TIME FOR WINTER CLOTHES
As fall approaches, you may find yourself pulling a few sweaters and long-sleeved shirts out of storage. This is the time to start preparing your closet for the winter. All too often, cold weather comes on suddenly and we're not prepared. We end up pulling out our boxed up winter clothes and slowly mixing our summer and winter wardrobes together. We all know that this can lead to a closet catastrophe! Avoid the mess by following these simple guidelines to getting your closet in order for the winter before it's too late.
1) The last thing you want is all of your clothes out of storage at once. Your closets and dresser drawers will quickly become a nightmare if you don't handle things in the right way. One good way to get the winter clothes out while you're still using a lot of your summer clothes is to get a good garment rack. A garment rack can be used for airing out musty winter clothing and hanging them so that wrinkles can fall out. You can also use this as a staging area to hold things that do not quite fit in the closet yet.
2) Make yourself a divider out of cardboard or poster board so that you can keep wardrobes divided. You can use it on your garment rack or on your hanging bar. Make sure that when you have items from summer and winter hanging that they stay separated. This will help you to quickly put those summer clothes away once you're sure that winter is here to stay.
3) Before you take everything out of storage, go through it and pick out some basics that you're sure to need on those cooler fall nights. A light jacket, a sweatshirt and sweatpants, some jeans, and other good layering items can be used during all of these in-between extreme temperature days. If you're not ready to swap out summer clothes for winter, just get a good stash of layering warmth to use until you're ready to tackle the rest.
4) While you're doing this, you can go ahead and take coats and sweaters to the cleaners if you need to. Getting rid of musty odors and having your clothes hung and ready to switch out will make the job much easier when the time comes. Use heavy duty clothes hangers to hang your coats, suits, dresses, and other items that need to hold their shape. Wooden coat hangers are perfect for this. Other clothes can be hung on hangers that fit closely together or cascade from each other so that they take up less room during the transition.
About the Author: Jo Granville is on the staff of www.OnlyHangers.com, a leading online resource for premium grade clothing hangers.