Closet Cases With Plenty of Hang-Ups

The nation’s closets have never looked so good. Shoes are lined up on custom-designed cherry shelves; sweatpants are folded on German beechwood hangers; cell phones are recharging in specially designed niches; pearls and cuff links are nestled in built-in quilt-lined drawers.

Pressed for time and swamped with stuff, Americans will spend more than a billion dollars on improving their closets this year. Why? They can’t afford not to: Time is money.

Do you think Michael Jordan or Madeleine Albright can waste precious seconds hunting for sneakers in the bottom of a closet?

Nobody can. Call it time and stress management through wardrobe organization.

“I was wasting so much energy looking for the clothes I needed for all my different lives,” says Suzanne Hillman, a CPA who hired interior designer Victor Shargai to design the elegant cherrywood and cream Formica dressing room and adjoining walk-in closets in the McLean, Va., home she shares with her husband, David Hillman, owner of Southern Management Corp.

Now, her “leathers” have a special closet with temperature control, and she can reach for her favorite white T-shirt because she knows exactly where it is. “When you work and you have kids and you have charity events, gardening and whatever sports you do, you need to have everything available,” she says.

“The closet area has exploded,” says Kristen Bryceland, an editor at HFN, a trade publication that covers the home-furnishings industry. “With bigger homes and a good economy, people just keep buying more things, and they need a place to put them.”

The billion-dollar-a-year residential-storage industry has grown 300% to 400% in the past decade, according to Greg Alford, senior partner at Peachtree Consulting Group in Atlanta. Alford says consumers in all segments of the economy believe that “an organized home makes people feel more in control of their lives and allows them to efficiently discharge tasks and save time.”

And in the general upgrading of the American lifestyle made possible by the prosperous times, more consumers think they deserve to have a top-drawer closet.

Builders are paying attention. “A million-dollar house today has to have two walk-in closets adjoining the master bedroom suite,” says Josh Baker, a principal at Virginia’s Bowa Builders, which specializes in high-end residential construction. Other upgrades: motorized conveyors, like a dry cleaner uses, to move clothes to you, custom wood cabinetry and moldings, plus dressing rooms the size of small bedrooms for those who want to create a junior haberdashery.

Home builders and even owners of rental apartments are hiring companies like Closet Stretchers to outfit closets with shelves and baskets to enhance the marketability of a property.

Some of today’s dressing rooms are so huge they even have center islands, which Morry Ghoulian, owner of Maryland’s Closet Stretchers showroom, says are perfect for packing suitcases or throwing your briefcase on at the end of the day.

Ghoulian says he’s presented with a lot of unique challenges, like the custom shelves he had built to house Miami Heat basketball superstar Alonzo Mourning’s size 18 1/2 shoes.

Closets today are more than just a place to cram your khakis. “Our product is made to simplify our clients’ exits in the morning and their return home,” says Vincent Sagart, designer for Poliform, an Italian-made closet system whose richly appointed custom designs cost from $6,000 to $100,000. “People are so busy and so successful, every 10 minutes saved counts.”

And make no mistake: Having your closet “done” is no longer a luxury reserved for CEOs. International franchises like California Closets and regional companies like Closet Stretchers build laminate systems starting at about $400. At Wal-Mart and Home Depot, do-it-yourself customers are filling their carts with plastic, wood and wire racks, drawers, shelves, boxes, bins and two-level hanging poles in the hope that all of this will encourage slobs and neatniks alike to keep things organized.

What’s more, Americans are willing to stand in line to get organized: At last month’s sale of the Elfa wire-based ventilated storage system, clerks at the Container Store in Rockville, Md., handed out pagers to customers waiting for their shelf brackets to be custom cut. The Dallas-based home-organization chain, which offers more than 100 styles and colors of coat hangers, is expecting total sales of $237 million this year, says a company spokeswoman.

“You wouldn’t expect people to get this excited about such a mundane thing as closet organizers,” says Ian Pennell, a closet expert and sales associate at the Rockville store. “But some people just go into rapture about it.”

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Help comes in all price ranges.

For more than 50 years, Poliform has built a reputation for its sophisticated, modular wardrobe system that marries high style with custom workmanship. Many of the company’s Washington-area clients come from the Northern Virginia high-tech corridor, where every minute saved may mean another deal done.

Sagart, who runs the Poliform showroom at the Washington Design Center with his wife, Helena, says they get requests for spaces to hold 300 ties, dozens of golf shoes, built-in safes, packed-and-ready suitcases, mini-bars and tiny TVs mounted to track stock tickers.

Poliform offers a wide variety of systems in pear wood or Italian walnut. To accommodate any storage requirement, Poliform (https://www.poliform.net) offers glass-fronted drawers dressed in quilted drawer liners and custom compartments to hold tennis rackets at easy reach. An average job runs about $15,000 to $20,000, says Sagart, whose A-list clients prefer to remain anonymous.

Sagart meets with his clients to discuss the inventory they have made of their wardrobe and queries them about how much time they spend in their closets dressing or organizing their stuff. He asks them how many pairs of shoes they have and how much sports equipment they store. After he comes up with a plan, he either meets with them again or, with particularly busy customers, he says, further communication goes on over the Internet.

He posts designs for the new closet on his Web site, so clients can click in from wherever they are traveling using a special password. Drawings then are transmitted to the factory north of Milan, where everything is produced. After about eight to 12 weeks, it all arrives in Washington and installation takes one to five days.

Interior designers are often called upon to draw up plans for clients’ clothes closets. Designers say that over the past decade, it has become a routine request. “Custom closets are now no more a status symbol than a Sub-Zero refrigerator,” says Washington designer Barry Dixon. “It’s just one more layer of service you bring to almost every job.” Dixon’s carpenter-built custom closets usually cost from $3,000 to $10,000. He’s big on cedar linings, although some clients can’t deal with the woodsy smell. Says Dixon, “One Prada sweater moth-eaten from one season to the next, and you have paid for the lining.”

Washington designer Shargai says that although he is doing lots of large room-size closets, the less space his clients have to work with, the more important planning the closet is. He also cautions that systems must be flexible. “Otherwise, as skirts get longer and shorter over the years, you’re in trouble.”

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California Closets has installed custom storage systems since 1978. Most of the shelves and partitions are constructed of 3/4-inch particle board with melamine laminate available in a variety of finishes, including white, almond and wood-grain. Higher-end cabinetry sometimes is finished with wood veneers. Systems range from $400 to $30,000, with the average sale around $2,000. The company now has 113 franchises, including a new location in London (https://www.calclosets.com).

And in March, the second issue of the firm’s own magazine, Hush, goes on sale at Barnes & Noble bookstores. “We like customers to think that the place they put their stuff is as important as the stuff,” says Edward Leaman, executive vice president of California Closets, who forecasts global sales of $140 million this year, a growth rate of 15% over last year.

One of the pioneers of fine off-the-rack closet goodies is Hold Everything, a part of Williams-Sonoma, which mailed its first catalog of see-through hanger covers and quilted ball-gown bags in 1983. This year, the firm will mail out 29 million catalogs. Today, there are also 33 Hold Everything stores, where canvas garment racks and ebonized-maple sock organizers entice upscale shoppers. Current hot item: fine European wood hangers.

This new call to order is not just for adults. Darrell Pauley of Gaithersburg, Md., a recent Container Store customer, put together an organizing system for his 15-year-old son, Eric. “His closet is a disaster,” said Pauley. “He has difficulty keeping stuff together. He’s into so many sports--baseball, track, and he is an avid skier.

“I certainly hope it will save him time,” said Pauley, as he shelled out $400 for Elfa closet essentials. “But more important, I hope it will save the family some time.”

Tidying Up: This Is No Time for Sentimentality Where do you start?

If your closet is not well-organized, experts say, you end up using only 20% of your wardrobe. But whether your closet is bulging with Armani blazers or scuba gear, transforming it will require patience and homework.

It’s also an opportunity to look at things in a fresh way. For instance:

* Consider installing an electrical outlet in one of your closets so you can recharge your cell phone, Palm Pilot or laptop computer in the same place every night.

* Decide whether you want built-in storage for luggage or sporting equipment in your bedroom closet or elsewhere.

Now for the grunt work. Armed with a few shopping bags and a tape measure, follow these tips from the pros:

* Go through your wardrobe and take a good hard look at each piece of clothing, each pair of shoes and every scarf and tie. Keep only what you really wear, and fill shopping bags with the rest to give away to friends or family, to charity or to the dumpster.

* Force yourself to part with clothes that have stains that will not come out and clothes that haven’t fit you for a year or more. Also, assign one shopping bag to clothes that need alterations, buttons sewn or some other repair.

* If you consider some pieces of clothing sentimental--like the petticoat you wore on your wedding day or your first Kate Spade purse--put them away in a box elsewhere instead of having them take up precious room in your everyday closet.

* Decide whether you’re a “hanger” or a “folder.” Do you like to put your pants and sweaters on hangers or fold them onto shelves or into drawers?

* Count your shoes, belts, ties and purses and decide if you want to keep those in your closet area or in a separate cabinet or chest.

* Measure your short hanging items (blouses, skirts and jackets) to see if it makes sense to install a double rod.

* Count your sweaters, shirts and pants and decide where you want to store those.

And, finally, a little treat:

* Buy some decent hangers. They’ll help your clothes hang straight--and make your closet look better. If you can’t afford to buy an entire closet’s worth at once (good wood hangers can cost a lot), treat yourself to three or four each time you go into your favorite organizing store.