresser drawers. For years I have been folding them so that they stand up. The short-sleeved tops go on the left, the workout t-shirts on the right, and the sleeveless tops and workout shorts go in the middle. When I do laundry, the clean shirts go in the back, so the ones I haven’t worn recently are always in the front.
I started wearing the short-sleeved and sleeveless shirts from front to back. I identified a couple of them that weren’t as flattering as others and I plan to donate them. I also have short-sleeved and sleeveless blouses hanging in the closet. I’ve now worn almost all of them, and have put a few in the donation pile.
I also had an interesting experience with my dressy pants. I wear jeans most of the year (blue or black) and only break out the nicer pants when I need to be a little more dressed up. I wear those nicer pants so seldom that they tend to collect dust. I solved that problem by getting some dust covers for them (see my post Clothes You Don’t Wear That Often.)
I recently decided to put on a pair of nice black pants for my anniversary celebration. The first pair I put on were less comfortable than I remembered. I decided to try on all of my nice pants to see which ones still felt good. I ended up giving away three pairs of pants. I am thinking of giving away more, since those pants are worn so infrequently.
Are there clothes you own but are not wearing? (Hint: if they still have tags on them, that’s a good clue. One of the pants I gave away still had tags on!) Try the exercise of wearing everything in order. See what feels comfortable and looks good. I guarantee that you will find some things that are ready to check out of your home. Life is always easier when you have more room and fewer choices.
Falling in Love With AnyDrawer
Is it possible to fall in love with inanimate objects? If so, then I am in love with my AnyDrawer custom drawer organizers.
I have long been a fan of drawer organizers and have written about them several times, most recently in In Praise of Drawer Dividers. But AnyDrawer has taken my passion to a new level.
What do I love about the AnyDrawer custom drawer organizers? Let me count the ways.
- They are customized to the dimensions of your drawer and the size of what you want to organize.
- The sections are modular, so you can switch them around as your needs change.
- They are made from sustainable materials and come in a variety of colors.
I’ve customized two of my drawers with AnyDrawer in recent months. The first drawer I worked on was the silverware drawer in my kitchen. It was organized with a hodgepodge of products to fill out the space, none of which were doing a great job of making everything visible and accessible.
This is what my silverware drawer looks like now with my AnyDrawer custom inserts. I chose the “coffee” color to blend seamlessly with the wood of my drawer.
The second drawer I customized was my desk drawer. This is the “before” picture. I was using a drawer organizer that I had received as a sample from a vendor a long time ago. It wasn’t holding up well, and things slid around too much.
This is the “after” picture, using AnyDrawer’s “marble” color. Everything fits much better, and I was able to put “like with like” — that is, similar items in the same section. For example, all of the USB drives are now in one section, and the PostIt notes are no longer sliding into the tape flags every time I close the drawer.
AnyDrawer’s pricing is very reasonable, and the manufacturing and delivery time is fast for a custom product. You can see more about their products on their website.
Because the measuring and design of a custom solution takes some practice, AnyDrawer is using Professional Organizers to help deliver their excellent products to the public. If you’d like to take your drawer organization to the next level, let me know if I can help bring some clarity to the jumble of your drawers.
Rethinking My Utensil Drawer
My recent home renovation included replacing all of my kitchen appliances. This required a widening of the doorway (don’t ask). As a result, one of cabinets was replaced with a narrower cabinet.
The original cabinet had a drawer that I used for kitchen utensils. I was lucky to have multiple shallow drawers in different areas of my kitchen. I used one for silverware, one for utensils, and one for my wraps and baggies. Now I was down one drawer.
Even when I had a utensil drawer, I kept some of my utensils in a bin in a lower cabinet because the drawer would otherwise be too crowded. The ones I didn’t use often, but was reluctant to part with, went down below. The ones I used all the time went up top.
When I prepared my kitchen last fall for the impending renovation, I got rid of a lot of the infrequently used utensils. When my kitchen was completed, I got rid of even more. Now I was ready to figure out how to compensate for the loss of one drawer.
The narrow cabinet was outfitted with a Rev-A-Shelf pullout with three levels. With the help of some clear plastic drawer inserts from The Container Store, I created three levels of utensils:
- The top level uses an iDESIGN Linus Deep Drawer Organizer to hold my most frequently used utensils, including the ones I use at the stove, which is right next to the cabinet. It holds two spatulas, a slotted plastic spoon, and a can opener. The drawer organizer is low enough (3-1/8″ high) that I can simply reach into it from the side to grab the utensil I need.
- The bottom level uses the same iDESIGN drawer organizer and holds utensils for opening stubborn bottles and jars.
- The middle level holds the less frequently used utensils and uses two iDESIGN Linus Narrow Pantry Bins. Those are taller (6″ high) so they hold a lot of utensils! The clear drawers allow me to see what’s in there so I can find what I need on the infrequent occasions that I use these utensils.
By rethinking how to store utensils and by making use of some organizing containers, I was able to overcome the loss of a drawer. And all of my utensils are reunited in one place instead of having the infrequently used ones in a separate cabinet. I plan to revisit that middle level in 6 months to see what more I can get rid of.