Closet Clean Chapter 5

Hello and welcome to Chapter 5 of this six part series following along my semi-annual closet switchover. Thanks so much to everyone who has sent fun messages or pictures of their own closet cleaning, I’m so glad this is helping anyone!

A few years ago, when my household had half as many people in it, we lived in the bottom half of a brownstone in Brooklyn with a weatherized finished basement. We didn’t live in the basement, but it was a full floor of storage, the unicorn of New York apartment amenities, and I loved it. But one of the issues of having a lot of space is that it’s harder to be disciplined about not acquiring too much stuff, and by the time I moved out of that home to zone my daughter into a better school district, what had originally been my “archive” had turned into a hot mess. Even the brand I worked for was storing a ton of things there, and getting everything out proved much more difficult than moving things in.

I am forever scarred by the experience of cleaning out that space as a single mom with a full time job outside the home and a dog and a life, such that I am wary of having too much space to this day. However, now I have the opposite problem. My home headcount has doubled, but the home we lived in has less storage than anywhere I have lived before. So, last year I decided to take a storage unit to move some of the things I was tired of Tetris’ing around our house into a safe but remote place. This included my off-season wardrobe.

For a while I tried Clutter, which, as I mentioned in a previous dispatch was not ideal, and recently I switched to Manhattan Mini Storage, which has a bunch of similarly priced options near my house, meaning I can move things in and out easily. The trick, as I found out, was finding someone to move it.

I started with a recommended Man With A Van, who confirmed my appointment and his rate but then never showed up. In a panic, I booked a different mover through an app for the following day, hoping not to disrupt my work schedule too drastically, and that guy…. also never showed up.

At this point I was absolutely dejected, and everyone in my house hates me now because after I fell off schedule getting my packed up things out they started to get in everyone’s way. I moped around for a few days feeling sorry for myself, but then finally gathered my courage, went back to Task Rabbit, and booked a new Man With a Van.

Enter Taha. Taha is prompt, communicative, arrived with the correct sized van, was nice to my family, and did an amazing job moving. So if you’re in New York, here is Taha, with a link to his Task Rabbit profile (the link being the true meat of this post). He is fluent in Arabic, Italian and French. Taha completed restored my faith in this process.

If you’re storing at home, maybe you don’t need this resource, and you can just load your things into your home storage space without much fuss. But if you’re storing away from home, choose a unit that is a little bigger than what you need. If you can, bring the rolling rack with you to the unit, that way you can store hanging garment bags standing up. And, when you need to bring your wardrobe back for some switching, you can roll the whole thing on its equipment.

The more organized your storage unit is, the easier it will be to access your things, or switch out your wardrobe, or whatever else you need to do with the space. I know the temptation with any storage space is to just cram things in however they’ll fit in a shameful frustrated haste, but taking an extra second to make it nice in there will pay off in the long run. I have an extra bakers rack that I might move over there as well, just so that there are some shelf options. I might as well. I love all that stuff so much, I want it to live a nice life (away from me, in isolation).

Before I locked it up, I checked to make sure everything is accessible, and that it will be easy for me to get in and out in case I need to pop over there sometime in the future. Then I said farewell, to return in the fall.

I would have loved to photo document every thing that went in there just to have for the ol’ records, but I didn’t. I have a job and a life and a family, and I am a real human. I’m saying this because I think it’s very possible there are other people reading here who might feel frustrated because they didn’t do every step from this mini series or didn’t have time or even space or budget to store things. The point isn’t to be all Bling Empire about your clothing collection. I have spent as little time on all of this as possible. The point is to take good care of what you have, and honor the fact that you spent money on all this crap, and that you are responsible for it. This, ultimately, is what creates the behavior shift we need, and it’s an imperfect, long, slow process. So go easy on yourself if you feel like you didn’t do it exactly right.

The last chapter if this series is coming up:

1. Prepare

2. Edit This Season’s Wardrobe 

3. Assess and Repair

4. Gift, Sell, Donate 

5. Storage (you are here 📍)

6. Living With Your Things

Living with Your Things is a celebration, so get ready for lots of joyous selfies having fun in my wardrobe. This week is my birthday, and I only have room to smile, rejoice and celebrate life. I hope you guys are doing the same. Thanks for reading. :)